Blue Streak

The Blues are currently enduring the downswing of a season long trend. St. Louis has gone all year without a streak, either winning or losing, stopping at just one game.

The opened the season with consecutive wins over the Flyers and Ducks. The Blues went on to lose three straight, all on the road, to Chicago, Nashville, and Dallas. This pattern has remained consistent throughout the season right up to their last game of November, which is tomorrow night in Chicago. Now that the Blues have lost two straight, there's no telling what tomorrow's outcome will be. But if they beat Chicago and you like to put money down on trends, betting on the Blues to knock off the Capitals when they return on home on Wednesday night is your kind of bet.

There are two much more telling and disturbing trends that are currently plaguing the Blues. First, only the Predators rank worse offensively than the Blues. The team was getting scoring from David Perron before he went out with a concussion. And although T.J. Oshie had scored just one goal before breaking his ankle, he had chipped in nine assists to the Blues' scoring cause. Another factor that isn't measured on the scoresheet, is how Oshie is one of the team's best forecheckers and how he can create offense with his hitting in addition to his constant pursuit of the puck. With those two players out, the St. Louis has needed to find other sources for scoring. To an extent, they have. Andy McDonald and Brad Boyes have both come alive on the scoring front. Boyes had a four-game goal-scoring streak in recent weeks and McDonalds had three goals and a shootout goal between last Wednesday's and Friday's games. Defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is having a very strong year in his first full NHL season and is leading not just the team's blue-liners, but the entire team in assists. Unfortunately, that's about where the bright spots end for the Blues' scoring. David Backes has been fairly quiet all season. Patrik Berglund has looked brilliant at moments, but still hasn't developed into the consistent scorer that the team had hoped for when they drafted him in the first round. Matt D'Agostini, who was on fire to begin the season, has been stuck at six goals for quite some time.

The secondary scoring also hasn't been there for St. Louis. Alex Steen, who got a lucrative extension over the offseason, hasn't been producing lately as he's failed to register a point in six consecutive games. Jay McClement has only scored in one game all season. Sure, in that game, he scored three goals, but he needs to contribute more as well, especially since we know he has the talent to do so after his hat trick against Atlanta and in addition to him putting up 29 points last season. He currently only has one assist for a total of four points, which has him on pace for just under 15 points by the end of the season. Everyone on the offense can improve and must if the Blues are going to stay in the thick of things until Perron and Oshie can return. Jaroslav Halak is a fantastic goaltender, but he can't post a shutout in a third of the team's games like he did over the first nine. Expecting that would simply be both unrealistic and unfair to Halak.

The other trend that the Blues much change and quickly, is the fact that they continue to blow leads late in games. It was an issue earlier this season when they coughed up a couple of late leads, including a two-goal advantage in Chicago with just seven minutes remaining in regulation. The Blues ended up losing that one in overtime, but they then followed that up with their seven-game winning streak. The Blues blew third period leads in back-to-back games with Dallas over the weekend, reprising the pattern from earlier this season. I'm not asking them to roll off another seven-game winning streak, but they can't go back to their old ways of blowing leads like they did all of last season. Not being able to close out games is the primary reason that the Blues missed the postseason a year ago and if the team goes back to that mentality, where they play not to lose, it will have similar results this season.

Photo by John Grieshop

Managerial Decisions

When the Cardinals announced that they'd be bringing back Tony La Russa as manager for another season, and possibly two with a mutual option for 2012, they pretty much were saying that's what has happened over the past two seasons is acceptable.

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.

The Chicago Cubs also made a puzzling choice with their managerial position. Ryne Sandberg, perhaps the Cubs' biggest player icon behind Ernie Banks, was very vocal in discussing his desire for the position. He's managed his way through the minor league system and by reaching the helm of the Cubs' Triple-A club, he was the logical choice. But the Cubs rarely do what is logical and they continued that trend by simply dropping the "interim" tag from Mike Quade's title, retaining him for the 2011 season. I realize that the Cubs started to play better under Quade down the stretch, but for a team that's had so many issues over the years, why would you pass on a guy in Sandberg who's lived through these problems and understands the Cubs mentality? Sandberg has stated that he still wants to manage at the major league level and with that no longer being a possibility in 2011 with the Cubs, Chicago could see him go elsewhere and perhaps even manage against the Cubs in this upcoming season. We'll see how it plays out, but I certainly think that passing on Sandberg will soon be an addition to the laundry list of regretful decisions that this franchise has made over the years.

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.

Ram-dy Moss?

The Rams have not put in a waiver claim on Randy Moss as of the end of today's practice, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. However, with the deadline still 25 minutes away, the club could still put in a claim if they haven't already.

I personally think putting a claim in for him is a great idea. Is Moss a jerk? Sure. The story that came out about him ripping a team meal right in front of those who prepared it show him to be selfish and inconsiderate. But sometimes in sports, you need jerks to win. Dennis Rodman kicked a camera man in the groin for no real reason, but man, could he rebound. He won five NBA titles and was a key member of those Chicago Bulls and Detroit Pistons teams. Manny Ramirez is a completely self-absorbed brat who only seems to care about himself and displayed this in the way he left Boston. But he helped the Red Sox win two World Series titles before he left.

The fact of the matter is, sometimes jerks win, especially if they're talented jerks, and Moss is both of those things. The Rams offense struggled on Sunday against a terrible, one-win, Carolina Panthers team. If Sam Bradford wasn't nearly perfect (25-32 with at least two of the incompletes being wise and intentional throw aways, passer rating of 112.4), the Rams would not have beaten the Panthers. The reason the offense has been struggling, going back even to last season, is that teams have been able to find success by stacking eight guys in the box to stop Steven Jackson from running. And why shouldn't they? The Rams don't have a single, healthy, deep threat in their receiving corps. Donnie Avery, Mark Clayton, and now Danario Alexander have all been injured. Clayton and Avery won't return and counting on an Alexander return with his history of knee problems would be silly.

The Rams need a wide receiver that can stretch the field. He doesn't even have to catch the ball to be valuable as long as he's a threat in the back of the minds of opposing defensive coordinators. And NFL coaches still do regard Moss as a threat. The proof is in the Vikings' game from last week against Moss' former team, New England. Bill Belichick had a corner lined up against Moss for the entire game, at least from what I saw, while also keeping a safety on him over the top. If teams are required to double cover Moss and want to put eight in the box still, that leaves just one other defender to try and stop Danny Amendola, Brandon Gibson (who played well last week), and the Rams tight ends who have proven themselves to be decent receiving threats. The Rams' opponents obviously can't leave one side of the field that wide open and would have to go with six or seven in the box instead, which would open up the running game for Jackson.

I know that there's some risk with bringing Moss in, but it's in his best interest to come in and be productive. He's already been dumped by two teams in a contract year. If he wants to get paid this offseason, he has no choice but to behave. I'm also pretty sure that if head coach Steve Spagnuolo can manage to win four games in the first half of the season after winning just one all of last year, he can handle Randy Moss.

Photographer information could not be found for this photo.

Playoff Baseball Update: ALCS Game 3

The Rangers scored twice as many runs in the ninth inning of last night's ALCS Game 3 as the Yankees had baserunners for the entire game. New York managed just two hits off of the dominant Cliff Lee while Lee only walked one batter.

Josh Hamilton, who is batting .300 during the ALCS and slugging a ridiculous 1.000, gave Lee all the runs he would need with a two-run first inning bomb. It was Hamilton's second of the playoffs as well as the series. Lee sat down the first 11 Yankee hitters in order, fanning seven over that span, before giving up a two-out walk to Mark Teixeira in the bottom of the fourth inning. Lee also retired 14 Yankees before surrendering his first hit to Jorge Posada in the bottom of the fifth. For a while, it looked possible that the third ever postseason no-hitter could have happened last night. And even though the perfect game ended in the fourth and the no-no concluded in the fifth, there's no denying that Lee was flat out nasty. He finished with 13 strikeouts over eight innnings. To say that the Yankee hitters looked lost would be an understatement. They might have had a better chance to hit the ball using the Adam Dunn approach: swing hard with your eyes closed and hope for contact. Or they could have gone with the Luke Skywalker approach as they may have had better luck leaving the blast shield down and trusting their feelings. It worked for the leader of one Evil Empire, why couldn't it work for this Evil Empire too?

Rams Win? Rams Win!

It's early in the NFL season, but the league is proving to be as unpredictable as ever. The Vikings started 0-2 after going to the NFC title game last season and returning all of their starters from last season. The Super Bowl sleeper pick of the 49ers have stumbled to an 0-3 start. My Steelers, after I was hoping for just two wins in the four games without Ben Roethlisberger have already won three without him going into next Sunday's home game against he Ravens. And perhaps the most surprising development of all, is that the Kansas City Cheifs have started 3-0. Sure, they've played the Browns, 49ers, and Chargers, with the Browns being their only road game, but most pundits probably had them pegged for 1-2 at best by this point. I doubt many people if any would've said the Steelers and Chiefs would be the last of the AFC undefeateds.

Another bright spot for me personally is the Rams getting out to a good start. Even though they've only won one of their first three games, they very easily could have won all three and certainly should have won their first with all of the mistakes that the Cardinals made. Sam Bradford had to throw the ball over 50 times and he looked great. He threw three interceptions, but with those numbers, the box score is misleading. Two of th three picks were thrown in situations where he had to force the ball, including a fourth down on a last minute drive. If he simply threw it away, the game would end with a loss, so why not throw it for the end zone? He even did his job, by getting it to the end zone, it just wasn't caught by a Rams player.

Today's games for my teams are both huge. The Steelers have gotten off to this great start without Big Ben and have a great chance to put some space between themselves and Baltimore. It's important for them to win, as it is their home game against the Ravens. If they lose, they would have to win at Baltimore in Week 13 in order to avoid a season sweep, which could be a division tie breaker at the end of the year. This is a very winnable game for the Steelers. Charlie Batch will get the start and he's the classic "just don't screw this up, and the defense will win it" quarterback. He's shown this by posting a 4-1 record as a starter with the Steelers. With the way the defense has been playing, including leading the league in takeaways, a few well-timed passes from Batch, a decent running game, and a strong defensive effort against a Ravens team that can't score should be enough to win. Baltimore only score 10 points in each of their first two games, in which they went 1-1. Last week, they managed to score 24 points on the road, which would be impressive, but it came against the Browns. The Ravens also trailed for much of the game in Cleveland. You can be willing to bet if they get behind in Pittsburgh today, a miraculous comeback will be far less likely.
My pick for this game: Steelers 17-Ravens 9

The Rams game is huge for many of the same reasons that the as Steelers' game. They need to win in St. Louis to escape the possibility of needing a win later in the season in Seattle, a very difficult place to play (just ask the Chargers), to avoid a season sweep at the hands of the Seahawks. A win would tie them at 2-2 atop the NFC West, by far the weakest division in the NFL this year, and a division game like this could also end up being a tiebreaker. With the starts that the 49ers and Cardinals have gotten off to, it's not completely far fetched that an 8-8 or 9-7 record could be enough to win this division. And with something like that being possible, a team wants to have all possible tie-breakers on their side. The Rams are already 0-1 in the division after the season opening loss to Arizona. They don't want to fall to 0-2. The Rams also need to show the Seahawks that they can beat them again. The Rams haven't beaten Seattle since the 2004 playoffs, a streak that has lasted for 10 games now. Many of those games were close, with the Seahawks wining on last second field goals, but a win is a win, a loss is a loss, and ten consecutive losses to the same team is way too many. For the Rams to win this game, they're going to need Bradford's best effort yet. Steven Jackson is active today, but as banged up as he is, he is unlikely to be much help against one of the league's best running defenses. On defense, St. Louis needs to stop the run. Their secondary has been pretty good and the team has been great at coming up with big plays (they're second to my Steelers in takeaways) to stop drives even while allowing a plethora of yards to be gained. But they must get better at the run, because those takeaways don't always happen. And when they don't, a lot of yards can become a large amount of points. The Rams also have to get pumped up on special teams, which was the difference in Seattle's last game. They got two touchdowns on kickoff returns from Leon Washington against San Diego and ended up winning by seven. If the Rams can shutdown the Seahawks' special teams and come up with a few big plays, they certainly have a chance to win this game. Seattle doesn't have players like Clinton Portis, Donovan McNabb, and Larry Fitzgerald that put them a head above the Rams. St. Louis just has to play solid football, which they've shown they can do in their first three games, and they'll be there in the fourth quarter. The Rams' third straight sell out crowd should help as well if they can bring the crowd noise while the Seahawks have the ball.

Beyond Belief

Every year as a football fan, it's easy to get out the schedule and go down the list of the games that your team should win. No one should really do this, as it just leads to disappointment when they screw up and lose to the Raiders, like my Steelers did last year. But many of us fans do this with football because it's so easy. There are only 16 games and just 12-13 in college. No one wastes their time doing this with baseball, because there's 162 games in a season. The starting pitcher changes every game, so the results are too hard to determine for each game in general by just looking at the schedule. However, as Cardinals fans know all too well, when the games actually are played, it's quite easy to see who should win them. And unfortunately, the Cards have dropped quite a few games this year that they should have won. But lately, the problem is that they shouldn't win them.

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.

The NFL starts tonight with a rematch of the NFC Championship game and my teams, the Steelers and Rams both get it going on Sunday. As I mentioned earlier, you never should go over a schedule and pick out wins and losses for a team, but I admit it, I did it with the Rams. I could see them winning as many as eight games and with this division as weak as it is, the playoffs are possible with a couple of fluke wins added in. That said, I'm picking the Rams to actually win five games, which would still be a huge step in the right direction after going 1-15 last year. As for the Steelers, who are without Ben "She was asking for it" Roethlisberger for four weeks, I'm hoping they split the first four games and go 9-3 or so once they get him back for an overall record of 11-5. That's typically enough to make the playoffs, so they should be ok. I think the TO/Ocho-Cinco combination could blow up in the Bengals' face and half of the Ravens' defense is practically on walkers, so the Steelers should be able to take the division, provided they don't do something stupid like lose to the Browns again.

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.

The Skitzophrenic Cardinals Season Continues

I've said it several times during the course of this season, but I'm yet to say it in this space. This Cardinals team is the most frustrating I've ever watched. They can play lights out baseball in Cincinnati with first place on the line and then they come home against the Cubs and play like, what's the term I'm looking for? Ah yes, "little bitches." Thanks, Brandon Phillips. The Cards were ignited last Tuesday night by a shoving match with the Reds in the bottom of the first inning. It stemmed from Phillips' comments from Monday that didn't get to the Cards' clubhouse until after they had already delivered Monday's beating. He then had the brilliant idea to tap Yadier Molina on the shinguard before leading off the inning. Yadi told him that they were not friends in so many words and the whole thing just spilled over from there. It was kind of like a hockey fight now that I think about it. Not in the physical sense, as the only real physical contact other than shoving was Johnny Cueto kicking like a girl scout. But as for how it fired up the team, it really took the Cards to a new level and they just dominated the Reds for the rest of the series. Cincinnati never led during the three game set and St. Louis went from two games down to one game up when they left town.

The Cards then came home to face the Cubs after an off day. Chicago jumped on them early and went up 2-0 after a half inning, but the Cards came right back at them with yet another Albert Pujols home run in the bottom of the first. They then managed to keep at it by taking the lead in the third and padding the lead in the fourth and seventh. They gave one back on a Derek Lee home run in the eighth inning, but seeing as Lee was superhuman during this series, clubbing four bombs in three games, that obviously was unavoidable. The Cards put the game away with Ryan Franklin's 21st  save of the year in 23 chances. He's not the shutdown guy that I'd prefer, but he has been getting the job done this year. As long as he doesn't fade down the stretch like he did last season, I'm alright leaving him in that spot, as much as I was clamoring for Jason Motte earlier this season.

On Saturday, the Cardinals just didn't get it done when they had guys on base. They outhit the Cubs 9-7 but only managed to squeeze in two runs. That being said, the Cards had just strung together four consecutive wins and in baseball, losses happen. Good teams lose 60 games a year, often more. What really got to me was Sunday's game. Kyle Lohse did alright for a few innings in his return from the 60-day DL, just giving up a couple of solo shots over three innings to the immortal Lee and the Cards trailed just 2-1 after three. The fourth was tough to watch. The Cubs scored six runs in the inning, getting just one extra-base hit off of Lohse and one walk from him. So it certainly wasn't a merry-go-round of walks and he wasn't giving up rockets all over the outfield either. There was one walk, a ground-rule doubles, and a bunch of bleeders. He was then removed for Mike MacDougal who walked won and gave up a double himself, allowing three other runs to score. I'm not sure why MacDougal is on this team right now and I'm pretty sure he won't be when Motte comes back. He wasn't finding the strike zone often and when he was, the ball was being hit hard into holes. After the top of the fourth was over, which must have lasted a good 30 minutes, it was 8-1 Chicago.

The Cards managed to get a run back in the fifth, but almost as soon as they scored that run, the man who crossed the plate, Colby Rasmus, was lifted from the game as was Yadier Molina. I understand that it was hot. I was sitting in the shade for most of the game and I was hot. But when it's the Cubs, who have a terrible bullpen, the end of the fifth inning is not time to consider the game over. I could see Tony La Russa getting rest for players if they were in a long stretch with no off days, but currently, they have a plethora of off days. They were off on Thursday, they're off tomorrow, and they have another open date this Thursday. That is a lot of time to rest guys without taking them out of games early. As a Cardinals fan, when the rally was going in the bottom of the ninth of today's game, who would you rather see representing the tying run at the plate, Randy Winn or Matt Holliday? Winn did his job by drawing a walk and getting on base against the wild Carlos Marmol, but there was no power threat up there. The team batted around and the Cards didn't send a single power threat to the plate. Sure Allen Craig has pop, but he still only owns one major league home run. Until he produces consistently at this level, he can't be considered much of a threat at the plate. Our last out was made by backup catcher Steve Hill, who led off the inning with his first major-league home run and hit. The likelihood of him cranking out another one was extremely low. When he hit the first, it was 9-2 and there wasn't any real pressure. In his second at-bat, the game was on the line. That's a lot of pressure for a guy in his third major league at-bat, especially when geography was the only reason he was up here instead of AAA catcher Bryan Anderson. So I don't blame him for grounding out to end the game. I blame Tony for putting him in that spot in the first place. A manager's job is to put his players in the best position to succeed and he certainly didn't do that today. Perhaps it's decisions like this that have left the Cardinals with a 15-16 record against the Cubs, Astros, and Brewers this season. The Cards play well with the big boys, but you have to take care of your business against your little brothers too and they haven't been doing that this season.

Speaking of a lack of power threats, Ryan Ludwick is doing quite well in San Diego so far. Through 10 games, he has three home runs and seven RBI with a .271 batting mark. In case you're keeping track, that's three more home runs than John Jay has hit for the Cards since Ludwick was traded. I appreciate what Jay's been doing this year. He plays hard, he's a strong defensive player, and he's batting close to .370. But he's just not a genuine power threat like Ludwick. As far as true threats go, I'd only count us as having two in Pujols and Holliday. Colby Rasmus has 19 homers this year, but he's even streakier than Ludwick is, so he can't really be counted on. I'd love for him to prove me wrong and hit some more game changing bombs like the grand slam he had on his birthday last Wednesday in Cincinnati, but he hasn't done it yet. Jake Westbrook has given us three solid starts since he's arrived in exchange for Ludwick, but since we only have one win in those starts, it's still difficult for me to count the trade as a positive.

The first photo was taken by Tom Uhlman of the AP. Credit for the second photo couldn't be found.