Finishing Up With Detroit

You take the good, you take the bad, you take 'em both and there you have a series win, a series win.

What's up with Adam Wainwright getting so much run support lately?  The Cards bust out 13 for him in Florida, then follow that up with 11 against the Tigers.  There's a lot of possible Heroes in that game.  Albert Pujols hit #23, taking over the major league lead in home runs.  Chris Duncan had three hits, including a home run.  However, like Jeff Gordon wrote, the game may have turned on Yadier Molina's first-inning at-bat.  Molina battled and battled, then dropped the two-run single into left and the Cards were bursting Justin Verlander's invincible bubble.  It was interesting, though, that later in the game Molina got a taste of his own medicine, getting picked off first by the catcher.

On the flip side, it's tough to come up with a Goat, but I guess you go with Colby Rasmus.  One hit in five at bats is OK, but he struck out twice and left four on, so in a game where everything was clicking, that's enough to slap the tag on you.

So the Cardinal offense has shown that it can turn up on occasion and that it's a pretty fearsome thing when it is completely clicking.  The problem is, it doesn't click on those cylinders very often.  I don't know how many times this week I've looked up, seen Rick Ankiel at the plate with runners on, and assumed a strikeout, an assumption that was usually fulfilled in the next few moments.

Wednesday's game, though, showed that even with reasonable offense, the Cards can win.  Colby Rasmus and Yadier Molina both had three hits, Molina with a home run that started the scoring, Rasmus with two hits (including a triple) that drove in a run.  It was nice to see a solid outing by Todd Wellemeyer as well, though as we noted on the UCB Radio Hour, Wellemeyer can do that, but you don't know anymore that he can do it consistently. 

On the down side, Kyle McClellan did give up a run in his over an inning of work, but it didn't tie the game, so I'll go with Joe Thurston, who went 0-4 and left two on base.  There weren't a lot of negative performances to choose from, however.

Thursday, the Cards had a chance for a sweep and to maybe quiet the local talk about not taking Rick Porcello a couple of years ago.  However, neither of those happened as the Cards lost a game that, statistically, was over in the first and Porcello was able to work out of jams to put up a solid line.

It's tough to know who to put the Goat tag on.  Thurston's error in the first led aided in the four-run inning, a gap that the Cards have only come back from once this year.  Given the way the team tried to battle back, though, I think you have to give the Goat tag to Jason Motte for serving up back-to-back home runs in the eighth, turning a one-run game into a three-run bulge.  I'm guessing Fernando Rodney wouldn't have been in the game in the ninth with one run, but seeing the Cards load the bases really made you wish it was still 4-3.

On the plus side, Duncan had an RBI, Molina had two hits, but let's go with Tyler Greene, who had a double among his two hits and drove in a run.  The offense wasn't spectacular last night, but it was respectable.  You also have to credit Joel Pineiro for pitching a very good game after the first inning, a first that wasn't completely his fault.

The Cardinals made some moves yesterday.  One was pretty expected, bringing Khalil Greene back.  However, the flip side of that was not Blake Hawksworth going down, which was rumored earlier in the week, but PJ Walters.  Nice to see Hawksworth getting a chance to hang around.  The other side of this was sending down Nick Stavinoha and bringing back up Josh Kinney, because we can't bear to be without 13 pitchers nowadays.

Kinney seems to have made strides in Memphis, so I look forward to seeing him back here in the bigs.  Greene is going to cause a lot of debate until he proves he's mentally healthy and is back to hitting.  It seems like a very quick turnaround for someone with his mental condition, though it may be that something flipped a switch for him or there was some medication he could take that would help ease his anxiety.  I expect he'll be starting tonight vs. Kansas City so we'll start seeing whether this is the case.

The Cards head across state this weekend for a rematch with the Royals.  Again, the Cardinals miss Zach Greinke, though that's not quite the relief that it was last time around.  The series opens with Kyle Davies, who did a solid job against the Cardinals in the last series, allowing only two runs in six innings.  However, that was during that extremely good stretch of pitching and so the Cardinals won that game 5-0.  None of the Cardinals have seen him all that often, though there are some good numbers in there.

The Cardinals counter with Brad Thompson.  I've been pretty vocal that I'm not a huge Thompson fan anymore, but he's definitely done the job since being pressed into service.  His 2.93 June ERA, though, is really weighed down by the zero earned in six innings in his last start.  Whether that is the trend now that he's getting used to the rotation or a fluke still remains to be seen.  He's really going to have to watch Mark Teahen, but the rest of the Royals haven't been that tough on him.

Should be an interesting series.  There have been some TV changes to the schedule which affect this series.  Saturday's game was planned for FSMW, but has been picked up as a Fox Game of the Week.  Other changes include the July 23 makeup game against the Nationals will be on FSMW, the August 1 game against Houston has been taken off the Fox Game of the Week schedule, given to FSMW, and has a time change to 6:15.  Finally, the Saturday, October 3 game (the next to last game of the year) has moved from FSMW to KSDK.

Enjoy the weekend!