St. Louis Cardinals: A Win and a Controversy

It's always good to start off a series with a win.  You only have to split the next two games to take the series and it keeps the sweep in play.

It's always a good night when you have to make up your mind who should get the hero tag.  You have to like what Joel Pineiro brought to the table last night. 

He did allow eight hits in his 6.2 innings, but should have been just one run, had Josh Kinney been able to find the strike zone, and only one walk. 

Pineiro is not going to overpower people, so the hits are going to come, but if he can keep from walking batters and get the ball put in play, he probably will be effective.  Having three double plays turned doesn't hurt either.

However, I'm going to give the hero award to Ryan Ludwick.  Two for three, with a double that drove in a run early and a home run that gave an insurance run late.  Without his bat, the ninth inning would have been even more scary than it was.

Kyle McClellan might put in a bid for hero as well after last night's performance.  He stepped into the game when Jason Motte was shaky again and put out the fire in a strong fashion.  What he might have also stepped into is a "closer controversy."

Controversy is probably too strong of a word, but Motte's outing last night probably confirmed, in Tony LaRussa's mind, that closer by committee is the way to go right now.  Nick from Pitchers Hit Eighth has been clamoring for McClellan to be the closer for a while now and got his wish for one evening, at least.

So who gets the call in the ninth now?  McClellan, himself, said that Ryan Franklin would have come in last night if Franklin hadn't work two straight days. 

Is McClellan permanently in the mix?  When will Motte get back into a game?  Will we see him in the eighth next time, seeing if he can get back into the groove?

It's surprising, at least to me, that Motte's spring training success didn't carry over to the regular season. 

Was he facing minor leaguers in the late innings?  Were players just ready to get the games over with, so they didn't focus as much on waiting for the fastball?  Did the day games help Motte with disguising his pitches?

I don't know, but after last night, I don't know that he'll get a ninth for a while, unless it's a two- or three-run version.

Looking ahead to this afternoon's game, it's got a chance to be a doozy.  Then again, if these two pitch like they did in their first outing, it might be more of a scoring session than expected.

Adam Wainwright goes to the mound for the Cardinals.  As with most Cardinal pitchers, the big thing is to be careful with Lance Berkman.  Few of the other Astros have done much damage to Wainwright, but Berkman has two homers against the Cardinal ace.

Roy Oswalt takes the mound for the Astros.  St. Louis has done a little better against Oswalt than I thought, but a lot of that is due to Albert Pujols, of course.  He's gone yard four times off of the Houston ace in 70 at-bats.

This will be the third time that Wainwright and Oswalt have matched up against each other.  Happens about once a year.  Here's 2007 and here's 2008.  Cards are 2-0 in these games, so hopefully they'll run the record to 3-0 today.

If you've not seen these opening day pictures, mainly of Stan Musial and Pujols, you need to head over there right now.  I like the background of one, where Khalil Green and Ozzie Smith, both former Padre shortstops, are shaking hands.

It'll likely be Monday before I blog again, so I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!