Is there
a more frustrating team to be a fan of than this season’s version of the St.
Louis Cardinals? I mean, really? If history is any indication, this team will
lose at least another two out of the next three games against the Nationals,
but they will come back against the Mets and Astros until they are back in the
lead for the second Wild Card team. No
other team that I can remember is this aggravating. The second that they put themselves in position
to contend, they decide that they no longer need to score any runs for three
straight games. How is this
possible? How is it that the Cardinal
team that is so capable of scoring, earning the highest run differential in the
league (as important as this is. I
always thought that it was the won loss record that mattered at the end of the
season).
This team
is capable of scoring with anyone, but they are also capable of being shut out
by anyone, therein lies the main issue and has plagued the Cardinals to the
point where a team that statistically speaking should be among the best in
baseball has become a team that would struggle to even get a spot in the newly
allowed second wild card spot. It is
almost as if this team is hell bent on winning on the last day of the season if
they win at all. Unfortunately, though,
this issue is not new for the St. Louis Cardinals. They have been a team without an identity of
achievement or the ability to consistently achieve for longer than we might
have thought.
Does
anyone remember what the talk was after the Cardinals were swept by the Dodgers
in the 2009 National League Division Series?
They walked into that game with the four best players in the series with
Albert Pujols, Matt Holliday, Chris Carpenter, and Adam Wainwright. Yet with all this talent, the Cardinals ended
up losing and losing quickly in the playoffs.
Then came last season, where the team had a nice run at the end, but the
inconsistency was just as aggravating as this season before they caught fire at
the right time to find themselves being crowned as World Series Champions. It is the type of frustration that has been
present ever since 2006 when the Cardinals were again World Series Champions.
I know
that it is something that I would laugh at and be irritated by, talking about
the inconsistency of the Cardinals when the team has more World Series rings in
the last 8 years than the Yankees do. I
am sure that there would be dozens of teams in the Major Leagues who would love
to have that kind of inconsistency, but the amount of inconsistency of the
Cardinals has been maddening in how impossible it is to understand. It must be exasperating for the Cardinals
front office in the offseason. How do
you fix a team that has one of the National League’s top lineup’s and yet fails
to score runs again and again against teams that they have beaten before and
will beat again in the future.
I do
understand that hitting is a difficult thing, and being some sort of consistent
robot is not possible in baseball. Even
Albert Pujols is finding this out the hard way this season where his own season
has been uncharacteristically uneven. I
am not suggesting that the Cardinals should all be some kind of Albert Pujols
in his prime, but how is it that this team is capable of looking like it may
never stop hitting one night before seeing them have a complete power outage
the next day against a team with even less of a pitching staff. It is not unusual for a player to have a slump,
but how is it that slumps seem to be contagious for this team. It feels like production as well as slumps
are more contagious than any sort of plague in the Cardinals locker room, and
they all seem to be spreading this disease to each other. I know that I must sound like a spoiled fan,
but the reality is that this team is difficult to watch even if it is capable
of great things. Maybe it is difficult
to watch because of this ability.
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