An appreciation for Cardinals’ consistency
Dalton Vitt
To the dismay of 14 teams in the National League — and especially four in the Central division — the St. Louis Cardinals still exist.
All this means is the assembly line that cranks out playoff contenders like candy from a vending machine is functioning the same as it has for the last several decades. Long-time fans call this concoction of talent-pooling and competition-wrecking the “Cardinal Way.”
That’s a little corny, so let’s go with referring to it as “boredom.”
Regardless of what injuries befell the team, what free-agency decisions contort long-term plans or which aging veterans prune earlier than expected, St. Louis keeps cranking the wheel to churn sweet playoff butter.
This season is no different, as the best record in baseball shows.
Now, as dedicated readers of the Daily Forum may have noticed, it appears our staff is comprised only of sweaty-palmed Royals fans nervously crooning their necks to catch a glimpse of the first successful core of players in three decades. You might be sitting at your coffee table or behind a desk in a Matt Carpenter t-shirt jersey, fuming over yet another sappy piece on Kansas City’s 2014 renaissance in the baseball limelight, assuming every staff member we have is a Royals fan.
Your observation is spot on, actually. Sorry.
But the point is, while blue-bearing Kauffman-goers on this side of the state relish in the opportunity to enjoy a winner, slighted Cardinals fans — if you can really call them that — continue tuning in to the Eighth Wonder of the World. The Royals might be baseball’s newfound affection, but the Cards are its Great Pyramid.
St. Louis sits atop the N.L. Central once again, bludgeoning its way to a 27-13 record and plus-61 run differential prior to Thursday’s contest in New York. It’s allowed a Major League-low 120 runs, even without its staff ace.
Adam Wainwright, who needs him … right? After he went down with an Achilles tear in Milwaukee that put an end to his season, all the rest of the Cardinals pitchers have done is toss the league’s second-lowest ERA in the last 30 days, a 3.02 mark that trails only the Tampa Bay Rays.
The core group of starters since Wainwright went down — Michael Wacha, Lance Lynn, John Lackey, Carlos Martinez and Tyler Lyons — have merely tossed up a collective 1.87 ERA in the last month.
On the offensive side, St. Louis continues to stave off Father Time from claiming 35-year-old left fielder Matt Holliday, who remains a critical piece even as newly acquired Jason Heyward and fan favorites Matt Carpenter and Yadier Molina garner most of the attention.
Holliday has enjoyed a .387 batting average on balls in play (BABIP, for us nerds) that is sure to deflate as the season wears on. But while he enjoys the ballooned number, which indicates a bit of luck on his side, his slash line sits at an All-Star level .328/.442/.463.
Three other contributors carry All-Star worthy numbers in Heyward, Carpenter and Molina, all of whom employ less glorious skill sets than the home-run bashers and base-stealing loons.
As most of the baseball world turns a blind eye to one of the most consistent forces in the game, St. Louis keeps working whatever magic it’s used for the last decade-plus. Surely Cardinals fans appreciate what their team has done with a steady core of blue-collar stars, but the rest of us tend to forget — until October, that is — how talented of a group this is.
This weekend, the 2015 version of the I-70 Series commences with Friday night’s first pitch at Kauffman Stadium. St. Louis enters with baseball’s top record and a dealing pitching staff, while Kansas City owns the best run differential and a surprising upstart offense.
Regardless of who leaves town with a pair — or more — of wins in hand, these are quite likely the two premier teams in the game, each representing an opposing side of the league split. It may be a preview of this season’s Fall Classic, as the national pundits are sure to jump all over, but that’s a ways down the road.
While we adore the reclamation of a baseball town and team in Kansas City, try not to forget the team four hours east is amazing, too. Just don’t admit it to your friends.
