The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 14-7 Friday night. That’s not exactly an attention-grabbing sentence on the surface…other than the fact that it’s somewhat shocking that the Pirates were able to score seven runs. But the way this game played out, and the timing of the victory, are possibly more important than we realize. This win adds yet another layer to just how good the 2009 Cardinals are.
Back up a bit to Thursday. John Smoltz got the start against the Milwaukee Brewers and pitched well. He took the loss, but only gave up four earned runs. A team can’t ask for much more from their #4 or #5 starter, even one with the reputation and storybook past of Smoltz. But the Cards were unable to solve Manny Parra and let a sweep of the Brewers slip away in a 4-3 loss.
It’s been rare to see these Cardinals lose such a close game. Over the past six weeks, they’ve been so dominant that we expect them to win every game, even though logic and history tell us that is impossible.
So we step forward to Friday night in Pittsburgh. These ain’t your daddy’s Pirates, folks. They are fielding a ton of youngsters who look like they could be good players one day. And if the Pirates’ ownership ever gets with the program and locks some of these guys up long term, they may turn out to be a decent team in the not-too-distant future. But this year, as in so many years past, they are…ahem…”rebuilding.”
With Adam Wainwright pitching, this game projected to be a quick, lopsided affair. After the Cards amassed a 5-0 lead by the 5th inning, the game was all but over. Then disaster struck. The Pittsburgh Pirates hung a six-spot on Wainwright and the Cards in the bottom of the 5th. And these weren’t cheap runs; these were hard hit, earned runs. Wainwright had only allowed six runs in the entire month of August…and the same goes for July. But the Pirates got to him, and our seemingly invincible Cardinals had just coughed up a five run lead to the worst team in the division. 
After losing a tight game the day before, and staring down the possibility that the Cards could then get embarrassed by Pittsburgh the very next day, I almost had to wonder what it meant. Was this going to be the chink in the armor? Were the Cardinals going to be the team that played out of their minds to get a comfortable division lead then tire out? I was thinking about how Wainwright missed significant time last year, and maybe 200+ innings would be too much for him to handle. Then I though about Carpenter missing the last two seasons; what if he gets tired too? It’s too early to panic, right?
Right…because in the top of the 6th, Albert Pujols yanked a line drive over the wall for a three run homer. And the Cards started piling on the shell shocked Pirates. It was almost as if the hitters got back into the dugout after that disastrous 5th inning and said, “How dare these Pirates score six runs on us? That’s our boy Wainwright out there! Let’s go out there and smack these kids around, just so they don’t forget who’s boss.”
I know the Pirates are not a good team, but this is still the big leagues and anything can happen. The 
likelihood of them losing every game is about the same as the likelihood of the Cards winning every game. That’s just not how baseball works. But the Cardinals showed us all something we haven’t been used to in these glory days: they can bounce back from almost anything.
Many other teams would take the combination of a loss one day and a mid-game collapse with your co-ace on the mound the next as a sign to roll over and go get ‘em tomorrow. Not these guys. They are never out of a game. So if Waino and Carp need to back it off a bit for some rest leading up to the postseason, then so be it. Pitching wins championships, but a potent offense can win any game, any time, anywhere.
Chris Reed is a freelance writer from Belleville, IL who also blogs on the Cardinals at http://bird-brained.mlblogs.com.