With three games left in the season we are basically down to this question: will it be the Cardinals or the Giants facing the Mets in the NL play-in game.
The divisions arranged themselves like Russian dolls two weeks ago. The pretenders, having hung around mostly due to contender inconsistency, are finally out of runway. The Blue Jays and Orioles, in whatever order, have separated themselves from the rest of the league. It will take a three-game meltdown on one of their parts and a surge by Detroit to upset the current arrangement.
So the only team with a post-season question is NY. Would they rather play the even-yeared Giants or the perennially-contending Cards. (This assumes, by the way, that the Metroplitans don't gack it up in the final three days of the season. It would take a whitewashing by the incompetent Phillies, accompanied by a trio of St. Louis wins and at least one win for San Fran, and then a tie-breaker loss, to fritter away their current edge. They are rated as 96.5% likely to take the Wild Card.)
On the surface, the Mets would much prefer to avoid the three-armed Giant monster of Bumgarner/Cueto/Samardzija to anything the Cardinals could throw at them. Then again, since their win totals are so close, the Redbirds must be compensating in some other way, like hitting 220 homers as a team without a single 30-home run slugger. (BTW, no one has ever done that before.)
The Mets are 4-3 against the Giants and 3-3 versus St. Louis. The Cards have prospered on the road, so playing at Citi Field is a wash. The Giants and Mets have little to offer in home-road splits, so the home field issue feels pretty moot.
What isn't moot is what a dumpster fire Bruce Bochy's team has been of late, 27-42 since the All-Star break. In addition, the Giants and Cardinals have mostly feasted on bad teams, with St. Louis 11 under against .500+ teams and San Francisco 9 under. The Mets have played good opponents to a draw, but aren't on the plus side only because the Nationals and their ultra-motivated second-baseman have owned them.
It's all an effort to find the two-percent edge and that effort doesn't appear to have come to much. If you bleed orange and blue, well, first of all, see a doctor. But then take your pick. Would you prefer to face a team that's scuffling or avoid a pitching ace. Either way a victory brings you to the ornery and talent-rich Cubs.
On the day after the San Francisco Giants agreed to pour about $10 million too much into Tim Lincecum's bank account...
(I mean, really, the guy has been a below-average pitcher for the past two years. If the G-men have some reason to believe in a Freaky return, fine, but they don't have to pay him like it. $14.1 million for one year would qualify them for compensation if he bolts, and that's more than he deserves. A two-year, $24.1 million offer would have been more than fair and barely justifiable.)
If you want to have a good laugh, read the "analysis" being done of the World Series. You'll particularly love the ubiquitous position-by-position comparisons, as if Dustin Pedroia lines up across the line of scrimmage from Matt Carpenter.
Any analysis at all of the teams' strengths is largely irrelevant in a seven-game series. The better team is going to lose the series 40% of the time even when it's clear which one is better. A quick perusal of the Cards and Sox reveals that this one really is a toss-up. Here's why:
Both these teams are among the top five hitting teams in their league. Cardinal shortstop Pete Kozma is the only soft spot in either starting lineup. You can expect plenty of offense throughout both lineups -- unless you can't. Predicting how teams will hit in a seven-game series is a fool's errand; witness the playoff series that got the two squads here in which neither showed much life at the plate, absent a pair of grand slams.
Both teams have top five pitching. The Cards have the edge at the top: they own the single best starter in the series in Adam Wainwright. They might own the second-best too if Michael Wacha, who'd thrown all of 60 innings in his Major League career prior to the playoffs, continues his run of terror. Expecting Wacha to strangle Boston the way he did the Dodgers is like expecting a solar eclipse the day after seeing one. The Red Sox are nothing like free-swinging L.A. -- they saw more pitches per game than any team in baseball. In fact, the Sox are nothing like any team Wacha has ever seen. With the DH, at least in his first start, Boston will throw one above-average hitter after another at him. So let's go light on the Michael Wacha predictions.
If the Cards own an edge in the rotation, the Sox take it back in the pen. Trevor Rosenthal is the presumptive closer for St. Louis, but he's no Koji Uehara. Boston also has more lefties in the relief corps and a pair of starters -- Ryan Dempster and Felxi Doubront -- who can eat innings and save the bullpen from wear in a blowout or extra-inning affair.
Defense
is more of a wash, primarily because, though neither team commits many errors, neither is stellar with the leather. B-Strong will be further weakened when David Ortiz shuffles to
first with his mitt in Busch Stadium. Youngsters in both dugouts will give announcers plenty of opportunities to blame errors on inexperience and butterflies.
One extra game at Fenway conveys a tiny edge to the hometown team, but only if there's a Game 7. We should be so lucky. If there's an emotional lift to be had, they have the marathon bombings, but it's more likely that the statute of limitations is up on that tragedy, which they've been riding all season. The same for any revenge factor St. Louis might feel about the 2004 Series sweep. Only Yadier Molina and manager Mike Matheny (as a player) remain from that Cardinal team. (Only Big Papi from Boston.)
If you think managers make much difference, you're right. A weak tactician can diminish his side's chances. Neither of these relatively inexperienced managers has demonstrated much inclination towards bonehead moves. Frankly, each of them has a bevy of good options on the mound and at the plate.
Bottom line, a pair of teams that beat expectations and tough divisions to post 97 wins, come into the Fall Classic on a roll. Even-Steven, Bob.
Let's just slay one dragon you've already begin seeing around the ballpark. The chatter about how individuals have played in the postseason -- all of nine games for Boston and 11 for St. Louis -- is pure drivel with the predictive value of astrology. Some players may indeed be hot, or cold, or hurt. Most of them though, performed well or poorly for a few games that are now over. Shake the etch-a-sketch and play ball.
Go Saux. Go seven games.
At the end of 2011, the St. Louis Cardinals won a dramatic World Series anchored by Albert Pujols, the best player on the planet; Lance Berkman and his .959 OPS (league average, .720); Matt Holliday (.912 OPS); backstop exraordinaire Yadier Molina; starters Chris Carpenter, Kyle Lohse, and Jaime Garcia, a combined 38-24, 3.46; and closer Jason Motte. Hall of Famer Tony LaRussa skippered the over-achievers in his Major League swan song.
Then Pujols skipped town for a pot of gold, LaRussa retired, Berkman moved on, Motte fell apart, Carpenter ordered a new ulnar collateral ligament and Lohse cashed in on a career year. They're all gone. Jaime Garcia has pitched 177 innings in the intervening two years. Only Holliday and Molina stayed put and kept producing.
The Cardinals did not dip heavily into free agent waters to replace all that talent. They brought in Carlos Beltran and some spare parts. So as you can imagine, the franchise has declined...to pause in its pursuit of another title. They won the toughest division in baseball, achieved the best record in the National League and now pose a World Series return threat.
If you're tired of the Redbirds, join the club. But don't fail to appreciate this unbelievable franchise, the best in the game at producing winning teams without spending significant fractions of a billion dollars. In two years, they have developed an MVP-candidate second baseman (Matt Carpenter), a post-season hero third baseman (David Freese), an RBI-machine first baseman (Allen Craig), a solid center fielder (Jon Jay), and possibly the best of them all, a slugging first baseman with 17 home runs in half a rookie season (Matt Adams).
And that's less than half the story. After welcoming back Adam Wainwright following TJ surgery, St. Louis turned into a pitcher nursery this season, with six hurlers under 26 throwing 50 innings or more impressively. That doesn't count 23-year-old lefty Kevin Siegrist, who only accumulated 40 frames, during which he allowed two runs on 17 hits and fanned 50. Just 22, rookie Shelby Miller bollixed NL batters to the tune of 15-9, 3.06 in the role of #2 starter.
It's impossible from this perch to determine whether GM John Mozeliak is a brilliant drafter or whether the franchise, in the shadow of Branch Rickey, excels at developing talent. Likely a combination. Either way, the Cards were the NL's second-best hitting and fifth-best pitching squad in the NL this year, en route to 97 wins.
It's funny to think about the money-greased Dodgers as upstarts against the child care center representing St. Louis, but with three World Series and two League Championship appearances in the last decade, the Cardinals present an aura of steady accomplishment. Just remember they're doing it not with Benjamins but with brains.
