Before his offensive production jumped several levels in the late-aughts and into the early-2010s, an oft-cited claim from manager Tony La Russa about St. Louis Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was that he could go hitless for the season and still be valuable to the team because of his defensive production. This was almost certainly hyperbole…
In "Homer at the Bat", from season three of The Simpsons, centenarian Springfield Nuclear Power Plant owner C. Montgomery Burns, moonlighting as the manager of his company's softball team, instructs then-Los Angeles Dodgers right fielder Darryl Strawberry, paid a boatload of cash to play on the team in the league final, to hit a home…
For whom should you root in this year's World Series? What do I know, do whatever you feel like!
The 2022 Los Angeles Dodgers were an unholy juggernaut of baseball dominance--with 111 wins, they defeated their opponents with surgical precision throughout the season, amassing the highest win total of any MLB team since 2001. They lost one of the best free agents of last offseason--shortstop Corey Seager--and replaced him seamlessly with Trea Turner, and…
R.I.P. Bruce Sutter (1953-2022)
Over the course of their 2022 National League Wild Card Series defeat at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies, the St. Louis Cardinals saddled Phillies pitchers who have not been Cy Young contenders over the last two seasons with a 5.40 ERA. Against Zack Wheeler, who finished a close second in Cy Young Award balloting…
Eleven years ago today (specifically, tonight), the lone postseason series ever contested by the St. Louis Cardinals and the Philadelphia Phillies concluded. Today, the two teams add a new chapter to their postseason history. Only time will tell if their 2022 tilt reaches the heights of 2011, a series filled to the brim with drama…
A comprehensive ranking of every Albert Pujols bomb from 2022
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the Philadelphia Phillies team which qualified for the 2022 MLB postseason, the first playoff berth for the franchise since their 102-win 2011 season ended in just about the most crushing possible fashion against the 2011 World Series championship-bound St. Louis Cardinals, is a good baseball team. At 87-74…
On Friday, the Cardinals will begin a (potentially) three-game series at Busch Stadium against the Philadelphia Phillies. For such a brief series with such dramatic stakes--the potential end of the 2022 season and the potential anticlimactic conclusion of two legendary Cardinals careers--those of Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina--selecting the optimal roster is going to be…
There's something inherently silly and strange about locker room celebrations in sports, something bizarre and contradictory about celebrating sporting greatness by acting like a reckless maniac and consuming some adult beverages that lessen your motor skills. Maybe it makes more sense after a championship, when there will be months until the next game. But following…
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…
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…
St. Louis Bullpen 