Tony La Russa insists on putting together ridiculous lineups that have Nick Stavinoha batting fifth after he's spent most of this season in the minors. Tyler Greene, who also has spent most of the year in Triple-A, was batting lead off last night. It's things like this that leave me to insist, that we need to part ways with La Russa. It's been a good run, as he's made the playoffs in half of his seasons here, but he can't keep pulling crap like this and expect John Mozeliak to keep him around. If La Russa is sending a message to the front office, saying,"Hey, this is what you gave me, this is what you get," then he's an idiot. He's the one that got fed up with Ryan Ludwick and shipped him off for a rental pitcher who, while Jake Westbrook hasn't pitched poorly, I'd hardly say that he's made a difference, being that the team is 2-4 in games that he's started. Ludwick would have influenced far more than six games and probably could've kept this offense out of some of it's huge lulls. The Cards have just 23 runs in their last 10 games. Some easy math will tell you that is an average of 2.3 runs per game. This means that in order to win, nearly flawless pitching is required. And guys that have been great all year like Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, and Jaime Garcia, have finally hit a couple of bumps. That's ok, except that when they weren't hitting their bumps, the team still wasn't scoring very much and thus didn't capitalize on the great pitching that they got while they had it.
This team was officially done when they went 2-8 on a 10-game road trip against the Astros, Pirates, and Nationals, perhaps three of the most inept teams in the National League. Going 6-4 against those clubs wouldn't have been great, but it left overtaking the Reds as a doable task. Two and eight? That's telling the fans that you've packed it in, so they might as well do the same until spring training. The Cards got some nice crowds for their three-game set against the Reds, but that was primarily based on the previous series being so solid and changing the division race for the better. I would expect to see some sparse crowds over the last few homestands. People can call us fair weather fans for that, but it's not about winning, it's about trying. And when the team looks like they're packing it in, why should we bother? At least the Pirates' players try. They might be ill-equipped, hence 18 consecutive losing seasons, but the effort is usually there. With the Cardinals, most days, it's hard to watch them because it'll just frustrate the crap out of you. Thank God football season is starting and we can all pretend that baseball season is already over. I'm jumping on the Rays (or anti-Yankees) bandwagon for the rest of the year, but I'm quite ready for both football and hockey to arrive.
My picks to make the Super Bowl are the Saints and Jets with the Saints repeating. Of course, we could see the Colts in there again. Every time I think they're on the decline, they go out, win 12 games, and end up in at least the second round of the playoffs. So with that, Go Steelers, Go Rams, and just go away baseball Cardinals. I'll write about hockey soon again, I promise.