“We’re No. 3!”
They did it, the Cardinals won Monday’s battle for third-place supremacy, forcing the surely forlorn Cubs into fourth.
It is distinctly bizarre to have a Cards-Cubs series in July in which neither team is in first place (or, for that matter, second). The clubs entered Monday’s game with identical 46-47 records but differing identities. The Cubs, it seems, are sellers, just waiting for famous faces to be traded in the coming days — already, Joc Pederson was sent to Atlanta for a prospect. The Cardinals don’t want prospects; they have the prophecy. The Redbirds foresee themselves in the hunt for October.
“I’m not making any plans for October, I can tell you that,” said manager Mike Shildt, anticipating a bevy of baseball games filling up his calendar.
Can they do it? There are many reasons to think they won’t. The Cards have one of the weaker offenses in the National League, and while they also did the past two years and made the playoffs, this year they don’t have the starting pitching to supplement it. (Now, should they happen to trade for a starter . . .). And the bullpen, even with its arms worthy of the fire emoji, still has one of the worst bullpen walk rates in the past 50 years of Major League Baseball.
But the Cards, at least, are taking positive steps.
They won their first series after the All-Star break on Sunday (and avoided falling 10 games behind first-place Milwaukee), and then took care of the Cubs on Monday, 8-3, on a blissfully comfortable evening at Busch. To gain any continued traction, St. Louis still has to win this series against Chicago, and that means taking two of the next three — and one of those is against Kyle Hendricks and his 2.82 career ERA against the Cards. But, yeah, in the super-short term, they’re winning ballgames.
And by now you know the trio of hope that lingers:
— Miles Mikolas and Jack Flaherty could return to the rotation in August.
— Starting July 30, the Cards play 24 of 27 games against teams currently under .500.
— The Cards still have 13 games against Milwaukee.
“We’ve got some climbing to do, but we also are ready for the climb,” Shildt said. “And we also have the opportunity to play the teams we’re climbing a lot — so that’s one of the other reasons for optimism. . . .
“(Making the playoffs), that’s the mindset we have. I mean, look, if you didn’t have that mindset, we wouldn’t have done what we did last year. This team could easily have rolled over last year and people could have criticized it — and maybe rightfully so — but there’s no roll over in this group. We came back and put herself in the ability to make the playoffs. Two years ago, I’ve been in the same group (of media) and people were asking some of the same questions, and I understand the question perfectly. But yeah, we have complete expectation to take care of today which will give us the best chance to take care of the year.”
As for the Cubs, they played some valiant ball earlier this season, making some wonder if they were rallying for one last hurrah. But depth, injuries and reality caught up with Chicago, which is likely to make some major moves to reorganize the roster and redistribute payroll.
Asked pregame about the looming trade deadline, Cubs manager David Ross said, “You’re just trying to focus on the day-to-day grind and try not to get too caught up in the outside. Even when we were a first-place team, my last year playing, and had a chance to win night in and night out, outside narratives that creep into a clubhouse that you can distract yourself with, they really don’t affect what’s going on in the process of competing that night. So if you just continue to focus on playing our best brand of baseball and figuring out how we’re going to win tonight, I think that’s the only thing that we can control — and stay focused on.”
Well, that didn’t happen Monday.
The Cubs played some embarrassing baseball, committing four errors, including two by Javier (“Javy-error”) Baez, who did so on consecutive at-bats.
The Cardinals, to their credit, played Monday like a hungry baseball team, pulverizing pitches and exploiting errors. Incidentally, their fans were hungry, too — because of some $6 tickets that came with $6 food credits, the concession lines serpentined the upper deck concourse. And now the Cardinals are at .500. It’s the benchmark of an average team, but it’s also a benchmark in the Cards’ climb — once 30-22, they fell to 44-46 by the All-Star break, and are 3-1 since. That’s something.
Meanwhile, the Cubs run of dominance (or, at least division dominance) appears to be over. They of course nabbed one title and broke the curse, back in 2016. Now, a half-decade later, it’s quite possible that Kris Bryant or other Chicago stars could be shipped out by the end of July.
As for the Cardinals, they likely won’t be sellers. But will they be traders? They should try to get an arm. After all, if they truly believe they can do this, why not double-down on that confidence by getting a pitcher who can not only help this year, but possibly in the following years, too?
