The Little Things

When I was younger, I used to love playing Nintendo 64.  I could not get enough of Mario, All Star Baseball, Madden, and NBA Live.  In NBA Live, I created myself as a 7 foot tall monster that could shoot as well as hold his own in the post.  Needless to say, the flaw in the game of being able to create literally perfect players made for games that became much too easy to win.  After a while, I wanted more of a challenge and after rising up the difficulty levels, I found a setting in the game called “Keep Games Close.”  This setting decreased the percentages that my players shot and increased the percentages for the other team, essentially keeping the game closer.  Watching the Cardinals play is far too similar to this game that I liked to play years ago, and like in the game, the games have not been kept close by dramatic, horrible innings but by the collection of little things that all seem to pile up.

In both of the second two games of the Dodger’s series, the Cardinals were able to pull ahead in the first inning, scoring 2 runs on both Saturday and Sunday to start off the game and 4 runs in the first 3 innings on Friday’s game.  Each of these runs came against pitching that was either inexperienced (Fife on Sunday) or pitchers who have a recent history of being hit and hit hard (Blanton and Capuano).  These are the types of pitchers that the Cardinal’s offense should pile runs on as the game goes on, but they seem to fail to do this with the exception maybe of Capuano who did not make it out of the 5^th inning even though the Cardinals scored no runs between the 3^rd and 9^th innings.  I have heard the arguments being made about good starting pitching being vulnerable in the beginning before settling down, but does this also work in reverse for the batters?  In a chicken or egg question, the Cardinals seem to score early and then put the bats away, hoping that their early lead will be enough to stick.

The reasoning behind this lack of ability to score runs, there seem to be so many reasons behind this.  I feel like the Cardinals, especially some of their pitchers, fail to execute the sacrifice bunt far too often.  These little, simple skills can and often are the difference between the cardinals winning a game and losing it.  Then there is the Cardinal’s hitting with runners in scoring position.  Let’s look at Matt Holliday for instance, batting third in the Cardinals order and hitting only .245 with runners in scoring position and .194 with runners in scoring position and 2 outs.  I do not want to criticize Holliday too much here as he is having a very good season and putting up the kind of numbers that we have grow accustomed to over the course of a season, but this just illustrates how difficult it has been for the Cardinals this season to get runs in to score.  There is also the factor of Matt Holliday hitting with the kind of power that can make a runner on first in scoring position in addition to himself.

Then there are the defensive issues of the St. Louis Cardinals this season.  I wrote an article questioning how much they would miss Rafael Furcal because of his struggling offense and the increased at bats for Schumaker with Descalso playing short.  I am going to admit here that I was dead wrong.  Just as we saw last year, having Furcal to man the center of the infield with his quick feet and cannon for an arm (and I can only hope that the latter can still be possible next season without too much time missed) is vital to this Cardinals team.  It does not matter how sure handed Descalso is or at least we thought he could be, there is a reason he is not a shortstop, and this was on display against the Dodgers in this series.  He made two costly errors on Saturday night that ended up being the difference in a one run game that the Dodgers won in a walk off.  With this, I do not mean to point a finger at Descalso since I believe he is more of a part of the solution than the problem.  The sad truth is that with the exception of Descalso, Molina, a couple pitchers, and John Jay, the Cardinals are filled with fielders who either cannot run like Beltran, or are simply better with their bats than with their gloves like Freese, Craig, or Holliday.  They have been making an alarming amount of errors lately, and this is just not what you look for in a team that has aspirations of a playoff run.

And then there is the bullpen, which pitched admirably on both Saturday and Sunday with the exception of a Jason Motte blowup in the 9^th inning of the third game of the series.  Motte is always going to be prone to these types of games although more often than not, they will be decided by a homerun than multiple base hits.  The fact that I can say this with confidence though is scary.  In a game like Saturday’s where Garcia pitched like he is capable in a road start, and the bullpen came through to put them in position to win against a team that is vying for the Wild Card spot the Cardinals currently have a hold of, Motte has to find a way to close the game out.  That was just too much of a momentum and confidence killer for this team, and going forward, they will need all the momentum these Cardinals can get.

I do not mean to dwell on the negative although I am sure it appears that way.  The bottom line is that the Cardinals did what they needed to do against Los Angeles and got a split of the four game set.  After an extremely tough road trip after an equally tough home stand, the Cardinals find themselves in position to take this Wild Card spot over the next few series with the Cubs and the Astros, and for all the frustration about not doing the little things, I do have to admire this team’s toughness in coming back after difficult losses.  It is just frustrating to watch a team that appears loaded with talent come through so poorly when all they need is a solid defensive play here or a base hit there.  The little things have been adding up to kill this year’s Cardinals.  I just hope that they can correct these enough to at least be given the opportunity to defend their title.