Matt Holliday injury: St. Louis Cardinals send Holliday to DL, backdated to July 12

Matt Holliday injury: St. Louis Cardinals send Holliday to DL, backdated to July 12

The Cardinals take advantage of the All-Star Break to give their perennially gimpy left fielder some time off.

This might just be my imagination, but I'm not sure there's been any stretch of time in the last two or three years where Matt Holliday couldn't have taken a totally justified trip to the disabled list. He's got a relatively minor case of Albert Pujols Grimace-everything he does seems just a little painful. So the news that the St. Louis Cardinals have moved him to the 15-day disabled list for this latest hamstring problem, backdated to July 12, doesn't really worry me yet-it actually seems kind of overdue. (Though I guess the pessimistic version of that is that it should worry me, because all those other times they could have DL'd him they didn't.)

In his place the Cardinals recalled Brock Peterson, this year's Ivan Cruz. Plucked from the Atlantic League last year after Memphis had basically run out of position players, Peterson has hit .306/.382/.564 with 23 doubles and 22 home runs in 93 PCL games this year. He's also done all of it at first base-he's theoretically an outfielder, too, but he's spent something like 30 games out there in his 11-year minor league career.

Basically: He's making his big league debut, which is neat, and he's as good a right-handed pinch-hitting option to deposit on the bench while Matt Adams picks up some starts as anybody in the Cardinals' system. He also spent part of last year living in a storage closet inside the Bridgeport Bluefish's clubhouse.