Elite defense + good hitting + good enough pitching can be a success
The Cardinals are more of a postseason threat than the Arizona Diamondbacks. But are they more of a threat than the Cubs, Padres, and Giants?
I don’t think we can catch the Cubs, but I think we can surpass the wild West. St Louis is after all a gateway to the west. We probably don’t have the firepower to catch up with Chicago, but we might since they lost their best two starting pitchers for an undisclosed amount of time. Because I did not look it up.
You see, the Cardinals have amassed more fWAR than 22 teams have, including the Padres-Giants-Diamondbacks. The Cardinals are only a hair better than the Diamondbacks, and this is because the Cardinals play elite defense. Yes, it’s been really really good so far.
Defense metric and small sample size caveat for sure, but I think this team really does play some elite D. Especially with Masyn Winn at shortstop.
The Cardinals are over 6.7 fWAR so far, on the positional player side. But what about pitching?
We are about where the Cubs are, pitching wise. The Padres and Giants just flat out pitch better than us. This is where I get to say, we are better than the Diamondbacks again. Yes, yes we are.
The Giants are around an 8 WAR team right now, but the Cardinals are 10 WAR with pitching added. So I think we could be better than San Francisco this year. I think we also might be better than the Padres, just totaling fWAR so far. Yes, by that stat, we are better than the Padres total.
I am not the only person to say this, but this team is better than people realize. The trade and selloff ideas are stale. Time to enjoy some fun baseball.
Ok, now I am being a caricature of myself, or of any Pollyanna fan. Sometimes princesses come from the strangest places. Yes some dude who ended up being a cool saxophonist dubbed that my theme song when I moved up from Starbucks employee to the ad agency upstairs providing employment. Rock over London, Rock on Chicago.
So we already have another series win after the Mets series. 14-6 at home. Busch Stadium reign. Abandon hope! All ye who enter here. And the funny part?
We seem to be bulletproof against Paul Skenes, the best pitcher in baseball. Well not really. He’s not the best pitcher in baseball. But he’s one of the very best, if you like the stat xERA. Otherwise, he’s still pretty elite no matter how you slice it. And he’s still really young and so is the 2025 baseball season.
It’s not that Paul Skenes pitches poorly vs the Cardinals, it’s just that the Cardinals do just enough to beat his team *except last game in April, we scored 5 runs on Paul. So he has no Wins against us. We have his number! still. We have won the last 4 games against Skenes, and the first was a no decision. He still has a 2.76 ERA against us, but who cares? We can beat him, and it’s repeatable!
https://www.statmuse.com/mlb/ask/paul-skenes-vs-cardinals
Today we go for .500! At 18-19, the Cardinals are starting to feel more like themselves. Hopefully today we can at least win the battle for .500. Sonny Gray takes the mound and gives us a really good chance at that. Mitch Keller pitches for the Pirates. He’s ok, but no Sonny Gray. Please give the Pirates their 26th loss of the season! And then on to DC.
Album Hall of Fame
Swirlies – ‘They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days In The Glittering World of the Salons’
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mlG-9RoyDKTZY_oWLvO9n_2xdTn7bz0bo&si=fuk6QwXwwpEWLVLd (youtube music)
One of my favorite albums of all time! I have the special edition double vinyl version with drum and bass remixes. The whole shebang. For fans of My Bloody Valentine, 90s alt rock, and experimental pop music with rock overtones. This is one of the bigger underground shoegaze bands and one of the best from the US (east coast style). I do believe a member of this band visited VEB once because I was talking Swirlies. They’re one of my favorite live bands too, albeit I have only had the chance to see them once.