It is a guarantee that the St. Louis Cardinals will rise above the mediocre in any division or league. It is their art.
Advertisement
The Cardinals win nine consecutive games after losing to the Orioles on a night where the Phillies were defeated by the Orioles. It's like a Swiss fucking clock, except that Swiss watches are made by hillrods.
The Cards are here because Tyler ONeil cannot stop hitting the ball so hard (.901 OPS second half), and their pitchers have stopped walking people, and allowed their plus-defense to eat up any balls in play. The Cardinals pitchers had by far the lowest open-length walk-rates in the National League during the first half. They are third in the second half. St. Louis is the third-best MLB team in defensive efficiency. This means they convert the third most balls into outs. Teams will stop giving away runners for free.
After being given a Molotov cocktail on arrival in Missouri, Jon Lester gave up just two earned runs in his sixth consecutive start. StatCast shows that Lester has essentially abandoned his fastball which isn't very windy these days, and instead he uses his sinker and change to get the two other runners away. This is about as disgusting as you can get right now.
This is how they work. They won two World Series with the worst teams possible, when nobody else wanted to take it. They won the NL Central in 2019, when both the Cubs and Brewers had been suffering from nosebleeds for the entire season. The Braves even had their own version Of The Leftovers in Game 5 to help them get to the NLCS. The Cardinals are able to stay upright even when everyone else falls.
We can only hope that this causes some kind of collapse. Unfortunately, the Reds and Phillies have a significant lead on Padres for this.
