Another Rally By The Redbirds

You have to give the Hero tag to Yadier Molinathis time.  For the second straight night, he gave the Cards the lead with a solid hit.  For the last three years or so, Yadi’s been a guy that I want up there when the team needs a hit, second only to Albert Pujols in that regard.

On the flip side, Blake Hawksworthreally had a terrible game, didn’t he?  He came into the game with a three run lead and left one out later with it down to one and the winning run on base.  The runs weren’t earned, but that’s because he made the error, throwing the ball away on a play at the plate.  Not exactly a night that he’ll want to remember for a while.

I think one of the more disconcerting things to come out of last night’s game, though, was that Chris Carpenter didn’t have a feel for his fastball.  Normally, that’s not a huge deal, but when you factor in that the game before he didn’t have it either, you start to wonder exactly why not.  Carp wasn’t completely Carp-like last night, though he still was very effective and gave the team a chance to win, so I think that’s something to keep an eye on.  To be his dominant self, he’s going to have to have more confidence in the heater.

One person who never lacks for a heater is Jason Motte, who actually got the save last night, with Ryan Franklin having worked the last two days.  Seemed to me watching that game that Motte got wild when he was throwing 96, 97, but he’d tone it down to about 88 and get the ball over the plate.  He also made an acrobatic play to get Erik Henske at first after a double-play ball had bounced off his glove.  (You could also tell that he wasn’t exactly happy with botching the DP….)  It was a little bit of a high-wire act, but it still was good to see Motte get a save in such a close game.  Hopefully it’ll be good for the confidence.

Also, it was nice to see my friends at Pitchers Hit Eighth be relevant again.  It will be interesting to see, since the fact that Brendan Ryan was hitting ninth played into the game-winning rally, if Tony La Russa will go with the pitcher in the eighth spot again tonight and for how long.  I’d like to see it continue for a while, but you never know with TLR.

In news that sent some worry around Cardinal Nation, Aaron Miles is back .  Now, I honestly don’t think he’ll ever see St. Louis this year.  Felipe Lopez should be back soon and Tyler Greene is fine as a backup.  I would also hope that, even if he did make it, TLR wouldn’t feel the need to play him much given Ryan and Skip Schumaker.  That said, well, you just never know.  Hopefully that’ll be the case, because Miles was all right in St. Louis, but we got his career years and they weren’t super at that level.

Cards have at least split the series, which is good, and they have Jaime Garcia and Adam Wainwright going to get another series win.  The Cardinals are already the best team in baseball, record-wise, and there’s no reason to think this can’t keep rolling along.

Garcia goes tonight against Kenshin Kawakami.  The only Brave that has faced Garcia is Nate McLouth, who is 0-1 against him.  Kawakami is just as much of a cipher, as the only person that has faced him (Felipe Lopez, 1-3) is on the disabled list.

Cards have had trouble in the past with pitchers they’ve not seen.  You’d like to think that Kawakami’s 4.76 ERA would indicate St. Louis would be able to take him, but you don’t have to have been a fan very long to know that high ERA guys oftentimes are able to shut the Cardinals down.

UCB Radio Hour is on tonight!  It’s one I’m pretty excited about, because not only is Nick, one of our great hosts from Pitchers Hit Eighth, on the schedule tonight but also Tom from CardinalsGM .  Tom was one of the original voices of the UCB Radio Hour back in its infancy and it’s great to get him back in the saddle again.  9:30 Central over at Blog Talk Radio, so give them a listen or call in at 646-929-1758!