The Cardinals’ magic number is still 1. Seriously, it’s one freaking game. How hard is it to win 1 freaking game? The more mind boggling question is how hard is it for the Cubs to lose 1 freaking game? It seems like the magic number has been at 1 forever. It remains at 1 again after Friday night. I was convinced that I was going to get to write the easy no-brainer column this week. Hell, Pete even wrote it yesterday. Cards clinch the division. But wait…no…um…they haven’t. They will of course. But with their stellar performance in Colorado on Friday, we all get to play this game again today. Today is the day that they’ll clinch a playoff berth…or maybe it isn’t. Surely if the Cards can’t win, the Cubs will lose…right? We’ll all just ha
ve to wait and see.
Speaking of the playoffs, do you remember that feeling you had about this team a month ago? They were unstoppable after the acquisition of Holliday. Steamrolling through opponents, making it look easy. I, along with most of Cardinal Nation, was convinced that they were going to win the World Series. I’m not so sure about that anymore. The Cards have a record of 5-8 since September 11. That is not very good for a team heading into the playoffs.
I am starting to get a real bad feeling about the playoffs all of a sudden and I don’t like it. One of my major concerns is that Ryan Franklin has not been as automatic lately. Many of the experts are saying his arm is tired, and TLR has even rested him a little extra lately. This scares the living shit out of me. No one wants the closer with the exhausted arm going into the playoffs. The closer has one of the most important jobs in the post season. Remember how important Adam Wainwright was to the 2006 team in that role? Striking out Carlos Beltran in game 7 of the NLCS? How clutch was that? I’m so afraid that Franklin is done and this team will be without a dominant closer in the playoffs.
Another reason for the bad feeling about the playoffs is the way the Cards have lost lately. They haven’t scored runs. I mentioned earlier that the Cards were 5-8 in their last 13. In 7 of those losses they have scored 0,2,1,2,3,0, and 1 runs, the only exception is September 12th against the Braves when they scored 6. So that is a combined 8 runs in 7 losses, for a runs per game of 1.14. In the 5 wins they have scored 34 runs or a runs per game of 6.8. What a difference the offense makes. Unfortunately we’ve seen significantly more of the 1.14 runs per game offense than we have of the 6.8 runs per game offense.
The last reason I’m freaked out about October is that the Cardinals now have a 0-5 record against the Colorado Rockies. Why does this matter? Because the Rockies are most likely going to be the team the Cards play in the first round of the playoffs. The Rockies only have to win 3 games to eliminate the Cards from the NLDS.
Look, I hope I’m dead wrong. I’m just a little freaked out and I want to hit the panic button. Let’s all hope the team we saw in August comes back real soon and tells the pretenders from September to get out of the clubhouse.