The Cardinals have been playing consistently lately.. They're still not the offensive power house they were last year. I think a lot of it has to be the juiceless MLB. I'm not sure if any of the birds were on the juice last year but there are a lot of good hypothesis that the de-juicing has given pitchers in the mlb more confidence. Basically you're not seeing the check swing homers and broken bat homers of last year. There was a comparisson of homers this time last year and this year and it was almost a quarter as many homers... part of that is Barry's hiding from the world.
A buddy of mine at work asked me why the cards were struggling against Colorado and all I have to say is "Mile High" I mean its a crap shoot when one plays in that stadium. You can put the best pitchers on the mound and if the air is thin enough it won't matter if you're Cy Young, the balls will find their way to the stands.
I think the Cards will have a good chance to win the NL. They need some more consistency but I think the more they play good teams and the more some of the sub par teams get better it will challenge the cards to become better. Like the Cubs are getting better some how lately and that will cause the cards to rise to the challenge more. The cardinals have only struggled really with the Phillies and the Braves... the phils makes no sense they're terrible, but the Braves are good so it makes sense. The East is strong, especially Florida, they're tough to beat with that pitching staff.
Posted by holtonian at June 3, 2005 07:40 PM | TrackBackI can't believe you were able to blog this dang much stuff in the 20 minutes we were at Coptix. unbelievable.
Posted by: JosiahQ at June 3, 2005 10:49 PMVIVA LA HOLTONIAN!
Posted by: Ron at June 3, 2005 10:56 PMYep... its a good thing i don't poof red
Posted by: holton at June 4, 2005 12:32 AMI'm glad your blog is back. There is a high school newspaper in Holton, KS and they just started posting their stuff online. I keep getting their site instead of yours. They call it the Holtonian, I think you should sue. Highschool know-it-all brats. Think they're all learned an' stuff. two more months to R&R.; Hey even if I don't make the wedding we can do something for your birthday.
Posted by: concerned at June 4, 2005 08:40 AMI think perception of performance this point of the year, in comparison to last year can be misleading. The Cards are in the top three of batting average in the NL, only 2 pts behind the leader (maybe higher after today’s game) and have been on top most of the year (BTW, Philly and Colorado are 1 and 2). They have the second best record in baseball, only two games or so behind the MLB leading White Sox, which I would say is fairly consistent. It's hard to remember, but the Cards have a much better record this point in the year than they did last year, and look how they finished (I'm not talking The Series :(, only the season).
Also, no one expected teams like the Cubs to roll over and die, but even after a 7 game winning streak, they are sill back 7 games in the central, which most would consider a sizeable lead at this point of the year. Not to say no team can come back from that, but the Cards are a tough team to make up that kind of ground on. If Derek Lee ever comes back down to earth, the Cubs will be slowing down.
About the ATL, they Cards have only had one series with ATL and they lost two games by a combined 2 runs, w/o Izzy. That's not exactly considered struggling against another team in the majors. I'm with you though on the Phillies thing, I can't explain it either. The Cards will be playing Boston and NY next week (I'll be at the tue. Boston game) and we'll see what they have against the east (they just took 2/3 from the Nats, not a bad team). It's easy to forget that Roland has been out for more than a month now, and may not be back until July and they keep winning series after series.