In the third inning of Saturday afternoon's 5-1 victory over the Cincinnati Reds, the St. Louis Cardinals scored three runs. In the forty-three innings since, the Cardinals have scored just one run, and even that run came via a throw hitting the scoring runner, who himself only reached base via the zombie runner, the automatic…
Albert Pujols has hit 19 home runs so far in 2022. Here is a ranking of all of them.
With last night's loss to the New York Mets, a Milwaukee Brewers franchise now doomed to be cursed by their non-tendering of first baseman Daniel Vogelbach, who drove in a run for the Mets last night, fell eight games behind the St. Louis Cardinals for first place in the National League Central division. As of…
When Albert Pujols debuted in Major League Baseball, there was an active player named Jesse Orosco, who was born on April 21, 1957. When he retires at the end of this season, the Majors will include Baltimore Orioles infielder Gunnar Henderson, who was born on June 29, 2001, a day by which Albert Pujols had…
Tonight, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright will make history, together, in their hometown.
The 2004 St. Louis Cardinals have the most wins in franchise history among seasons where most of the league's top players were not on active duty during World War II. If the 2022 Cardinals, a team which is already in good position to make the postseason, were to win the final twenty-four games of their…
Entering Sunday afternoon's game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the Chicago Cubs stood at 56-77. While not literally mathematically eliminated from the postseason, the Cubs' playoff odds rounded to 0.0% and even the most optimistic of Cubs loyalist was fully aware that the season was a lost cause for them. At the risk of sounding…
Ever since Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers memeified the notion of sports teams "trusting the process"--the ideology by which they construct their rosters, there are some corners of the sports analysis world which have decided to completely eschew results. On some level, this is the wise move--if I'm playing poker and I'm dealt a…
This weekend, Matt Holliday will be inducted into the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame. Here is a look back to 2016, at the last weekend that was an extended tribute to him.
Because, during the height of COVID-19 lockdowns and its total absence of televised sports, everybody with even the most casual interest in the NBA, and even a bunch of people who didn't, gravitated towards watching The Last Dance, a perfectly watchable documentary produced by ESPN Films and Netflix about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls. Because of…
Oh my God, Albert Pujols hit two home runs in the biggest win of the St. Louis Cardinals' season. In 2022. I was twelve years old when Albert Pujols debuted. I had yet to graduate from elementary school. Albert Pujols was Major League teammates with four men--Chuck Finley, Jeff Fassero, Bobby Bonilla, and Mark McGwire--who…
A deeper look into why Paul DeJong simply cannot stop crushing New York baseball teams
One of the two or three greatest Cardinals of the 2010s makes his first trip back to Busch Stadium since becoming the greatest baseball player in the world tonight
My first reaction to the late-breaking trade which saw the St. Louis Cardinals sending starting center fielder Harrison Bader to the New York Yankees for starting pitcher Jordan Montgomery is that I'm mad because they ruined my "the Cardinals didn't do enough to improve the starting rotation at the deadline" post I was just getting…
The problem with a couple weeks' worth of Juan Soto trade rumors and discussion, not the least of which were propagated by this site, is that virtually any other trade is going to seem like a half-measure by comparison. Even if the Cardinals had, say, jumped into the Luis Castillo or Frankie Montas bidding wars…
Yes, I have to accept their decision. I absolutely do not have to respect it.
It's one thing to perform poorly. It's another thing to not be physically able to perform. It's a whole other issue when you choose not to perform.
Guys like Juan Soto don't come cheap
A team doesn't need to have Juan Soto for a decade to get a ton of value out of having Juan Soto
Juan Soto is one of the greatest players in baseball, and the cost of trading for him would likely reflect that
Where does Albert Pujols rank among the twenty greatest living baseball players? Spoiler alert: Somewhere!
Before I start discussing two members of the 2022 St. Louis Cardinals, I will begin in the time and place where you surely assumed this would begin--the college football realignment landscape of a decade ago. Technically, this was the realignment landscape of major college athletic conferences in general, but the reality was the purpose of…
You gotta love a happy accident
In which one Cardinal tried to dig out of controversy, and another steered right into it
Tonight, Nolan Gorman will (likely) become the first Cardinal born in the 2000s. A look back at each decade's first ever St. Louis Cardinal.
I watched almost zero minutes of the St. Louis Cardinals game on Sunday night. I was busy making and eating dinner, and by the time I got to checking the score of the baseball game, it was uncompetitive and there were three Games Seven in the NBA and NHL postseasons available to watch that night…
Tonight, the St. Louis Blues will square off against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 1 of the National Hockey League's Western Conference Semifinal. And if the Blues defeat the 2021-22 President's Trophy winners, awarded to the team with the league's highest points total, it will without question be the greatest St. Louis over Denver triumph…
After entering 2022 with already-high prospect expectations, St. Louis Cardinals minor leaguer Nolan Gorman is crushing baseballs at alarming rates. In 95 plate appearances with the AAA Memphis Redbirds, Gorman has 11 home runs and a 1.067 OPS. A third baseman by trade, Gorman has played exclusively at second base this season while in the…
Let me be very clear: I hate hit-by-pitches. They are an unavoidable part of baseball, of course, and most of them are unintentional and relatively harmless, but in a perfect world, pitchers simply would not throw baseballs that hit pitchers. I hate when guys on my favorite team get hit; I hate when guys on…
If you had never heard of Moisés Gómez a few days ago, you were certainly not the only person to read this article who hadn't, a thing I can say with absolute certainty because I, person actively writing this article, will eventually read the article, and I hadn't heard of him. Admittedly, I am not…
I'm not going to sugarcoat it (too much): I am not optimistic about the St. Louis Cardinals' starting rotation. It is the reason that I am predicting the Cardinals to finish a few games behind the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Central this season despite a superior starting lineup. But it's also fun, and…
On September 23, 2005, 22,472 fans gathered into Milwaukee's Miller Park to watch the hometown Brewers face the St. Louis Cardinals on a Friday night. The Cardinals had already clinched their second consecutive National League Central title, while the Brewers had recently been officially eliminated from Wild Card contention, so the stakes were minimal--if I…
I will start off by acknowledging my prior history--I was and am extremely skeptical of the St. Louis Cardinals' signing of Albert Pujols for reasons that I have published in the past and about which I will expand upon in a moment. But it would be willful ignorance to pretend that what the Cardinals did…
The 2022 National League Central. Five teams enter. Three teams try to compete. Two teams actually compete. A division preview.
With the Major League Baseball owners’ lockout officially in the rearview mirror of the baseball world, and Opening Day now just over a week away, the St. Louis Cardinals enter the 2022 season in a familiar place. Coming off of their third consecutive playoff appearance and second straight 90+ win campaign in seasons where Covid…
Albert Pujols never had to forgive St. Louis because he never felt mad at St. Louis because he's smarter than us.
The argument for the St. Louis Cardinals signing Albert Pujols is entirely sentimental. There is a reason that Albert Pujols was never seriously tied to another Major League Baseball team this off-season—his value is entirely based on what he did over a decade ago for the team which signed him. He is the slowest runner…
For each of the last 11 seasons, a different Cardinal has led the team in Wins Above Replacement. Who is the most likely to extend the streak in 2022?
Of all the days that could be commemorated as among the darkest days in modern St. Louis Cardinals history, December 11, 2015 makes no intuitive sense in terms of where it falls on the calendar, and for future generations of fans, it will make even less sense. And yet, with the exceptions of days on…
Here is my initial take on the St. Louis Cardinals' signing of veteran outfielder Corey Dickerson to a one-year, $5 million-plus-incentives contract: Sure. It's a boring signing, which does not make it a bad signing. Corey Dickerson has bounced around, with the Cardinals being the seventh MLB team for the 32 year-old. He was an…
What the Cincinnati Reds and the Oakland Athletics are doing is awful for baseball. These are both teams which had winning records in 2021 and were winning and playoff teams in 2020. They are teams that were not going to enter 2022 as division or postseason favorites, by any means, but neither team was in…
Major League Baseball trades are rarely swindles. Even for the ones that, in hindsight, seem lopsided beyond comprehension, the people that make the trades are generally, if not prophets, reasonable people with the best interests of their teams in mind. The trade that sent Fernando Tatis Jr. (and marginal pitcher Erik Johnson) to the San…
I really, truly do not believe St. Louis Cardinals fans properly appreciate Paul DeJong. I understand why that is. His offensive profile can be pretty unpleasing at times--the home runs are certainly cool, but a guy who strikes out somewhere in the 20-30% range is suboptimal statistically and dreadful aesthetically. His base running numbers are…
Even for the highest spending teams in baseball, contributions from players making the league minimum salary are inevitably vital for a World Series championship--this should very much remain the case through the minimum salary bump that has come with the new collective bargaining agreement. The likes of Mookie Betts or Clayton Kershaw were obviously indispensible…
In 2021, following a dreaful month and a half start to the season, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim released Albert Pujols. Pujols, whom the Angels signed coming off one of the finest first eleven season stretches in baseball history, had been a major disappointment since departing the St. Louis Cardinals for the Los Angeles…
In sharp contrast to previous Major League Baseball work stoppages, there is a decidedly anti-ownership fervor that had been largely absent. While those who have sided with the Major League Baseball Players Association will occasionally fixate on those who side with ownership (or, as is more often the case, those who posit false equivalencies between…
In 1889, future Hall of Famer John Montgomery Ward, one of the premier players of early professional baseball, helped form the Players' National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in retaliation to discontent with how players in the National League and American Association were being paid. The league's eight teams were populated largely by defectors…
When John Spano purchased the National Hockey League's New York Islanders in 1996, the franchise's future was hanging in the balance--the once-dynastic team was a decade and a half removed from its glory years, and with teams occupying the same metropolitan area, the New Jersey Devils and New York Rangers, having won a Stanley Cup…
Even among those who ostensibly support the Major League Baseball Players Association in the current owner-instituted Major League Baseball lockout, it can be difficult to facilitate real, honest-to-God empathy. I get it--while the union is not incorrect in stating that the majority of its membership are not extraordinarily wealthy multi-millionaires, the league's current minimum salary…
You don't have to have a good reason to hate your favorite athletes. It's way more fun when you don't.
St. Louis Bullpen 