Tagged: Dodgers

Faith.

Before I get into Cardinal baseball, how about that Yankee game? 8 home runs by 7 different players? And not of them is A-Rod? Are you kidding me? You figure there are a lot of balls getting hung over the plate that game to have that kind of a homer happy night. So I’m surprised that Alex didn’t get in on the action, much less to go 0-5. It also shows you how much under ability these guys have been playing all year. This is what the Yanks are capable of doing when they’re running on all cylinders. Every guy down the lineup 1-9 has the ability to put the ball in the stands. Half of their lineup could be cleanup on almost any other team in the league.
Ok, on to the NL Central. What a bittesweet day of baseball. The Cardinals played a hard fought game against Pittsburgh and actually came up on the winning end to stretch their streak to…….4 games. I can barely believe it. The sad news? The Brewers fought back Glavine and his quest for 300 in their win over the Mets and the Cubs won as well. So, the Cardinals still sit at 6 games back of first place and gain nothing on Chicago.

I’m happy for the win though. This kind of back and forth game is the kind of game that Cardinals would win last year and have been losing this year. And even though it seemed back and forth, they never really let the Pirates fully get their foot back in the door and pretty much stayed in control the whole game. Still, I wish the Redbirds would have been able to put them away sooner. You just can’t get in the habit of letting teams hang around in games, especially when we go back to playing higher caliber teams. Both runs that were scored off of starter Adam Wainwright were runs scored with two outs. A sac fly or something may happen when you have 0 or 1 outs, but once you have 2 outs, you have to do everything possible to shut that door.

That said, I felt the Cardinals played hard. Ryan Ludwick laid our for a terriffic play in left field. And Scott Rolen came in hard to homeplate on a play that he should have been out on by a mile. But the catcher couldn’t come up with the ball and Rolen was safe. Great baseball. Though, the Pirates may want to invest in a new catcher. He made two mistakes today that cost his team and earlier this season he did the same against the Cardinals. I can’t remember what game, but I remember another similiar play when he couldn’t handle a simple relay throw for the out.

These next games against the Pirates are getting to be pretty much must-wins for the Redbirds. Sweeping or taking 2 of 3 from the lower teams in the division are a necessity if the Cardinals expect to cotinue competing for the division. That said I think I should explain the following.

I’m not naive when it comes to this team. I know that they have played horrible ball this year. I know that they barely held onto the NL Central title last year when they were AHEAD for most of the year, let alone trying to climb back into contention. And I’m painfully aware that even if this team somehow makes it into the postseason that they’re chances are almost nil. Anybody else remember the 2004 World Series when we didn’t have Carpenter? Yeah, their are other pitchers and other games, but don’t think that the 2004 loss and the 2006 win don’t have anything to do with Carpenter. There is something about going out there with your dominant ace against the other team’s dominant ace that boosts your team’s self esteem, not to mention pushing everyone else on your staff back and deeping your rotation. Losing Carp has been the biggest blow of the season thus far.

Nevertheless, I have faith. Blind faith, maybe. But faith none the less. I believe my team can do it. Or maybe more accurately, I WANT to believe my team can do it. But this is what baseball is all about, right? Every team’s fan has that sort of faith on Opening Day. They all say, “We signed free agents!” “We called up our top prospect from our farm system!” “It’s a new year!” Now, it’s the All-Star break and fans of some teams like the Royals and the Devil Rays have resigned themselves to another season of under 500, poorly executed baseball.

But the rest of us still have hope. Not all of the teams will be rewarded. The Mets, Phillies, Braves, Brewers, Cubs, Cardinals, Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Padres and Rockies will not all make the posteason. In fact, only half of them will. Yet all of those teams are only 6 games or less back and it is ‘possible’ for any of them to do it. So I hold onto the hope. It’s certainly better than giving up on a season. How many people gave up on the Redbirds last year? Like they say, in baseball, anything is possible.

I’d like to hear from anyone else on this topic. When do you say enough is enough when it comes to your team? Do you hold onto hope until the bitter end, until that magic number for the first place club finally reaches 0? Or is that just asking for disappointment such as was the case for Houston fans last year? Is there a point in the season where you finally admit your team is too far gone, even if they have not ‘technically’ been eliminated? I’m really interested in thoughts about this. Obviously baseball is a good starting point, but if you have another sport you’d like to bring up on this topic, I’m open to that too.

Alright boys, time to get busy tonight, taking another one away from the Pirates.

Having faith,
Tiffany

It’s been awhile

I’m back.
I have been very busy at work the last few months and while I have kept up with baseball and the Cards, I have not had time to watch every game and or to even think about blogging. We were trying to get a product out the door on a deadline and now that it has been completed, I hope to spend a little more time watching Cardinal baseball and with my blog.

I realize that there is no way that I can recap everything I’ve missed talking about the last few months, so I’ll just go ahead and pick up where things are right now.

It’s really a great time to come back to the blog, I think, because there is so much happening in baseball right now. First, the Cardinals are starting to look like a team that maybe has a shot of contending. After being in 3rd place for quite sometime and well behind the Brew Crew and even the 2nd place Cubbies (gag), the Cardinals have recently come on strong. After taking 3 of 4 from the Brewers over the weekend, the Cardinals are now in pouncing distance of them at just 6 games back. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that the Redbirds still have 6 games left against the Crew and 8 games against the Cubs this year. So if the Cards can stay close, they definitely have a chance to help themselves the next couple of months. Not to mention the games between the Brewers and the Cubs, where someone has to lose.

This upcoming series is a big one. We will be playing the Pirates and we have to win a couple of games right here, especially with the Brewers playing the Mets. You figure with Glavine on the mound and the kind of ball the Mets have the ability to play, the Brewers are in for a tough series. So it’s an excellent time to gain some ground.

Right now, there is excitement seemingly everywhere in baseball, not just in St. Louis. 3 huge milestones will be chased tonight throughout the baseball world. A-Rod attempts to hit number 500 in New York and not only that, but when he accomplishes the feat, he will be the youngest player to ever reach that mark. I just hope they get a win and shave off a few more games in the AL East Race. I don’t want to see Boston win it.

Over in LA, the Giants/Dodgers rivalry will be heating up and even more so, with Barry one homer shy away from maybe the most hallowed record in baseball; the all-time home run record set by Hammerin’ Hank Aaron. It’s only a matter of time before it happens, but of course, knowing it’s that imminent can sometimes make a player press too hard at the plate, so we’ll see how he handles the pressure of pursuing the great Aaron and his record.

Last, but not least, Mets pitcher Tom Glavine sets his sights on 300 career wins. I’m rooting especially hard for this one because not only do I respect Glavine as a pitcher, a win for him means a loss for the Brewers. And that is something I am very much in favor of.

What a day this could be if all of these feats happened on the same night. Even if they don’t, they will all happen this season, barring injury, in a year where there has already been so many stories with Sosa and Thomas already hitting milestone home runs and Griffey not too far behind. Craig Biggio earned hit number 3000 and if Randy Johnson could have ever stayed healthy he would have had a chance at 300 wins as well. Definitely a historic year to say the least.

The last thing that makes this an interesting day is that the non-waiver trade deadline has now passed with a lot of the wheeling and dealing for the year done. Though there are a few GMs that seem to prefer trading after the deadline, waivers and all.

The Cardinals made very little noise, acquiring righty Joel Pineiro from Boston for cash and a minor league player to be named. Honestly, I don’t know much about this guy. I know that Boston had designated him for assignment, but by this point, I trust that if the Cardinals are interested in a pitcher, there is usually a good reason. Dave Duncan has worked a lot of miracles in that pitching staff, even with guys that were supposedly done, such as Jeff Weaver last year. And Pineiro doesn’t appear to be that far gone looking at his numbers. The best part about this is that the Cardinals didn’t get rid of a ton of players as I feared might be the case. That tells me that they haven’t given up fighting in the Central yet and that they plan on being a contender instead of just a seller at the deadline.

Other notable trades include Matt Morris coming to the Pirates. Once the ace of the Cardinal staff, Morris will be seeing the Cardinals a lot more in the NL Central than he did as a Giant. Morris was always a favorite of mine, a Cardinal that was hard to see go. I hope he does well in Pittsburgh.

Also, of note, Eric Gagne went to Boston. This deal surprised me a ton, considering he had a no-trade clause to the Sox. I really didn’t think he would waive this to setup for Papelbon. That makes the Sox downright frightening in the late innings.

Well, I supppose that is more than enough for my return blog. I will be back tomorrow where hopefully I will be saying that the Cardinals are just a mere five games away from first place.

Go Glavine,
Tiffany

The Spainards have a word for this. It’s, “Uno.”

That’s right!  The magic number is indeed one.

Half of the Saturday equation is complete.  The ‘Birds squeaked by with a W.  (Thank you Scott Spiezio!)  I am supremely confident that the season will be over Sunday, if not tonight.  Chances are very great that either we will tomorrow, Houston will lose tonight or Houston will lose tomorrow.  Any one of those three things happening would send us to the playoffs and make the make-up Giants game unnecessary.  Still, it is best if the Astros just lose tonight and get it over with.

We can save Carp’s arm because Sunday’s game would automatically become meangingless.

In other news, the Reds are completely out of contention.  As for the West and Wild Card, it’s coming down to the wire.  The Phillies won their game and much like the Astros, it’s all they could do, but watch and wait.  The Padres and the Dodgers are playing right now and the Phillies need them both to lose to gain ground in the Wild Card race.  And they have the right guys on the mound to bring home the win in Wells and Maddux.  Bot teams currently have the lead in the late innings.  It’s not looking good for the Phils.

It’s been awhile since the Cardinals were not playing important games in September, whether or not they made the playoffs.  It’s great to be a fan of a team that you love to watch win and that is capable of winning 90+ games every season.  And makes you even happier that you’re not a Cubs fan. 🙂

One last thing.

Dear Braves, If you could please beat Houston tonight, I will forgive you for coming back to beat the Cardinals in the 1996 NLCS and robbing me of my first chance to see a World Series after I had already obtained a ticket.  Thank you for your cooperation.

It’s tomahawk time,

Tiffany

October is only a Cardinal win an Astro loss away – magic number sits at 2

It’s hard to believe, but it’s taken a week worth of games for our magic number to go from 5 to 2.  I definitely thought we would have clinched by now.

What we needed last night was a Redbird win and an Astros loss and that’s exactly what we got.  Believe me, I’m not a Braves fan, but after they beat up on Houston I was doing the tomahawk chop right along with the 40,000 fans at Busch.  Now Atlanta, can you give us one more win tonight?

With the magic number at a mere 2, the Astros chances of making postseason play are slipping fast.  There are still a number of various possible situations in these next few games, but almost all of them still end in the Cardinals heading to divisional play.

I’ll highlight just a couple of these possibilitites.

1) Best case scenario

As I said previously, the best possible outcome would be two wins from the Cardinals and 2 losses from the Astros.  We completed half of that equation last night.  If we duplicate it tonight, the Cardinals are in and without the expense of Carp pitching on Sunday, not to mention the stress.

2) Worst case scenario

Clearly the worst case scenario would  be if the Astros somehow wiggled their way into the playoffs.  They can no longer beat us outright, but it’s still possible they could make it.  But there are only a couple ways this could happen.  They could either finish 1/2 game behind the Cardinals (if we go 1-1 and the Astros go 2-0) or they could finish 1/2 game ahead of the Cardinals (if we go 0-2 and the Astros go 2-0) after Sunday’s game.  If either of those happen, the Cardinals would play the Giants.  If after THAT game, it’s all tied up, then we would play a one game tiebreaker in Houston.  If we lose that game the Astros are in.  Or if the Astros ended up 1/2 game ahead and then we lost that game to San Francisco, the Astros would win, without a tiebreaker game being necessary.

3) Worst case sceario with the Cardinals still making the playoffs.

This means that even if the Cards make it, there is definitely a string of events Cardinal fans don’t want to see.  That would be to finish Sunday’s game 1/2 game ahead or behind of Houston using Carpenter.  Then to play the Giants probably using Reyes and finish in a tie with the Astros.  Then to have to play the tiebreaker game in Houston probably using Suppan (or perhaps Weaver since it’s a road game).  We could win that game and still be in the postseason.  But then we would have to go into divison play most likely the following day or the latest the day after that, (only if the Phils take the Wild Card), having used our 3 best pitchers.  Marquis starting game 1 of the NLDS is a scenario I’d rather not see.

At this point, it’s not likely the Phillies will make it as the Wild Card, so if that’s the case we will not see the Mets round 1.  We will instead play whichever team comes out on top of the NL West race; either the Dodgers or the Padres.

So the fun is far from over.  It’s crazy to think of two opposite ends of the spectrum of possibitlies in options 1 & 3.  Sure, the Cardinals would make it either way, but HOW they make it will go a long way in determing how they do in the NLDS and ultimately the NLCS.

But, it all starts tonight.  We will know a lot more following the game against the Brew Crew and even more following Houston’s game against the Braves.

Atlanta, if we’ve ever needed your help, it’s now.  We need you to be the spoiler.

Tomahawk chop the ‘Stros

Tiffany

Of course there would be a rain delay……

I was planning to watch the Astros game tonight, but since it was delayed that didn’t happen.  Instead, I was checking my computer every few minutes to see if they had started.  So between making dinner and washing a load of laundry, watching a movie and sorting through last year’s pictures, I probably checked my computer around…..oh 52 million times.

Finally, they started.

I know that 2 games out isn’t that much more than 1 1/2, but I would love for Houston to lose tonight.  It would make me feel much more secure about the Cardinals future in October.  Not to mention, a loss would reduce our magic number to a tiny, tiny 3.

The best part about a loss though would mean the Cardinals can’t lose any ground when they play tonight.  An Astros win puts a little more pressure on to make sure they come through with a W tonight.

Still, I figured if the Astros were going to win one more, it would be tonight.  With Oswalt on the mound and facing the Pirates, it’s almost in the bag.  And sure enough, as I type, they are up 3-0.  The good news of course being that Oswalt won’t be pitching in their next 2-3 games.  As good as he is, he can’t win ’em all.

In a completely unrelated manner this LA-Colorado game is out of control.  It’s only the 5th and they’re all tied up at 10-10.  The two teams have combined for 24 hits, but only 6 of them have been extra base hits.  3 doubles and 1 homer per team.  They’re singling each other to death.

The Dodgers squandered a five run lead including a grand slam that James Loney hit in the 2nd.  I love crazy games like this.  Would be fun to be there in person.  But Dodger fans can’t be happy.  They’re supposed to be in a pennant race, not in a slugfest with a last place team.

Well, I’m off to sleep and will dreaming off a Pirates comeback and more importantly a Cardinals win.

Let’s make it 2 in a row, boys,

Tiffany

Who would receive your Cy Young vote?

Two things before I get into the main chunk of my post.

The first is 9/11.  It’s so hard to believe that it’s been five years since that day in 2001.  But, watching old footage and looking at pictures and reading stories, I was instantly transplated back to the bottom level of the bookstore at college, where I was standing with several other students, as we collectively watched the second plane fly into the Towers.  It was the moment that we all realized that this was not an accident, but a deliberate attempt by someone to hurt our country.  As the news came in of other planes, they started evacuating most of the city (I lived in downtown Minneapolis at the time), as all of my friends croweded in front of a tiny TV and watched the days events unfold. 

I’m not a New Yorker and I rarely stray from baseball on this blog, but I think this is important enough to discuss whenever possible.  The courage and dedication of the police force, the firemen and just the regular citizens of New York and DC will never be forgotten.  A big thank you to them.  If only our nation could stay as unified as we were that day instead of constantly attacking everyone except for the people who were truly responsible.

My second comment is not quite as serious.  It’s NFL time and the Rams are 1-0.  Yes, that’s right.  The Rams officially have a winning record.  After a rather disappointing season last year, it’s great to see the Rams in the win column to start of the year.  Of course two other teams in the NFC West and there’s still many games to go.  But, it still made for a good day.  Exceptionally with a not so hot weekend of Cardinal baseball.

Ok, on to my post about the Cy Young.  I was going to write this post after Carp’s last start, but didn’t get the chance, so I wrote it today after he started last night against the Astros.

Much like Albert Pujols, I am biased about Chris Carpenter, since he is a Redbird.  But, I do believe he has what it takes to win the Cy Young this year.  He’s certainly one of the talked about candidates, but also like Pujols, he’s not quite the "shoo-in" he was last year.

Still, I’m confident that he should receive the Cy Young, barring any kind of end of the season meltdown.  His closest competition would have to be Brandon Webb, as the Cardinals found out all to well, as they were 1-hit by Webb in the last series against Arizona.  (And that would be the series we’re not talking about…..)

First, let me talk about the intagibles.  The kinds of things that you know when you watch the Cadinals day in and day out and observe the pitching staff nearly every game of the season.

And the biggest of these intangibles is that Chris Carpenter is a MACHINE.  He strolls to the mound.  Cold.  Methodic.  Calculating.  And he takes cares of business.  As a Cardinal fan, you just don’t get stressed out when Carp is on the mound.  Maybe he walks a guy.  So what?  You’re confident he’ll get the DP.  And he usually does.  Maybe a fielder makes an error that allows the bases to get loaded with only one out.  So what?  He’ll strike out the first guy and get the next guy with an easy ground ball.

He’s started winning streaks and stopped losing streaks and consistently gets ahead of batters.

Basically, Carp can be summed up with this: he has been consistent on a team that has been somewhat inconsistent; the constant on a pitching staff that has been constantly under par.

But, a lot of people looking at Cy Young, look at much more than this.  They want numbers.  So, let’s have a look at the stats that make Carpenter a very worthy candidate for this year’s Cy Young award.

I mentioned earlier that, in my opinion, Webb is the closest competition for the award.  Well, Webb and Brad Penny of the Dodgers are tied with 15 wins and Carp is right behind them at 14.  But, of couse, you can’t look at just wins.  If you did, you would have to conclude that Marquis is a better pitcher than Carpenter, since he reached his 14th win nearly two weeks ago.  Obviously, this would be a crazy and quite untrue assumption.

While Carpenter has had some legitimate losses he has been also the benefactor of low or late run support resulting in losses, or more often no-decisions.  So, next we look at ERA.  Carp leads the NL in ERA with a highly impressive 2.84.  He’s also the only guy in the NL to have an ERA under the 3.00 mark.  He’s 8th in strikeouts, but Webb is down at number 13.

One of the best marks of a pitcher today is consistency.  Carpenter definitely has this on his side.  He’s gone less than 5 innings once (he went 4 on July 30) and in OVER HALF of his starts he’s given up 1 earned run or less.  That’s a pretty incredible stat.  He’s only given up more than 5 earned runs three times all year.  His worst start coming on June 23 in that Detroit debacle.  He gave up 7 runs in 7 innings, striking out 9 and walking none.  When you strike out nine guys in your worst start of the season, you know you’re pitching pretty well.

The other is the ability to go the distance.  Here, Webb and Carpenter are on equal footing.  They both have notched 4 complete games (along with Aaron Harang and Dontrelle Willis) and also have both thrown 3 shutouts (the only ones in the NL to do so).

Carpenter has given up only 63 earned runs to Webb’s 68 and 168 hits to Webb’s 194.  Carp and Webb’s walk totals are 39 and 47 respectively and their strikeouts are 164 and 153.

The numbers are close, but Carpenter edges out Webb in just about every category.

But, of course, do all these stats even matter?  Or should the award be given based on which pitcher is most "valuable" to the club, as the MVP is?  If we’re talking those lines, it’s Carp by a mile.  Other pitchers don’t come close.  Zambrano’s Cubs are so far out of contention that his high strikeout total is void.  Peavvy also has a lot of K’s, but his win total and ERA are atrocious.  Brad Penny also has nice numbers, but they look pretty simliar to Webb, only Webb’s are slightly better, so between the two, you’d have to vote Webb.  The same could be said of Andy Pettitte.

The only other guy that I would give serious consideration to is Johnson of the Marlins.  He has decent numbers and definitely has been valuable to this rookie-filled club all season long.  He has 12 wins and has posted a pretty impressive 3.20 ERA.  His flaw is that he hasn’t been that consistent rock all season that Carpenter has.  He didn’t become a consistent starter until later in the season and yet his walk totals are about twice what Carp’s are.  His strikeout total is also much lower.

If the voting ended today, my vote goes to Carpenter first, Webb second and Johnson third.  Of course voting doesn’t end today and with the excpetion of Zambrano, I see almost any of the pitchers I’ve mentioned being able to make a legitimate run at getting the Cy Young.  Each pitcher probably has 3-4 starts left and any one guy putting an impressive streak together during those starts could tie it up.

You can check out my case for Albert Pujols for MVP here.  As always, I would love to hear who your picks are for MVP or Cy Young and if you think I have missed any contenders that you would put in your top 1, 2 or 3.

Kellia commented that she thinks if Howard hits 60, he’s the MVP.  He’s 4 away.  What do you think?  Comment away.

Carp & Pujols,

Tiffany

Lucky seven….how about eight?

The Cardinals have been so hot lately that I am almost afraid to write a post, lest I do anything that brings them bad luck.  But I am confident that our boys will continue their current winning ways and hopefully extend this hot streak to eight games and beyond.

It’s been awhile, so I have a few things to say.

First, I know I promised a post regarding a sort of "midseason report" of the Redbirds.  I am not going to dedicate a whole post on this now for two reasons.  One, I’m not too worried that anyone was eagerly awaiting this post and therefore nobody will miss it if I don’t write it.  Two, I would pretty much be saying the same thing that everybody already knows and if you would a midseason report you can look about 1,000 places on the internet.  Every media outlet possible has written one.

So instead it will be combined with this post, which will be more of a "how awesome is this seven game winning streak" post.

As we all know, June did not go well.  But, I have every reason to believe that July and the rest of the season will continue to go better.  And the two biggest reasons for that are in the bats of Edmonds and Rolen.  Pujols is a constant.  We know that.  And, for the most part Rolen is too.  Still, there are times he is good and there are times he is GREAT.  Edmonds….well, he’s off and on, but man, when he’s on, he is unbelievable as well.  And both of these guys are heading into the unbelievable category without looking back.

Edmonds average for the first 3 months of the season was .213, .271 and .279.  He’s hitting .283 so far in July.  More importantly, he’s hitting with more power, as evidenced by his slugging percantages, again by month: .427, .329, .443.  And in July?  .652.  Obviously, a huge difference.  Not only that, but he’s hitting the long ball more frequently.  Edmonds had seven homers all together in the first 3 months of the season.  He’s already up to 4 in July alone with half the month left.  Same goes for Rolen.  He had ten homers in his first 3 months and he’s also up to 4 already this month. 

Still the biggest reward for improvement goes to catcher Yadier Molina.  No doubt, this guy is a big league starter for his defensive ability, not his offensive.  So whatever he does at the plate is icing on the cake.  And, he’s been piling it on lately.  Molina has gone from a .192 slugging percentage in April to slugging .500 in July.

Clearly, we’re on an upswing.  So, for those of you who say we still can’t win 100 games this year, I wouldn’t bet too early.  It’s still entirely possible.

The Cardinals have been fun to watch this past week and they look like they’re having more fun too.  Who wouldn’t be?  They’ve won seven straight, sweeping the Dodgers and almost the Astros in the process.  They’re doing everything we’ve come to expect from these guys the past few years.  They’re taking great pitchers deep, they’re playing incredible defense, (who else is loving vintage-Jimmy??), they’re pitching quality starts, the bullpen isn’t giving up runs in the late innings.  In fact, each game against L.A. showcased a different aspect of this team’s talent.

  • Thursday – Hitting the long ball.  Cardinals win with Albert’s walk-off homer.
  • Friday – Pitching.  Carp goes the distance, pitches a 2-hitter and gets the win.
  • Saturday – Small ball.  Rolen gets the walk-off single.
  • Sunday – Everything.  Good pitching, even better hitting to beat up on the Dodgers.

The walk-off wins lately, especially, have brought a smile to my face.  Thursday, Pujols goes deep to win the game for the Redbirds.  So, on Saturday with the game on the line, the Dodgers choose to intentionally pass Pujols.  Good call.  Except, this time it’s Rolen that brings the walk-off win.  If enough of the Cardinals start hitting, the opposition won’t have enough bases to intentionally put them all on.  During this series especially, it’s getting harder to put Pujols on, not just because of Rolen, but suprisingly because the guys in front of him. Eckstein, always the scrappy hustler, has been getting on base a ton (every game this series), but so has Duncan in the two spot.  This has been great to see.  In his earlier appearnces, he showed a lot of power, but not a lot of patience at the plate.  But, in his last two starts against L.A. he went 6-8.

The rotation has been great as of late and let’s hope it stays this way.  As I said, Carp went the distance in his start and earned player of the week honors, so congratulations to him for that.  He also didn’t give up a home run.

If I could pick one category for the Cardinals to improve in, in the second half, it would be for the starters to give up less homers.  How many times have we said of a Cardinal starter, "He only made one mistake during the game, but it was a home run."  Sometimes that "one mistake" has cost us a win.  Other times, it’s been multiple mistakes, but had they not given up the homer, we still would have won.

The Cardinals have collectively given up 107 home runs, which isn’t suprising considering that two Cardinal starters are in the top 5 in the NL for home runs allowed.  Marquis tops the list (21) and is joined by Mulder (18).  Though it doesn’t factor into the team home runs allowed, Jeff Weaver (who has yet to start for the Cardinals) also has 18 this season during his time in Anaheim.  Even young Reyes has gotten into the act.  Despite his excellent pitching peformances, he’s given up 7 homers so far this season….exactly equal to the number of games he’s started.

All in all, though, the Cardinals seem to now just be starting on all cylinders and it’s exciting and it sure beats how I felt during our longer losing streak not too long back.  Weaver’s start against Atlanta tonight will be pivotal for what’s in store for the Cardinals the rest of the season.  With Mulder still out, it would be great to see Weaver really step it up and fill the role during this time.  And who knows?  If he shows he has something left, maybe we’ll be able to get something for him down the road.

It’s no easy task, however, as their 43-49 (.467) record is misleading.  Atlanta has suddenly emerged from the bottom of the NL East heap.  They’re riding a 5 game winning streak, including a sweep of the Padres since the Break.  Even more impressively, have been their ability to show that they still plan to be competitive for the post season this year.  Less than a month ago, they were 13 games under .500 thanks to a 10 game losing streak, in last place in the NL East and had the fourth worst record in the Majors, behind only the Cubs, the Pirates and the Royals.  At 9 games back of the Wild Card, they didn’t seem to have a prayer to make the post season.  They’re now only 6 games under .500, tied for 2nd in their division and have moved to 5 1/2 games back of the Wild Card.  Met’s fans are very confident (and have every reason to be), but there are still nine games to be played between the Mets and the Braves.  If the Braves stay hot, it will be an interesting second stretch.

Hopefully we’ll help the Mets out this week by sweeping the reigning NL East.  Or at least taking 2 of 3.

On a completely different subject, it’s been very exciting to watch Josh Kinney pitch in a Cardinal uniform.  He played college ball in my hometown and it’s always great to see someone like that reach the big leagues.  Hope he has a great career in front of him.

Next, I’m going out of the country Wednesday morning and it might be awhile before I get to watch Cardinal baseball again, so I’m going to live blog some of Tuesday’s game.  More than likely, I will have to leave for the airpot before it’s all over with, but it will give me something to do as I stay up all night.  I would love for anybody who’s around to join in the live blog with comments of their own.

One more thing and then I’m going to end this ridiculously long post.  The current score between Pujols and the Cubbies is:

                             Pujols homers = 31          Cubs wins = 35

Welcoming a Weaver win,

Tiffany