The Cardinals' closer situation

There have been years where a team announces that it's going to a "closer by committee" and the media makes a huge deal about it and there's a lot of hand-wringing about how you can't win without a designated closer.

But even with those teams there were really only 2 or 3 guys that really ended up getting saves. LaRussa has taken the Cards one step beyond that, I think. There was supposedly a job battle between Perez, who's now in Triple-A, and Motte, who pitched in the 6th inning of a blowout yesterday. So now there's a completely separate competition going on involving two right-handers (Franklin and McClellan) and a lefty (Reyes). The "favorite" among them is supposedly Franklin, yet he is the only one of the three that hasn't actually recorded a Save yet.

As a baseball fan, it's nice to see LaRussa (implicitly) insist that he's not going to let a stupid accounting system dictate how he uses his pitchers. As a fantasy baseball player, it's a total nightmare. I've gotten sucked into it in both my leagues, having drafted Motte in one and Perez in another. I thought I was being smart when I did that, too.

Brett Favre's plane just landed in Green Bay!

ESPN just broke into the baseball game to announce that Brett Favre has landed in Green Bay. He's on the ground. There was no fiery, newsworthy crash. Also, earlier on Baseball Tonight the ticker on the bottom of the screen had three categories: AL, NL, and FAVRE.

Let's hope the STL bullpen can keep the Phillies one run down. It would be nice not to have the Mets fall three back if Jason Isringhausen and co can avoid it, which they might.