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That was a close one. Not quite a game the team should have lost but managed to win but I would have been not at all surprised if they had. By winning the Cardinals guarantee two more days in first place – by losing though they could have made a little more noise for the camp that I include myself in that Ryan Franklin is pitching on borrowed time and that time will always run out in the postseason if not before. Unfortunately there is no one else in the bullpen I would rather have closing right now. Thus, a return to the early season form of mashing home runs and defeating opponents would be rather nice. Albert finally hit a home run but I’d like to see a few more before I think he’s really healthy. The Cardinals 1.5 game lead over Cincinnati is obviously a lot smaller than it was last time they played the Reds and they are now only 6 games over .500. Looking at the untouchable 2004 Cardinal team they were not in first all year spending 122 days in first place. They were also 4.5 games back on May 11. The 2005 team came at lot closer to running the table, spending 172 days in first place. Wainwright pitches tonight.

Well – the Cardinals with many a replacement between them scored 11 runs on Sunday for Adam Wainwright and didn’t even need one home run to do it. It was a good old time Sunday offense game the kind that you can half pay attention to from the fourth inning on because the lead is so sizable.

Tonight – the Cardinals coughed up a win and I didn’t enjoy watching it. Brendan Ryan made an error yes, but, Brad Penny unraveled faster than an old burlap sack in a 40mph gale force wind. As I stated above, it was ugly. Then Jason Motte came in and you could tell he didn’t have it and as soon as Lance Berkman switched to his Motte bat the game was surely over. With Lohse pitching tomorrow against lefty Wandy we could be in for a sweep. In order to prevent this from coming to fruition I have picked up Bud Norris in fantasy baseball to put an end to his curse. With him in my starting lineup the Cardinals will pile on the runs and drive my roto stats down. But a new day will dawn in Redbird history.

Well I finally recovered from the 20-inning ball game. Felipe Lopez hasn’t though. Matt Holliday has only hit one HR since that game. The Cardinals lost their first series of the year against the Giants in SF, against some tough pitching and then gave us very little to talk about during their homestand against the Braves and Reds. The Phillies presented a tough opponent and despite the hitting in the final game of the series against Halladay the result came in as a loss as expected. Jaime Garcia won the only game of the series, Wainwright drew an incredible performance by Cole Hamels which the Cardinals managed to excuse him from the loss for and then Brad Penny pitched like it was May. In his career Penny has .765 Winning Percentage in April(and March) and 3.39 ERA. In May his WP is .513 and ERA is 4.07. The second highest WP for a month in his career is Sept(and Oct) at .690 then May is #3. June through August he’s below .500. However, I’m still expecting the Dave Duncan Brad Penny to be better than previous iterations. Wainwright pitches today for a series win against the Pirates and with a win the Cardinals will remain with only 2 Series losses on the year.

It was so fitting that Ryan Ludwick made the last out. By trying to bunt in the first inning with a 2-0 count, Skip on second and Albert on deck he set the whole thing in motion. You don’t play for one run in the first inning of a ballgame. I also thought it was the rule that you didn’t steal in front of Albert because if you do – they will just put him on base. I’ll be interested to see what La Russa says about all of that if he takes the blame or let’s Ludwick know how it should be. Maybe he ordered the steal – by that time the Cardinals deserved to lose anyway. They were actually the beneficiaries of CB Bucknor’s nebulous strike zone the whole game and when they got the guy called out at second in the inning Lopez pitched he was clearly safe. La Russa was clearly out managed with his use of the left-handed specialists but then again how many times are you going to get out managed in a 20 inning game? It’s still a game in the standings though, if the Cardinals can capitalize on the fact the Mets used all their pitchers today by winning handily tomorrow, we can easily absolve him of the loss. If they clinch in the middle of September or earlier we can do the same, but if it comes down to the final weekend this is one of those games that can be looked at and said that it could have been won easily. The first time the bases were loaded and the pitcher came to bat I was begging for Bryan Anderson or Adam Wainwright to be pinch hitting. I would have used them each time and not saved them for an at bat where there was a less likely chance of a positive outcome. What would you have done in that situation? Also, is this a game where we miss Brad Thompson for his rubber arm? And Jason Marquis for his power bat?! Ok, I guess by the time I finished typing that I didn’t either. May Wainwright be our savior tomorrow.

Cardinals Win!

The Cardinals overcame the one run deficit they were handed in their first at bat and quickly scored two runs to take the lead back. After the first inning performance against Brett Myers it looked like they were set for an offensive breakout night. Brett Myers didn’t allow it though, but that was ok, because Brad Penny was having nothing of it either. He only gave up 3 hits all night and nobody scored a run after the first inning and the Cardinals grinded their way through the game to their sixth win. It became a bullpen game and the bullpen almost blew it when McClellan put his first batter on and Dennis Reyes walked the batter he was brought in to face. Ryan Franklin got his first two outs with fly balls and got another dicey six pitch save. With a two run lead, I think I can trust Franklin but with 1 run a home run can come any time. The bullpen bended but did not break in this game and so, having won the first three series of the season there is little to complain about. But we still haven’t won the final game of a series…Kyle Lohse against Cardinal nemesis Bud Norris.

I’m watching the Cardinals play Sunday night on espn and Carp is struggling. Regardless of the outcome the Cards will come away with another series win thanks to Nick Stavinoha’s fence swinging heroics on Fri and Jamie Garcia’s strong showing on Sat. I couldn’t watch the Sat game thanks to the MLB.tv blackout but from listening to the game while watching the Masters and napping on the couch it seemed that the team was in control for most of the game. The Cardinals are down 4-2 to the Brewers now after coming back for two runs (finally) after the horrible Freese-error laden inning. After watching The Wire David Freese is reminding me of Prez we seem to be watching him shrug and whoops himself around the hot corner. Holliday is having a rough night – the light throwing left hander Randy Wolf has the Cardinals number, a la 2009. Joe Mather’s catch in center is the highlight of the game so far – he’s earned the start at 3rd tomorrow.

Cardinals Win!

Nick Stavinoha (can we call him Matt Stairs, Jr.)? saved the Cardinals with his PH HR in the top of the 9th. This is the first +/- game of the year. The Cardinals were not headed for a win in the late innings and came away with one – down to their last strike even. The team is now +1 for the year. The bullpen was a positive factor in this win which was nice to see, Hawksworth was especially efficient. This was a good ball game and a great win to come away with in the first week of the season. It got pretty sluggish in the middle innings and Lohse got off easy when things could have turned disastrous against the middle of the order a couple times. He looked pretty good though and ‘established’ himself as the fourth starter. Two exciting games coming up over the weekend. Jaime Garcia’s debut against Yovani Gallardo, and Chris Carpenter in prime time on ESPN tomorrow.

Elsewhere Rick Ankiel got 4 hits and his first HR for the Royals and drove in the tying and winning runs to beat the Red Sox. Attaboy Rick!

Cardinals Win!

Well the Cardinals began the season with a bang, Albert particularly with two home runs and four hits on the day.  Colby Rasmus made the first play of the season highlight reel and hit a homer for himself.  The Bullpen added to the bang – the sound of their meatballs being hammered around.  After 4 hours I’m still waiting to get through the MLB.tv replay – all I have left is the poor 9th inning by Ryan Franklin.  MLB.tv epic fail opening day btw, trying to watch the replay has been torturous and additionally after shielding myself from the score all day I had it shoved in my face by the player in the first 5 minutes of trying to load the video.  Having an even worse day than the Cards’ bullpen and MLB.tv was Carlos Zambrano who only pitched 1.1 innings for the Cubs.  A lot of players with HR power hit HRs today, including but not limited to Albert Pujols, Colby Rasmus, Joey Votto, Scotty Rolen, Adrian Gonzalez, Ryan Howard, David Wright, Vernon Wells, Adam Lind, Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, Aramis Ramirez, Mark Reynolds and Mark DeRosa.  Given his penchant for opening day HR’s I wouldn’t be surprised if Ken Griffey Jr. got his name on the list this evening as well.  At the end of the day all of the teams in the NL Central have played and the Cardinals share first place with only the Pirates.  This bullpen is gonna need some help or divine intervention or at least a real closer.  Quite possibly the longest day of the year by tradition:  the of day after opening day.  Well at least we can watch the Red Sox and Yankees again, oh gee, no thanks, I think I’ll go see Wilco instead.

The Yankees are bringing back a pretty solid team.  They shook up the outfield but with their infield they could win 80 games with no one out there.  Look for Mark Teixeira to keep launching balls into left, especially in the early season jet stream.  Even though Joe Nathan won’t be debuting in Target Field with the rest of the team I like the Mauer/Morneau/Thome combination.  The Rangers will win the AL West, really maybe by predicting it I can make it happen.  They added Vlad Guerrero to their stockpile of hitters and have a lot of young arms that have begun to prove themselves in the majors.  The Angels, with their loss of Chone Figgins, Guerrero and John Lackey will finish third in the division to the Mariners who have Felix Hernandez, Erik Bedard and should get a partial season out of Cliff Lee.  As much as I want to keep the Red Sox out of the playoff picture they seem to have a much improved lineup and I’m expecting big things from Adrian Beltre.  But look at John Lackey’s career numbers against the Yankees and in Fenway Park and the Mariners will give them a run for their money.  Zack Greinke will give Royals fans a reason to pay attention every five games and I have nothing close to an idea what rookies are in the AL.  Maybe Brett Wallace can get to the majors by June 1st and make us proud.  And those are my predictions.  I tried to make them interesting and conversation starting.  I still can’t offer any hope for the Pirates though -and I sure hope I’m proven wrong by an amazing Cardinals team this year.

First let’s review last year’s picks:

I picked all of the AL teams correctly, albeit the Yankees won the division and the Red Sox ended up with the Wild Card.  I got the Dodgers as a postseason berth.  And as you might know I picked Albert Pujols correctly.  Sadly this year I’m feeling more and more that this will be the year Albert Pujols gets hurt.  I hope I’m wrong but since my picks usually end up wrong I don’t have too much remorse in not predicting it.

The Mets don’t seem to be getting Jose Reyes back so soon.  Healthy, combined with David Wright and a healthy Beltran they could go somewhere, but as it stands, the youthful Braves seem to have their pitching figured out and have nothing to lose.  The Phillies have Roy Halladay but I don’t think he’s going to be the Roy Halladay of old, see Johan Santana.  The Cardinals won their division last year and will have a full season of Matt Holliday.  But they have a question mark at the end of their rotation and David Freese is their strongest third base candidate.  Their bullpen is also anchored by Ryan Franklin, pretty dicey.  I think the Dodgers have some amazing players who are getting better and better as predicted and seem to finally be figuring their pitching out and an incredible bullpen.  The Giants added Mark DeRosa and Aubrey Huff and have a full season of Freddy Sanchez at 2B.  Not to mention Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez in the rotation and Brian Wilson closing games.  Back tomorrow with the AL predictions.