Chris Reed posted on April 26, 2010 00:00
The Cardinals entered this weekend facing perhaps their greatest challenge to this point in the young 2010 season: the San Francisco Giants and their tough pitching. Predictably, the Cards drew their top three starters for the weekend series, and unfortunately they leave the Bay Area with their first series loss and a few new questions.
Actually, the Cardinals should count themselves lucky to have gotten out of San Francisco with a victory at all. 
In the first game of the series, Jaime Garcia took the mound against Tim Lincecum. Garcia allowed two earned runs over six innings; Lincecum allowed one over seven. But the Cards’ defense failed them, allowing two more Giants to cross the plate. Take that away and it’s a damn good game that the better pitcher—if not the best in the whole league—just barely wins. But the 4-1 loss looks like the Cardinals took a good performance by Garcia and flushed it away with bad fielding and no offense.
Saturday’s game featured Adam Wainwright against a resurgent (so far) Barry Zito. This classic pitchers’ duel went into the 8th scoreless, but Wainwright flinched first and gave up two runs. Zito mesmerized the Cards by striking out 10 and looking like the pitcher the Giants thought they were getting when they signed him to that huge contract a few years ago.
The Cardinals lost that game 2-0, guaranteeing their first series loss of 2010 and still having to face Matt Cain on Sunday. But pitching for the Cards was a resurgent (so far) Brad Penny, and he turned the Giants away by blanking them 2-0. Albert Pujols showed signs of shaking off his recent slump by going 3 for 4 with a solo home run in the first. So chalk up yet another game winning RBI for Pujols.
The fact that the Cardinals lost the series isn’t a huge deal in and of itself. They weren’t going to win every single series this year; if nothing else, I have to believe they have a few long winning streaks in them so a losing streak of 3 or 4 games isn’t going to break them. What I don’t like about this series loss is that it was to the Giants—a team with stellar starting pitching and a really good closer. The Giants are the type of team that makes the playoffs and is a handful in the short Division Series. They may or may not be the best team in their division, but expect them to be around for the playoff races. And what this series loss tells me is that when faced with great pitching, the Cardinals buckled.
That brings us to the next opponent for the Cards, the Atlanta Braves. The Braves come to town a last place team, but they have the talent…they’re just not firing on all cylinders yet. Many picked the Braves to be in the Wild Card mix this year, and some think they could challenge for the NL East division title. So, once again, the Cardinals are up against a formidable opponent.
How will they fare against the likes of Derek Lowe, Tim Hudson, Jair Jurrjens, and the Braves? Will the bats go to sleep again like they did in San Francisco? Will the pitchers turn in great performances only to see the win slip away 1-0 or 2-1?
People around town are starting to talk about how the Cards rely on the home run too much. It’s in the paper, it’s on the internet, and it’s talked about during broadcasts. Truly great teams can score in a variety of ways. I see sacrifices and steals and the hit & run every now and then. But it has to happen more, just to balance the attack. This team has too much talent to be streaky, and a home run attack can easily be neutralized by top-tier pitching.
It certainly was this weekend.
Chris Reed is a freelance writer from Belleville, IL who also blogs on the Cardinals at http://bird-brained.mlblogs.com. Follow him on Twitter @birdbrained.