When is the time to sell?

For the first time in my time as a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, I am writing this sentence: the St. Louis Cardinals, over a month into the season, have the worst record in the National League. The Cardinals currently sit eleven games under .500, playing the season at a crisp 52 win pace.…

What happened in Oakland can happen anywhere

In 1989, Oakland Athletics home games were attended by 2,667,225 people--in the American League, only the Toronto Blue Jays, who were opening up their brand new stadium then known as SkyDome, turned more fans through the turnstiles. Entering the 1990s, Oakland was not only packing fans into their stadium, but they were loading up with…

The continuum

On May 22, 2002, the newest St. Louis Cardinal, Jordan Walker, was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia. In St. Louis, in the fourth-to-final season at the former Busch Memorial Stadium, the Cardinals hosted the Houston Astros. The game concluded in the bottom of the ninth inning thanks to a lead-off home run off the bat…

The time for rooting against your favorite team

Since becoming a full-time starting pitcher, Milwaukee Brewers ace Corbin Burnes has been, by FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement, the single best pitcher in Major League Baseball. The 2021 National League Cy Young winner didn't quite reach his 2021 heights last season, but with a sub-3 ERA and seventh-place Cy Young finish in a 202-inning campaign…

The MLB playoffs are whatever you want them to be

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…

Why the Cardinals lost

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…

Who should be on the Cardinals’ Wild Card Round roster?

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…

Do the Cardinals have a Jeff Albert problem?

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…

The Greatest Twenty Teammates of Albert Pujols

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…

Why David Ross was right to pitch to Albert Pujols

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…

The historic last dance of Albert Pujols

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…

Cardinals make a riskier trade for a veteran lefty than yesterday, flip Harrison Bader for Jordan Montgomery

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…