Column: Cardinals far from dead
May 9, 2008
Pronounced dead before the season even began, the St. Louis Cardinals were slotted to duke it out with Pittsburgh and Houston for last place in the NL Central, not Chicago and Milwaukee for first.
Huh?
This is the same Cardinals team that is only two years removed from a world championship. This is the same Cardinals team that has missed the playoffs only twice since 1999. This is the same Cardinals team that finished only seven games out of first place last year. This is the same Cardinals team that was only one game out of first on Sept. 7 last year. This is the same Cardinals team that, with the extra seven or eight wins a healthy Chris Carpenter would have provided, might have won the division last year. And, oh yeah, they have Albert Pujols and Tony La Russa.
But if you watched ESPN or read Sports Illustrated you would think that this was the 1900 Cleveland Spiders in first place.
You can’t see a story about the Birds’ fast start without the words “shocking” or “unfathomable” attached to it. Which is strange, since they seem to be doing exactly what they do every season.
Except 2007 of course. 2007 was an unmitigated disaster. There is no debating this. It was so bad that the first blow (Tony La Russa’s DUI) didn’t even wait for the season to begin. Then the day the season did begin, they lost their ace, Chris Carpenter, for the rest of it.
What came next, Josh Hancock’s death, left little hope for any sort of a normal year.
But instead of seeing this catastrophic season as a one-off for a team with the second most playoff appearances in baseball since 2000, everyone took it to be the beginning of a pattern.
What were they thinking? That two players were going to die this year? That we’d re-sign Esteban Yan? That Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen could still strike out for us while they were playing for different teams?
Admittedly, the Cardinals won’t keep winning at this clip. A .600 percentage seems unrealistic as there is no way the starting pitching will continue to be this good. Kyle Lohse is already coming back down to earth.
But it is no stretch to suggest that they will compete for the rest of the season and probably finish first or second. Not with our main competition being the Cubs and Brewers.
People were so quick to coronate the Brewers after one 83-79 season.
Why? Because they lost Francisco Cordero and gained Eric Gagne? The Brewers’ pitching might be thinner than the Cardinals’ was last year and will doom them to a third or lower finish.
The Cubs? Despite an embarrassment of talent, they seem to be as volatile and streaky as ever. They’ve taken on the personality of their manager Lou Piniella, and it does not seem to be working.
The Cardinals, meanwhile, will continue to defy their laughably low expectations and give everyone a run for their money with their reinvigorated and younger offense and vastly improved starting pitching. Some down year this is.
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