The Red-Hot Cardinals Are On a Mission to Bury the Cubs

For much of the season, the National League Central race has been a jumbled mess that the Chicago Cubs were favored to win seemingly by default.

But here come the St. Louis Cardinals.

Even after dropping the finale of a three-game set against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park on Wednesday, the Cardinals are 15-4 since August 9 and 29-15 since last month's All-Star break. Whereas they were once as many as 5.5 games out of first place, they're now leading by 2 games.

If that isn't a strong enough indication, FanGraphs' odds confirm there is indeed a new favorite in the NL Central:

Image courtesy of FanGraphs

It would be a mistake to assume that these odds are set in stone. The Cardinals, Cubs and Brewers are separated by only five games in the win column and six in the loss column. Any one of those three teams can win a race this tight.

To boot, what the Cardinals have done lately should be taken with grains of salt. 

Out of their 29 second-half wins, 20 have come against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Colorado Rockies and Kansas City Royals. Those teams are nobody's idea of "good."

However, the Cardinals can enjoy the soft underbelly of their schedule for a while longer. Although things will get tough again in mid-September, they have 14 more games against the Reds, Pirates, Rockies and San Francisco Giants between now and then.

To take advantage, they only need keep doing what they've been doing.

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Above all, the Cardinals are good at preventing runs these days. That was a struggle for them early on, but their 3.57 ERA since June 1 ranks third in MLB behind the Los Angeles Dodgers and Cleveland Indians.

More than anyone, Jack Flaherty is entitled to take a bow. The young right-hander teased ace upside amid an overlooked rookie season in 2018, and he's been realizing it lately with a 1.01 ERA and 4.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio over his last 10 outings.

Meanwhile, fellow young righty Dakota Hudson is riding a stretch of three straight scoreless starts. Veteran righty Miles Mikolas still isn't building on his breakout 2018, but he's mostly corrected his problems while racking up a 3.79 ERA over his last 13 starts.

Despite the loss of flamethrower Jordan Hicks to Tommy John surgery, the Cardinals bullpen has been the star of the show with an MLB-best 3.21 ERA since June 1. Andrew Miller, John Brebbia, Tyler Webb and Giovanny Gallegos have all been pitching well, and two-time All-Star Carlos Martinez has recently found his comfort zone as a full-time reliever.

Unless, of course, one prefers to think of the Cardinals defense as the true star of said show. Between its fifth-ranked efficiency and fourth-ranked defensive runs saved, it's been airtight all season.

With such a strong backbone in place, the Cardinals were only a consistent offense away from taking off. No thanks to disappointing turns from alleged stars Paul Goldschmidt and Matt Carpenter and Marcell Ozuna's monthlong absence with broken fingers, it's taken a long time for such an offense to materialize.

Yet it's here now. Since June 9, the Cardinals are averaging 5.9 runs per game. 

Although a little extra power has boosted their home run output from 1.2 per game per game to 1.4 per game, Cardinals manager Mike Shildt has seen a more specific method to the madness.

"Good at-bats travel," Shildt said after the Cardinals dropped a dozen runs on the Brewers on Monday, according to MLB.com's Andrew Wagner. "Just really pleased in general with our patience and our calmness, letting the game come to us, everybody seeing the ball well and not trying to do too much."

There's something to Shildt's notion. Since June 9, Cardinals hitters have been balancing walks and strikeouts second only to the gold standard for balanced offense: the Houston Astros.

Ultimately, the Cardinals are playing well-rounded baseball at the moment. Between that and their ongoing stretch of weak opponents, they aren't likely to come back to the Cubs or Brewers any time soon. Those two teams must gain ground on their own.

The Brewers are the thanks-for-playing inclusion in this discussion. It's somewhat impressive that they've hung around for as long as they have, but their minus-39 overall run differential and general shortage of stars around reigning NL MVP Christian Yelich amount to a bad omen.

For their part, the Cubs have played a background part in the Cardinals' rise by going 8-9 over their last 17 games. Call it a microcosm of a season in which they've gone 49-55 on either side of a 22-6 run back in April and May.

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A team with an offense centered around Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez and a pitching staff anchored by Cole Hamels, Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, Jose Quintana and Yu Darvish should be better than this. By all rights, these Cubs should be no worse than the clubs that averaged 97 wins between 2015 and 2018 and won a World Series in 2016.

Regardless of the specific reasons on any given day, the Cubs only play to their full potential at Wrigley Field, where they're 44-22. When they go on the road, they play like one of the National League's worst teams.

If the Cubs are going to punch back at the Cardinals, it'll likely be during a 10-game homestand between September 13 and 22 that begins with six against the Pirates and Reds and ends with four against, you guessed it, the Cardinals. To date, the Cubs' six home games against the Cardinals this year have all resulted in flying Ws for the home team.

But between how and who the Cardinals are playing right now, any damage the Cubs do to them in that series might be too little, too late. And no matter what happens, the Cardinals will have a shot at the last laugh in a three-game series at Busch Stadium in the final weekend of the regular season.

Whether that series finishes the Cubs off for good or leaves them clinging to flimsy World Series hopes via a wild-card berth, it would be mission accomplished for the Cardinals.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus.