If Ryan Ludwick hits a fly ball, the Cards would have won three straight games against the Cubs in the ninth inning.\u00c2\u00a0 What a weekend series, huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s recap:<\/p>\n
Friday (3-2 win<\/a>)<\/u> Saturday (2-1 win<\/a>)<\/u> You can argue about that play in the ninth all day, though.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know how much of a comparison you can make to the one in the sixth when the Cubs forced Brendan Ryan to throw the ball away trying to turn two.\u00c2\u00a0 (He should have eaten it and not done a double pump.)\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t know if the Cub runner was as far out as Holliday was in the ninth or not.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 After watching Ludwick scramble to the base after Derek Lee missed the tag, though, it was pretty heart-rending to have that kind of call decide the game.\u00c2\u00a0 But if it’s the rules, it’s the rules, and you can’t argue, in my mind, terribly much about it.\u00c2\u00a0 It was preordained, anyway, since the ESPN guys had just finished talking about how Ludwick had the highest fly ball to ground ball ratio in the bigs.\u00c2\u00a0 After that, how could he NOT hit a grounder?<\/p>\n Coming out of the weekend, though, the Cards are still within 4 games of clinching the division.\u00c2\u00a0 While it was nice to think, briefly, that it was at 2, winning two out of three against Chicago is a good thing, especially with the solid pitching they faced this weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not the ideal result, surely, and it’d been nice to see them score a bit more often, but you can take it and like it.<\/p>\n After working on my Top 7 prospects for Friday and getting them published, the news comes out that Wagner Mateo has some sort of vision problem<\/a> and it could be to the point that he’ll never play for anyone.\u00c2\u00a0 You can read the Future Redbirds discussion on this over here<\/a>, but you have to feel pretty bad for Mateo if it is true and it is a degenerative condition.\u00c2\u00a0 Having vision problems at 16?\u00c2\u00a0 And having a dream (and a possible fortune) taken away at the same time?\u00c2\u00a0 That’d be pretty bad for anyone, especially someone in this situation.<\/p>\n Cardinals head down to Houston tonight, with the chance to clinch while they are down there.\u00c2\u00a0 (The Cubs get to go to their home away from home in Milwaukee, but the Brew Crew did just beat them twice last week.)\u00c2\u00a0 Kyle Lohse continues to try to show that he can do something for this team.\u00c2\u00a0 Lohse has had a season to forget, especially on the injury front, but he still has time to look sharp and take that fourth starter role.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s had reasonable success in the past<\/a> against the Houston hitters, but if he’s not on the top of his game this one could be out of control fast.<\/p>\n Not only because of Lohse, of course, but because the Cardinals get the rare good fortune of facing Wandy Rodriguez.\u00c2\u00a0 On the list of Cardinal killers, Rodriguez is right up there<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 After Pujols belted a home run of Jeff Suppan the last time the Cards were in Milwaukee, Rodriguez moved to the active leader in most ABs against AP without El Hombre going yard.\u00c2\u00a0 Heck, it was just his last game against Wandy that Pujols finally got an extra-base hit off of the guy.\u00c2\u00a0 If Lohse doesn’t have it early, this could be a long night.<\/p>\n Daniel Shoptaw is the founder of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153C70 At The Bat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where he regularly writes about his beloved St. Louis Cardinals.\u00c2\u00a0 You can find more of his work here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If Ryan Ludwick hits a fly ball, the Cards would have won three straight games against the Cubs in the ninth inning.\u00c2\u00a0 What a weekend series, huh?\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s recap:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":347,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nHero: Matt Holliday<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Walk-offs in your first game in the Cards\/Cubs rivalry will do that.
\nGoat: Albert Pujols<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t expect the only guy that’s hitless to be him, but there you have it.
\nNotes: John Smoltz had his second straight rough beginning to a game, then settled in.\u00c2\u00a0 However, when this offense isn’t clicking, you really run a risk by putting them in a hole.\u00c2\u00a0 They can come back, but there’s no guarantee that they will.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, does that bode ill for Smoltz coming out of the pen in the playoffs, if he does?….Nice to see a sharp Kyle McClellan.\u00c2\u00a0 Having him on track could be a huge thing, especially if Ryan Franklin continues to stumble.<\/p>\n
\nHero: Brendan Ryan<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if he got an assist on his home run, he still drove in the only two runs of the game with three hits.
\nGoat: Ryan Franklin<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 Before his first pitch, I was really thinking Tony LaRussa needed to leave in Chris Carpenter.\u00c2\u00a0 Carp threw 101 pitches and wasn’t showing signs of tiring.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d have rather had him start the inning, at least, before moving to Franklin.\u00c2\u00a0 And for his blown save and ruination of Carp’s great day, he gets the win.\u00c2\u00a0 Baseball’s not always just.\u00c2\u00a0 LaRussa’s not worried about him yet<\/a>, but I’m not nearly as confident in him as I was just a month ago.
\nNotes: Carpenter was dealing.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting that win might have bumped him to the front of the Cy Young race, though there’s no doubt the outing as a whole helped a lot….when your #2 and #3 hitters don’t get a hit, you know it’s going to be a low-scoring game.\u00c2\u00a0 Ryan Dempster was on almost as much as Carpenter was, which made for a memorable game.
\n
\nSunday (6-3 loss in 11<\/a>)<\/u>
\nHero: Adam Wainwright<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 If he’d gotten a better turn on the double play, he might have left the game with it tied.\u00c2\u00a0 Just looking at some of the games he has lost this season, with some decent run support in those games, he’d already have 20 locked up.\u00c2\u00a0 Another special outing that shows why you can’t necessarily name the “ace” of the Cardinal staff.
\nGoat: Mitchell Boggs<\/strong>.\u00c2\u00a0 I hate to give it to him because the game never should have gotten there, but not only does he give up the winning home run, but puts more runners on after that.
\nNotes: If anyone really should get the Goat, it’s Tony LaRussa.\u00c2\u00a0 Bunting Mark DeRosa in the ninth inning just didn’t make sense on any level.\u00c2\u00a0 If he’s successful, then they walk Pujols.\u00c2\u00a0 Even if he hits into a DP, that means Pujols bats.\u00c2\u00a0 Take your chances, see if you can’t put another runner on or even put runners on the corners with nobody out.\u00c2\u00a0 (They’d have still walked AP, but at least then even a DP–unless it goes home–would score the winning run.)\u00c2\u00a0 When you have such a weapon as Pujols, you want to make sure he hits in a situation like that.\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t give the other team a reason to take the bat out of his hands.<\/p>\n