If I hear one more Cardinals apologist say that our “trade” is the hopeful addition of the injured Wainwright and Carpenter, I am going to go batshit crazy. In the spin zone of twisted logic, that has to take the cake. If the first two games of the Brewers series didn’t expose the glaring flaw of an incompetent bullpen to you, then your name may be Helen Keller. We have to make a move. NOW! And you have announcers and company men saying that getting back people that have been receiving huge checks to not to show up for their job is our “trade.” No. I would say they are simply showing up for work now.
But how about Chris Carpenter? He throws four 
scoreless innings and gives up one hit and he is not even remotely satisfied with his command. He is pissed at himself after the outing. This guy is such a competitor. What would the complete opposite of Chris Carpenter look like? Let’s think. A guy that seems satisfied with any result no matter the outcome, is entirely unreliable and underachieved since about forever. Well, a hypothetical pitcher like this would probably be named Mark Mulder. It is hilarious to juxtapose these two. The perfect example is Carpenter’s no-nonsense approach after his outing in Springfield. Mulder, on the other hand, would go get lit up by a bunch of 18 year old negative three tool players in three font A ball and drop wisdoms on us like, “Well, I think I had a couple of bad breaks today.” Or come up with, “There were a lot of positives to work with from this point on.”
Where are we ranking Mulder-gate in our all-time worst trades? It wasn’t as bad as the Steve Carlton deal (yet) and probably not as bad as Neil Allen for Keith Hernandez, but it is rising up the charts faster than a no-talent ass clown pop star post sex-tape. I mean I can’t wait to see Daric Barton, who by the way is still a month shy of his 23rd birthday, get on a good HGH program and start mashing 35 bombs a year. That would officially take the Mulder trade to rape status. I mean, more often than not, Jocketty pulled off shrewd moves, but Billy Beane had to just be laughing his ass off after this one. And don’t say, well, hindsight is 20/20 and we didn’t know…The same apologists referenced above make nonsensical remarks like that every time you bring this trade up. Isn’t a GM’s job to predict the future performance of players in a trade? Isn’t that one of the things he is paid to do? Then when he trades a Cy-Young quality arm on the rise for a dude that spends 45 minutes looking in the mirror with 8 tubes of hair gel every morning and throws in a quality middle reliever and a stud prospect, we should be able to comment strongly on the inequality of the trade without hearing excuses.
I really feel sorry for Mark Mulder in a way. Wait, no I don’t, I meant to say I feel sorry for myself for having had to watch Mark Mulder in a Cardinals uniform on the rare occasions that he made it out to the bump. Here is how I will remember Mark Mulder as Cardinal. He was like the girl two years older than you in high school that was smoking hot then and wouldn’t give you the time of day because you were too young and then you see her out on Skanksgiving when you are in college and she put on the freshman, sophomore 40 and looks like she has been passed around the frat house umpteen times. Yeah, that is the Mulder we got. The one that flunked out of college, moved back home and still talks about J.V. cheerleading as if it was an achievement.
I was lamenting aloud regarding this stellar trade the other day at the Cardinals game (translation: screaming to anyone who would listen while partially sedated due to numerous overpriced, lukewarm beer) and some dude that was wearing jean shorts and a McGwire jersey yelled to me, “Hey, Mulder got us a World Series ring buddy, so get over it.” Can we not screen these people at the gates somehow? Winston Churchill once said the greatest argument against democracy is spending five minutes talking with the average voter.” Well, the baseball translation holds up in saying that the greatest argument against Cardinals fans is spending five minutes talking with the average fan.
Mulder went 6-7 in 2006 with a 7.14 ERA and never pitched in the postseason. His impact on the 2006 team ranks slightly behind Josh the 86 year old batboy.
Random aside: I was watching a highlight film of the 2006 team which is what I do every Saturday night at about 3:00 a.m. after we get back from the bars. My fiancé tries to hide it from me because I usually get WAY too excited about seeing highlights that I have seen so many times I have memorized the voiceover and it ends with me impersonating Billy Bob Thorton and screaming, “THEY FORGOT” about 345 times. Anyway, after Wainwright strikes out Inge, all hell breaks lose as we have seen numerous times. However, this time I noticed that Geritol Josh is right in the middle of the pile just losing his mind. How cool is that for that guy. I mean, I think I would rather have that job than be Megan Fox’s pool boy. And this disturbs me on a number of levels. I mean this guy could be replaced by any person in the stadium at anytime and you would lose exactly zero in performance. Yet he kept his job for like 6 decades. I would love to hear Josh (who recently retired) wax poetic about the ’26 Championship team.