I suppose that I'm spoiled since the Cardinals make the playoffs so often, but really, they just haven't accomplished much in the last two years. In 2009, they couldn't score runs for about the last two months of the season including the playoff series against the Dodgers that resulted in a sweep. The offensive struggles continued for most of 2010 and coupled with injuries to Brad Penny and David Freese, among others, allowed an inferior Cincinnati Reds to win the division. The Cardinals easily had the best rotation in the division as they had two Cy Young candidates in Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter as well as rookie Jaime Garcia, who was among the leaders in ERA for the majority of the season. Some decent hitting should have been enough to win most of their games, but the team continued to have their difficulties with hitting, especially after Ryan Ludwick went down. Less than a week after the team got Ludwick back, they decided rather than add some more offense (the obvious problem with the club), they would rather go after another pitcher to replace Penny and get rid of even more offense my sending Ludwick to San Diego. I was furious when I saw that this trade had gone through and we ended up not acquiring any offensive pieces to replace Ludwick. Add this to the fact that Tony La Russa never wants to play Colby Rasmus when after that trade, he was clearly the second best offensive outfielder on the team behind Matt Holliday, and the team was doomed due to a lack of production.La Russa won't even allow the sub-par offensive talent he has to get in a groove because he's always changing the lineup around. Aside from a massive amount of injuries, there's no reason to run out 100 different lineups in a single baseball season, but he does it year in and year out. If you look at the teams that made the playoffs this season, almost every single one used the same lineup for the majority of the postseason. When the Texas Rangers take the field in San Francisco on Wednesday for Game 1 of the World Series, you can bet that Elvis Andrus will be batting leadoff and playing shortstop. That's his role. He knows it. I know it. And most importantly, his manager Ron Washington knows it. And if Tim Lincecum shuts down the Rangers in Game 1, you can bet that Andrus is going to be right at the top of the order again for Game 2, rather than Washington trying to "shake up" the batting order to get something going. This is what works and it has worked for years. It's the same with batting the pitcher eighth. No team has ever won a World Series while batting the pitcher eighth. Why? Because it doesn't work. For a guy who's been managing in the big leagues since the early 80's and in the National League since 1996, you'd think La Russa would have figured this out by now. Hopefully he'll finally figure it out this season. Otherwise, Cardinals fans are in for another disappointing season that will end up with a sub-par team winning the NL Central and another season of the Carpenter-Wainwright tandem wasted.
This year's World Series had its ups and downs for me. It was certainly an up that it didn't have the Yankees in it and even more so that it wasn't a repeat of the Yankees and Phillies series from 2009. That would have been reminiscent of the late 90's when it seemed like the Yankees and Braves were in it every year, even though they only met in the series twice (1996 and 1999).Another poitn of interest was being able to see two cities get their first shot at a title in the same year. Even though the Giants had won before as a franchise, all of their titles came while they were in New York, and the Rangers had never even won a pennant before this season. As for a downer, it would have been nice to see the series at least go back to San Francisco for a sixth game. Cliff Lee, previously infallible in the postseason, dropped both the series opener and the series clincher. Neither Lee or Giants ace Tim Lincecum had their best stuff in Game 1, but both brought it to the table in Game 5. Lee just made one very big mistake to World Series MVP Edgar Renteria and it cost him dearly. And although he had first base open and could've walked Renteria or at least could have tried a little harder to pitch around him, Lee refused to do so and came right after him. That's the kind of mentality a manager or a GM wants out of an ace pitcher. They want a guy that thinks,"Screw you. I'm better than you and now I'm going to beat you." When a pitcher has that mentality and the stuff to back it up (yes Jason Marquis, you really must have the stuff to back it up for that to work) it makes him a very valuable commodity. This why even with giving up that bomb to Renteria and going 0-2 in the series, Lee is still being sought after and sought after hard, by the Yankees. There's word coming out according to ESPN that Lee and the Yankees are meeting in Arkansas, which just goes to show once again, few good things ever come out of Arkansas (No offense Tyler). Yes, now that the postseason has ended, it looks like baseball will go back to business as usual. The Yankees will continue to try and buy another title, the Red Sox will do the same while claiming that the Yankees are far worse offenders, and the Pirates will rack up their 19th consecutive losing season with no end in sight. I guess hockey will just have to tide me over for now. Sigh...Photos in order by Roberson/AP, unknown, and Louis DeLuca of the Dallas Morning News.
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