St. Louis Cardinals: With Two Months Remaining, Birds Fight for Playoffs

Two months remain in the chase for the NL Central pennant. The Cardinals hold a slim half game advantage over the pursuing Reds. St. Louis was active during the trading season, while Cincinnati stood pat. Clearly Walt Jocketty believes that the Reds future is promising enough that he need not sacrifice the talent in a win now transaction.

That hardly suggests that Cincinnati cannot improve and sustain the pressure they have put on the Cardinals all season. And St. Louis' trade cannot be truly considered a horizontal move. Dishing Ryan Ludwick to hand the job to a still raw Jon Jay to facilitate the acquisition of Jake Westbrook as a fourth starter is not a serious game changer. The race will remain tight as both clubs add players who return from injury or are summoned for their first taste of a big-league pennant chase. Let's take a quick look at what will make for an exciting August and September between the two clubs:

The Game In Hand

Few things are more pertinent to a playoff push than the game in hand. If you're holding a lead or chasing, the game in hand gives a safety valve. Play to a standstill - the game in hand allows a team to control its own destiny and need not rely on anyone else.

The Cardinals have an extra game in August, which happens to fall on August 26th, when they will be in Washington to play the Nationals. After that, the two teams play the same number of games the rest of the way. They have differing off days in September, but play the same number of games. Beating the Nats will force the Reds to play at least one game better than the Cardinals to secure the division.

Beneficially for St. Louis, Washington has the worst record of the non-divisional foes that St. Louis will play. Unfortunately, St. Louis will play on the road, which has been a favorable experience for the Cardinals, having dropped 30 of their 52 contests away from Busch.

Schedule

Both teams will spend more time over the next two months on the road than at home. St. Louis has an almost 50-50 split with 28 home games against 29 road matches. There's the game in hand again. Their superior home record gives them a distinct advantage. But Cincinnati, who will spend 31 games away from the Great American Ballpark and Homer Haven is two games over five-hundred on the road.

How much their better road performance impacts the race is balanced by the quality of opponents they face. Cincinnati will play both San Diego and San Francisco on the road on two separate swings out west. They also get the Dodgers and Rockies on separate trips west. All told, the Reds will make three visits west of the Mississippi between now and the end of the season. Those western swings take their toll.

St. Louis has a slightly easier road, with no west coast trips and the advantage of facing San Francisco and San Diego at home. They play 18 of their 28 road games in division. The Reds have 15 of their 31 road contests against the NL Central.

Which is quite appropriate. The race will largely be settled in division, with both clubs playing their intra-divisional foes frequently. St. Louis plays 29 times against Houston, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Chicago. Against those same teams, Cincinnati plays 27 games. Both teams should expect success against their mostly vanquished rivals.

Even though the Brewers refused to surrender, selling off talent at the deadline like the Astros, Pirates and Cubs did, their poor record on the season is a reflection on their year to date performance. Milwaukee may play better, but they will not magically become a world beater, winning 65% of their games down the stretch. They are, to borrow a famous phrase, who we thought they were, a middle of the pack team without enough starting pitching to seriously contend.

Head to Head

The most important in division matchups are the six head to head battles. The clubs have a trio next week in Cincinnati and another three spot in St. Louis a month from now. Those six games hold more sway over the race than any other factor. If either club takes two of three twice, it grabs a two game swing over a split. A sweep in one series will stagger the other team. A sweep by one club in both series is as close to a knockout as is possible.

We can look into our crystal ball and see who might be on the hill for each club in a week's time. Both club's have an off day on August fifth, which would allow St. Louis to skip Jeff Suppan , who pitched his best game of the season this weekend. However, it was against the Pirates. Take that with a grain of salt.

Should St. Louis skip Suppan, they would need a fifth starter, either Suppan, or Kyle Lohse , if his rehab Thursday goes well. Pitching Thursday would allow him to go on Tuesday on regular rest. Lohse is eager to be done with rehab, but for the pivotal series, it may behoove the Cardinals to not skip Suppan after the off day and set up their rotation to give their three best arms the starts against Cincinnati.

But instead of pitching Suppan on the sixth, bump him to the seventh and let Adam Wainwright go on regular rest on the sixth. Wainwright would be in line for the Reds series finale on the eleventh when he would likely face Bronson Arroyo . Jaime Garcia would open the series against Mike Leake in a good battle of rookie hurlers. The middle game would be Chris Carpenter against Johnny Cueto . Those matchups decidedly favor that Cardinals, and when every game counts, every advantage must be pressed.

Returning or Recently Promoted Talent

As mentioned above, the Cardinals are expecting Lohse back imminently. In addition, Allen Craig will be recalled as soon as he can be. More importantly, starting third baseman, David Freese is expected to go on a rehab assignment and may be ready to resume play on the ninth, just in time to face the Reds. The minors don't offer all that much else to the Cards. And with no timetable for Brad Penny 's return (likely the motivating factor in the deal for Westbrook) those three are about all the reinforcements available.

For Cincinnati, they have a pair of injured pitchers who are showing signs of being ready to return. Both Homer Bailey (currently on a rehab assignment) and Aaron Harang (about to go out on one) are soon to come back. But due to the return of Edinson Volquez and the solid pitching of Travis Wood , neither are guaranteed spots in the rotation.

The big Reds advantage is starting pitching depth. Beyond those two, Sam LeCure , Matt Maloney and Aroldis Chapman await the call in AAA. Though Chapman has been converted to relief work in anticipation of getting his first big league experience out of the pen in September, the Reds can stretch him out if an unthinkable slew of injuries cripples their staff.

For hitters Todd Frazier and Yonder Alonso have very little left to prove in the minors. Frazier's fielding likely limits his usefulness at short, where Orlando Cabrera is already an offensive liability to the team. Juan Francisco could also see time in the case of injury to Scott Rolen .

St. Louis' role players are typically called upon to fill in when injuries limit a started, such as Felipe Lopez ' time at third in Freese's absence. The lack of accessible depth in AAA may prove costly, especially with a valuable former piece of the team's depth in the outfield playing in San Diego.

The Trade

The decision to hand rightfield to Jon Jay and ship Ryan Ludwick to San Diego is in part explained by the relative cost of Ludwick in 2011. Arbitration eligible for the third time, and hitting well, Ludwick would have merited a raise of another two to three million dollars. Westbrook is more expensive than Ludwick, but the Cardinals also received cash from the Indians to cover part of his salary and Westbrook also agreed to a decrease in his $2 million assignment bonus if traded.

The additional salary is hardly troubling in 2010. It's 2011 that worries John Mozeliak. He'll easily exercise Albert Pujols ' option for the season, but not before working tirelessly this offseason to secure Pujols' services for the remainder of his career. That will take some serious money. After the seven-year, $120 million deal that Matt Holliday got, and the ridiculous contract Ruben Amaro Jr. signed Ryan Howard to this season (five-year $125 million), Pujols could ask for six years and $168 million without much fuss or outrage. If Howard is worth $25 million a year, how could anyone think of paying Pujols less?

Paying that freight is a serious commitment, considering the last two seasons are the only two in the history of the franchise where their payroll has exceeded $100 million. Committing $45 million or almost a third to two players means the rest of the team needs to be lean, hungry and willing to work for scale. Ludwick was priced out, the same way Jayson Werth has been priced out of Philadelphia.

Getting Westbrook may work out well. He's proven durable this season after nearly two years of arm woes. Handing a capable back of the rotation innings eater to Dave Duncan has proven effective in the past at elevating his value. But Westbrook is largely a rental and his conversion from average four to super three will need to happen quickly. The success of the move will be judged exclusively on the success of the team in 2010.

That's largely because the Cardinals are approaching a plateau and the Reds are a team on the rise. St. Louis has the benefit of better established talent, but the Reds have more near ready talent, and can easily shed their larger contracts like Arroyo and Harang, allowing less expensive and quite possibly more effective players to take over those roles. The salary reduction would give Cincinnati greater flexibility to secure rising talent in the future.

Which is what makes this stretch drive so wonderful. In fact, it's baseball at its finest. An established veteran club facing a game upstart for a division title. This battle will play out many more times over the next few years. The premiere performance begins later tonight and I'm sure we'll all be watching, transfixed at the beauty of meaningful baseball fought between two of the finest franchises in the game.

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Joe Tetreault covers the confluence of business and baseball as Managing Editor of The Biz of Baseball and covers baseball foremost among other topics at TetreaultVision . You can also follow him on Twitter .