Surprising Cardinals gear up for Mets
NEW YORK -- There have been better weeks to be in the predicting business.
Not to pick on ESPN, because it had lots of company, but before the baseball playoffs began, the sports monolith solicited predictions from 19 of its baseball experts. All 19 forecast the Yankees to beat the Tigers. There was a similar consensus that the Padres would beat the Cardinals. Only Enrique Rojas, the Dominican-based columnist for ESPNDeportes.com, picked the Cardinals to be where they are today, preparing to meet the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series, which begins tomorrow night at Shea Stadium.
Yes, the Cardinals, the team that finished the regular season with 83 wins, which would have left them 14 games out of first place in both the American League and National League East. The Cardinals, the first team ever to advance to the postseason in a year in which it had three losing streaks of seven games or more. The Cardinals, who ripped off one of those streaks in late September, when they were on the verge of losing an 8 1/2-game lead to the Astros in what would have been the mother of all regular-season collapses.
``Well, if you watched us, we had periods we played very well, and we had periods where we didn't," manager Tony La Russa said Sunday night in St. Louis, after the Cardinals beat the Padres, 6-2, to win their Division Series, three games to one. ``I certainly didn't blame anybody that didn't think we had a real good shot."
The number of Cardinal believers is unlikely to expand in great number for the NLCS, which St. Louis enters as a heavy underdog to the Mets, who tied the Yankees for the best regular-season record in baseball with 97 wins but did not implode like their Bronx brethren in the first round. And La Russa will not have the luxury of making ace Chris Carpenter the linchpin of his strategy to beat the Mets the way he was against San Diego (Carpenter won both of his starts in the series).
La Russa gambled and held back Carpenter from the last game of the regular season, even though the Cardinals had yet to clinch the NL Central. He won that gamble, which allowed him to have Carpenter for the first game of the playoffs. Then, because the schedule gave the teams an extra day off in their series, La Russa was able to bring back Carpenter on regular rest for Game 4.
Carpenter struggled in the first inning Sunday, walking three, one with the bases loaded -- he hadn't walked two batters in a row all season -- as the Padres took a 2-0 lead. But Carpenter held them scoreless for the next six innings, and the Cardinals rallied against Woody Williams and Cla Meredith, the former Red Sox prospect whose departure in the Doug Mirabelli deal has been much mourned but who could not quell a four-run St. Louis uprising in the sixth that included a perfect squeeze bunt by another former Sox farmhand, David Eckstein.
Also contributing a big hit in the win was Ronnie Belliard, the second baseman the Cardinals elected to acquire at the trading deadline instead of Mark Loretta, the Red Sox second baseman who was offered to them. Belliard, who began the season in Cleveland, wound up with six hits in the series, and also made two major defensive plays. He gave a huge lift to a Cardinal lineup that in Game 4 was missing third baseman Scott Rolen, who finally admitted to La Russa that his surgically repaired left shoulder was affecting his play.
``I think when you coach or you manage, you make decisions, and there are some that are really, really tough," said La Russa when asked to reflect on holding Carpenter out of the regular-season finale. ``But once I got by myself, I called Dave [Duncan, the pitching coach] and I said, `Dave, this is not even a tough call.' "
It was no different, La Russa said, from being down a run in the ninth with slugger Albert Pujols coming to the plate. ``You let Albert swing, and you hold Chris back," La Russa said.
But La Russa has no choice now but to hold back Carpenter against the Mets, who won't have to face the 16-game winner until Game 3 in St. Louis. The Cardinals instead will have to go with Jeff Weaver, who this season was released by the Angels to make room for his kid brother, and Jeff Suppan, who was shown no mercy by the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series.
It may be asking too much of the Cardinals' bullpen -- which relies on three rookies (lefty Tyler Johnson, righty Josh Kinney, and righty Adam Wainwright, who inherited the closer role when Jason Isringhausen was shut down by injury a month ago) -- to duplicate its performance against the Padres, whom it held scoreless in 13 2/3 innings. The Padres were dreadful with men in scoring position, going just 2 for 32 (.063) while scoring just six runs in four games.
The Mets batted .333 (11 for 33) with runners in scoring position in sweeping the Dodgers, and their lineup is clearly the best in the league.
But if the Cardinals -- and, for that matter, the Tigers -- have proven anything already, it's that things that appear obvious just may not be as clear as they look.
``We've come through rough times and now we're enjoying ourselves," said Belliard. ``We're confident. We're going to see what happens when we go over there."
