Matt Grover

@bill_tschumi @ryneschill @nut_history He probably shouldn’t be a first ballot if you look at the history of catchers who got in on the dust ballot and his totality of work (the stats aren’t that eye popping), but he will because Mauer did for some ridiculous reasons

@ryneschill @nut_history Buster Posey is not "1st ballot" HOF. Maybe 4th year, if he's lucky.

2027 first time candidates Anyone you voting for?

@RedbirdRiot Probably Edgar and Vina - even though Wong/DeJong was an underrated duo.

Winn and JJ best infield since who???

@MLBaseball_Live This love affair with Dan McLaughlin is absurd. He was a pedestrian broadcaster and he had three chances and blew it. Danny Mac isn’t calling Cards games because of Danny Mac.

If KMOX hired Danny Mac I'd listen to every single Cardinals game - but I can't listen to the Radio anymore since Shannon retired - Every ball is a homerun until it's not - the Bert and Earnie schtick is tired - I just don't like it Listening to Radio used to be my favorite but now I'll pull the TV broadcast up on my phone and just listen to it on the radio when I'm driving - just to avoid the radio broadcast #stlcards

@BKSportsTalk Mo should get credit, but drafting the talent never seemed to be an issue, it was the development of said that. While Mo may have bought the ingredients, Chaim Bloom hired the chefs to make the meal with the way he revamped the minor league system.

Can I ask a quick question on this? Please don’t yell at me. If this continues, does Mo get credit for the “rebuild” given the fact that basically every young player currently on the roster was drafted &/or developed while he was in charge?

@BBGreatMoments This will sound dumb. I’m a Cardinals fan. As a kid, my cousin asked me who my favorite player was. I said Cards utility man Mark Sweeney (a lot of my favorites weren’t the stars). Not 10 minutes later the Cards announced Sweeney was traded to SD for Fernando Valenzuela. Ugh.

What's the trade that broke your heart as a kid?

@BBGreatMoments Jack Buck’s “Go Crazy, Folks” for Ozzie Smiths walkoff homer in Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS is classic.

@blu_sky76 @B1ackBruceWayne To be fair, Florida offered a 100-pt scorer and a top-4 d-man. The Blues - reportedly - offered Tarasenko and Scandella. That said, some athletes don’t want to play in their hometowns and deal with that pressure.

@B1ackBruceWayne They don't want to play here. If they did Matthew wouldn't be on the Panthers.

I don't want either one anywhere near my team tbh

@LStevensAuthor @TMLJaysNiners If you want to make an impact move (not necessarily for Brady, but for anybody) Neighbours has to be in play. Kyrou has a NTC.The team doesn’t appear willing to move Holloway, Snuggerud or Carbonneau. You have to give to get & that puts Neighbours, Dvorsky & Stenberg in play.

@SuperGrover57 @TMLJaysNiners They aren't moving Neighbors either. Kyrou, maybe, if he says yes, but the rest of those guys won't be traded.

@clbrni @cranberryrasp @OnASilverPlaty “Mr. Criminal?” Stop. He made one dumb mistake as a 17-year-old, owned it and hasn’t caused any off-ice issues since. Pump the brakes. And Brady would absolutely help this team. He’s the type of winger you pair w/ Rob Thomas.

@cranberryrasp @OnASilverPlaty like he is in no way good enough to justify making our team look terrible. and not to mention we already have mr criminal mailloux he is the last thing we need

I say (again)

@cranberryrasp @lamar_ochs Neighbours is a piece, but he’s a third line piece. Brady Tkachuk - much like Matthew did in Florida - can be that missing piece - especially when factoring in his history/friendship with Thomas.

@lamar_ochs WE LACK IT?? We have debates about who the next captain will be because there are a few guys who fit the bill. Neighbours is young and fits it…broberg has gotten the A.. Thomas/parayko blues ‘vets’ who fit it.

@ArtLippo2 Neighbours, another prospect and those first round picks would probably have to be in play here. Plus, Kyrou has to approve.

Tkachuk for Kyrou. #L25

@TheHuskyG_AF @game7__ Vrabel’s actions have no real bearing on his job and his consequences will likely be in his personal life. Russini has one of the few professions where this will ruin her. If she was an almost anything else besides a journalist nobody but her inner circle would care.

@game7__ Dude cheats on his wife and essentially admits it and it clears him after he said there was nothing to the story and he gets cleared, but the insider sleeping with him for stories is the only at fault party….get fucked dickhead.

Mike Vrabel literally has nothing to apologize for. The only person who should be apologizing to the public here is Dianna Russini. Vrabel stood at a podium at Gillette Stadium on April 21, 2026, and told reporters he had "difficult conversations with people I care about" in the weeks since photos of him and NFL reporter Dianna Russini at a Sedona resort were published by the New York Post. He said those conversations with his family, his coaching staff, and his players had been "positive and productive." He promised the Patriots would get "the best version of me going forward." By all accounts, he did not mention Russini by name. He kept it brief. And then he moved on. That is all Mike Vrabel owes anyone. The reaction from certain corners of the media suggesting Vrabel needs to do more, say more, or face some kind of professional reckoning is absurd. Mike Vrabel is a football coach. His job is to win games, develop players, and run a football operation. Whatever happened or did not happen at a hotel in Arizona is between him, his wife Jen, and their family. The NFL already confirmed through spokesman Brian McCarthy that it is not investigating Vrabel under the personal conduct policy. The Patriots have not disciplined him. Robert Kraft has not publicly addressed it beyond reportedly trying to stop the Post from publishing the photos in the first place. Vrabel's marriage is 27 years old. He and Jen met at Ohio State in the mid-1990s. They have two adult sons. What happens inside that marriage is not the business of anyone holding a microphone or a Twitter account. If he made a mistake in his personal life, the people who deserve answers are in his house, not in his press room. And by his own account, he already had those conversations. The idea that a head coach owes the public some kind of confessional because he was photographed at a resort is a standard that does not exist in professional sports, has never existed, and should not start now. The person who owes an explanation is Dianna Russini. Russini's entire career was built on credibility. That is not a side benefit of being an NFL insider. It is the whole foundation. When Dianna Russini reported that a trade was happening, or that a coach was on the hot seat, or that a front office was divided, the value of that information depended entirely on the audience believing she got it through legitimate professional channels. The moment those photos hit the internet, that foundation cracked. And everything she did after the photos were published made it worse. The photos, published in early April by Page Six, showed Russini and Vrabel at the Ambiente resort in Sedona, a luxury adults-only hotel roughly two hours north of Phoenix, where the NFL's annual league meetings were being held the following week. The images showed the two of them spending time by the pool, sitting in a hot tub together, and in at least two photos, holding hands or interlocking fingers. Both Russini and Vrabel are married to other people. Russini married Kevin Goldschmidt in September 2020. They have two young sons. Russini's initial response was to claim the photos "don't represent the group of six people who were hanging out during the day." She described the interaction as a journalist meeting with a source away from stadiums and other venues. Vrabel echoed this, calling the photos "completely innocent" and saying "any suggestion otherwise is laughable." The problem is that when the New York Post gave both Russini and Vrabel the opportunity to provide evidence backing up their story before publication, they could not do it. The Post was reportedly open to changing the tone of the story or killing it entirely if the two could produce anything showing they were each on separate trips with friends. Text messages about an airport pickup. Screenshots of planning the trip. Photos from a hike with the supposed group of six. According to multiple reports, Russini could not provide any of it. The Athletic, owned by the New York Times, launched an internal investigation on April 10 into the nature of Russini's relationship with Vrabel, her NFL coverage, and whether she had lied to the company about the meeting. This was not a tabloid outlet chasing clicks. This was her own employer, operating under New York Times editorial standards, determining whether one of its lead reporters had a conflict of interest that compromised her work and whether she had been honest about it. Four days later, on April 14, Russini resigned rather than face the conclusion of that investigation. She then played the sexism card, framing the situation as a female reporter being held to a different standard than her male counterparts. She has supporters in that argument, including Jemele Hill, who pointed out that male reporters have broken "cardinal rules" without losing their careers. There is a real conversation to be had about double standards in sports media. But that conversation does not apply here, because the issue with Russini is not that she was photographed with a source. The issue is that she was photographed in what appeared to be an intimate setting with a source she actively covered, that she could not provide evidence supporting her innocent explanation, that she coordinated her public response with Vrabel before responding to the Post, that she reportedly called a crisis communications expert to strategize before issuing a statement, and that her own employer launched an investigation into whether she had lied. Male reporters do not get a pass for that either. Adam Schefter was criticized for years after it was revealed he emailed an unpublished story draft to a Washington front office executive for approval in 2011. The difference is Schefter could argue he was cultivating a source through a lapse in judgment. Russini's situation involves photos that suggest a personal relationship with a head coach she covered, a denial that fell apart under scrutiny, and a resignation that came before the investigation could reach its conclusion. Those are not the same thing. Russini covered the Tennessee Titans for ESPN during Vrabel's entire six-season tenure as their head coach from 2018 to 2023. She was described by ESPN as the boots on the ground in Nashville for a significant chunk of that tenure. She then moved to The Athletic and continued covering the NFL, including the Patriots after Vrabel was hired as head coach in January 2025. Every story she ever filed about the Titans under Vrabel, every source she cited, every piece of information she reported about the Patriots this past year now has an asterisk next to it. Not because photos at a hotel prove anything definitively, but because a journalist's credibility depends on the absence of reasonable doubt, and Russini could not clear that bar when she had the chance. Multiple outlets reported, based on sources close to the situation, that Russini's husband Kevin Goldschmidt may have hired a private investigator to follow her. If true, that suggests this was not a one-time meeting that happened to get photographed. That suggests a pattern that someone close to her suspected and wanted documented. This is why the Vrabel comparison does not work. Vrabel's job performance is not affected by who he spends time with at a resort. He does not owe the public objectivity. He does not have editorial standards. He does not have a duty to maintain professional distance from the people he interacts with. His job is to coach the Patriots, and nothing about this situation changes his ability to do that. Russini's job was to report on the NFL with independence and credibility. If she had a personal relationship with an active head coach she covered, that is not a personal matter. That is a professional failure. Every NFL insider report she filed, every scoop she broke, every bit of analysis she offered now comes with a question that cannot be answered: did she know this because she was a great reporter, or because she had a relationship with one of the most connected coaches in the league? Vrabel addressed his team. He addressed his family. He addressed the media. He promised to be better. That is more than a football coach is required to do. Russini resigned before her employer could finish investigating whether she lied, could not provide evidence for her own explanation, coordinated her response with the person she was photographed with, and then blamed the fallout on sexism. That is not accountability. That is damage control. Vrabel does not owe anyone an apology for what happened in Sedona. Russini owes one to every reader who trusted her reporting, to every colleague at The Athletic whose credibility got dragged into her mess, and to the profession she claimed to represent. One of these people failed at their job. The other one just got photographed.

@CarolWebster @JaredStillman Her downfall was her profession is a journalist. If she was a lawyer or a doctor or waitress or actress or almost anything else, it’s just two people with bad morals.

@JaredStillman Of course her career is ending. Vrabel will skate. Happens all the time.

Mike Vrabel's soft confirmation today practically ended Dianna Russini's career...why? Because it makes everyone believe that she lied to the Post, he lied to Post and she lied again last week in her resignation letter. He didn't have a choice but he ended her career today.

@CJ_Feher @JacobCersosimo @KMOV @MatrixMidwest Losing Petro didn’t help, but Covid is when things started going off the rails.

@JacobCersosimo @KMOV @MatrixMidwest In retrospect, letting Alex Pietrangelo walk killed any chance of another cup run.

"I think we probably should have two cups, maybe three" Doug Armstrong believes there's a shelf life for managers & it's time for him to move on. Armstrong adds he's had time to reflect lately & is happy with what he's accomplished as GM of the #stlblues @KMOV | @MatrixMidwest

@OleTimeHardball Probably. The bar was lowered with Mauer getting in on the first ballot.

Is Salvador Perez a 1st ballot Hall of Famer?

@stlanalytics That Oshie trade helped make 2019 possible. That team was getting bounced regularly in the first round. Something had to change. Brouwer brought a winning pedigree to the team and was instrumental in changing the culture.

Look, I don’t really care what happens with Kyrou anymore, but idk why people are acting like this is crazy. Guys have bad seasons in the NHL all the time and immediately bounce back. Heck, Jaden Schwartz had just ELEVEN goals in 2019. No need to make another Oshie trade.

Rickey Henderson is on 1st, and he’s looking to run. You have your choice of any Catcher, of any era, to try and gun him down. Who gets the call?

@jmhz84 @jprutherford I get your point, but To be fair, they all did it against the B-teams

@jprutherford Buchnevich doing it against the B teams the past week. It doesn’t count

A couple of weeks ago, it looked like the Blues may not have a 20-goal scorer this season. After that goal by Buchnevich to make it 1-0, they now have four ... 22: Thomas, Holloway 21: Snuggerud 20: Buchnevich

@Ferrario101ESPN It would be nice to see this eliteness show up in Oct. through Jan.

Thomas-Holloway-Snuggerud played like those elite players from 3/1 on. Isn’t that what we wanted all season? They, along with your long-time #1 goalie, hurt your chance at a Top 5 pick. And I’m 100% ok with that.