{"id":1650,"date":"2009-09-30T09:13:07","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T16:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/30\/cardinals-stumble-to-start-final-stretch\/"},"modified":"2009-09-30T09:13:07","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T16:13:07","slug":"cardinals-stumble-to-start-final-stretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/30\/cardinals-stumble-to-start-final-stretch\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardinals Stumble to Start Final Stretch"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s meaningless baseball, right? \u00c2\u00a0The Cards are going to the playoffs, but without a lot of things going their way, there’s not much they can do otherwise. \u00c2\u00a0The odds are long that they’ll catch the Dodgers for the best record and, given the way that the Rockies have handled the team, being second might not be all that advantageous either.That said, and even given the fact that the Dodgers got blasted by the Pirates just a couple of days ago, you never like seeing your #3 postseason starter get lit up<\/a> by a team that’s well under .500, even if that team has been playing much better of late.<\/p>\n

Joel Pineiro<\/strong> isn’t supposed to have those kind of outings. \u00c2\u00a0He’d only given up seven home runs all year going into this game, then allowed three in six innings. \u00c2\u00a0Granted, he allowed them to good hitters, but Pineiro is supposed to be the master of getting the ground ball, so any ball that goes over the wall isn’t in the plans.<\/p>\n

Even if the offense had been clicking, it would have been hard for them to overcome seven runs. \u00c2\u00a0It’s pretty obvious that the offense isn’t clicking. \u00c2\u00a0It’s about time to start doing a serious search for it. \u00c2\u00a0They had a chance, down four, bases loaded and Albert Pujols at the plate. \u00c2\u00a0He had a good drive, but it was still feet from going out. \u00c2\u00a0A sacrifice fly is nice, of course, and it broke up the shutout, but Matt Holliday wasn’t able to do any more with two on and two out.<\/p>\n

As a side note, you hope that Pujols is saving up his power barrage. \u00c2\u00a0After his two homer day against Milwaukee on the 9th of this month, he’s been stuck at 47 homers. \u00c2\u00a0Tonight is three weeks since he went deep–which shows how great he was going since he still leads the league in long balls.<\/p>\n

Someone on one of the boards said something about Pineiro pitching his way out of the postseason rotation. \u00c2\u00a0Which is fairly\u00c2\u00a0ludicrous, since he’s been one of the reasons the Cards are where they are today and he’s not be Todd Wellemeyer-level bad. \u00c2\u00a0Couple that with the fact that, if you pull Pineiro, you have to go with Kyle Lohse AND John Smoltz in the rotation and I think you see that isn’t happening.<\/p>\n

That said, Pineiro has a 4.58 ERA since August 1. \u00c2\u00a0Right now, he’s scheduled for the Closing Day start against Milwaukee. \u00c2\u00a0If he does make that start–and I would hope that Tony LaRussa will consider skipping him–I expect he’ll only go two or three innings, unless he’s leading and works quickly, in which case he might go five so he can have a chance at the win.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, David Freese<\/strong> hit his first major league home run, adding to his push to make the postseason roster.\u00c2\u00a0 I still don’t know that he’ll make it, but apparently he’s under consideration and getting your first longball out of the way couldn’t hurt the situation anyway.\u00c2\u00a0 Also nice to see Holliday getting two hits in the game.
\nTroy Glaus got a couple of at-bats last night and seems to feel fine<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 However, you have to think that his odds of making the postseason roster are pretty slim as well.\u00c2\u00a0 He always seems to be coming up with an injury every time he makes some progress and isn’t able to get into a regular playing rhythm.\u00c2\u00a0 I agree that the potential of Glaus, with his past power, would be a nice thing off the bench, but I don’t think the Cards can count on getting that.<\/p>\n

Another person who’s doing OK, Adam Wainwright.\u00c2\u00a0 He doesn’t seem to have too many ill effects from his 130 pitch marathon, though LaRussa is giving him an extra day off and he’ll have another extra day between his last regular start and his first playoff start.<\/p>\n

A couple of links.\u00c2\u00a0 First, More Hardball has their own Hall of Fame called Hardball Heroes.\u00c2\u00a0 Today, they’ve “inducted” former Cardinal catcher Ted Simmons.\u00c2\u00a0 Check it out<\/a> when you have the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Also, my monthly piece at Baseball Reflections is up today<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally, if you’ve not heard this prediction from Mike Blowers and the result, you really have to<\/a>.<\/p>\n

UCB Radio Hour tonight<\/a>, with myself and Mike from Stan Musial’s Stance<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ll also have Joel from Red Reporter<\/a> on to talk about Cincinnati and their plans for the offseason.\u00c2\u00a0 Call in after tonight’s game and talk some baseball.<\/p>\n

John Smoltz vs. Bronson Arroyo tonight.\u00c2\u00a0 Hopefully the bats will break out and get rolling toward October!<\/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":"

It’s meaningless baseball, right? \u00c2\u00a0The Cards are going to the playoffs, but without a lot of things going their way, there’s not much they can do otherwise. \u00c2\u00a0The odds are long that they’ll catch the Dodgers for the best record and, given the way that the Rockies have handled the team, being second might not […]<\/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-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","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=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}