Clinching Doesn’t Solve Everything

The Cardinals were able to lock up the NL Central this weekend.  They weren’t able to lock down worries about the postseason, however.

The clincher was nice and you have to give all credit to Adam Wainwright.  130 pitches and he’s still able to strike out batters to keep the St. Louis lead in the eighth.  Chris Carpenter says that locked down the Cy Young for him .  While I’m still fairly sure Tim Lincecum is going to have a say in that still, getting to 19 wins with the supporting numbers he has for a postseason team is going to be a hard resume to overlook.  A game like Saturday’s, with everyone in baseball looking at him, may have put him over the top.

I was on Twitter at the end of the game and expressed strong relief after Ryan Ludwick’s home run gave the Cards a three-run cushion .  Not only was it a big hit for a team that doesn’t seem to be able to get them all that often, but it meant that Ryan Franklin didn’t work with just a one-run lead.  That became vital when he allowed a runner to get to third in the ninth before locking everything down.

Give credit to Jason LaRue as well.  Only in there because Yadier Molina had been injured during the game, LaRue cranks the home run that broke the tie and put Wainwright in the driver’s seat.  After getting the lead back, there was no way Wainwright wanted to give it up again, which leads to the reasoning behind 130 pitches.

Tough night for Joe Thurston, though, as he was hitless in his two at-bats before being replaced by Mark DeRosa and he made an error that led to one of the runs against Wainwright.

You don’t want to say that they took Sunday’s game less seriously than others, but the lineup was a little on the wacky side, even for Tony LaRussa.  I’m sure Tyler Greene was a little worried about playing outfield for the first time ever.  It was a way to get him and David Freese into the lineup, though, which is a good thing.

Albert Pujols set an assist record for first basemen and drove in three runs with a bases-loaded double in the third, accounting for all the Cardinal runs .  That gets him the Hero tag, doesn’t it?  Normally, it would, but striking out later with the bases loaded (exactly how many times did this team have the bases loaded yesterday?  At least three that I know of, some with less than two outs, and only once could they get runs in) as well as the error on Eric Young’s grounder (which was really inexplicable.  It just popped right out of the glove) and the
baserunning at the end of the game takes away from his overall performance.

I understand his reasoning, somewhat, in taking off on contact.  And indeed, if Clint Barmes doesn’t make that spectacular play, AP’s on third with a tie game and one out.  That said, that ball was almost caught by the outfielder, and Julio Lugo really needed to be tagging up instead of so far off the bag.  I was excited at the time because I was sure that tumbling catch at least allowed Lugo to score, but no such luck.

Anyway, let’s give the Hero tag to Kyle Lohse.  It wasn’t a dominating performance by any means, though it might have looked a little different without Albert’s error, but it was a servicable outing with no major blowups.  Lohse kept a good hitting lineup in check in their own park, which may help in getting him to the #4 slot in the postseason rotation and moving John Smoltz to the pen.  I’d expect they’d want to see him throw one more time, though that would be against the Brewers at home.

On the down side, Ryan Ludwickhas to be the Goat.  No hits, three strikeouts, five left on.  If he’d just been able to put that ball a little farther away in the ninth…..

Over the weekend, there was a little more information about Wagner Mateo out there.  Turns out his eyes are weak even with the contacts–without them they are exceptionally bad.  Mateo might get a contract from someone and I hope that he does, but I can see–no pun intended–why the organziation decided to cover itself in this situation.

There’s an interesting article about the Molina brothers over at CBS Sports.  Too bad that it appears Bengie won’t be making it in this season.  It’d be nice to have them all in the playoff hunt after losing their father.

The Cardinals have an off day today, then spend time in the Queen City before heading home to wrap the season.  Hopefully they can use these out of it teams to get things kick started for the real work yet to come.

Daniel Shoptaw is the founder of “C70 At The Bat,” where he regularly writes about his beloved St. Louis Cardinals.  You can find more of his work here .