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Fly The Happy Skies

Posted on October 15, 2011 at 10:54 AM
Filed Under: Milwaukee Brewers | St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals are one win away from the World Series.

Roll that around on your tongue a little bit.  Ponder that one over a meal.  Discuss it with your closest friends, perfect strangers, or your household pet, whichever might be closest.  It's not something that you can really grasp until you've talked about it somehow with someone.  One game in Milwaukee and they get the special World Series bunting out for Busch Stadium.  (No, I don't know if they have special World Series bunting.  But they should.  Put some squirrels on it or something.)

I haven't been doing Heroes and Goats for the postseason, but if I were for last night, there's no doubt that Octavio Dotel would get it, since I only award it to players and Dotel's strikeout of Ryan Braun was the turning point of the whole game.  However, the real Hero had to be Tony La Russa.

Playoff Tony La Russa, back-against-the-wall TLR, is a lot different than our standard portrait of him as a manager.  In season, Tony might do his best to get some stats for a pitcher that's earned it.  Playoff Tony?  Whatever wins the game, in whatever combination.  If that means yanking Jaime Garcia before he gets qualified for the win, so be it.

In-season La Russa loves his bullpen, there's no doubt.  I mean, he really created the modern bullpen of role guys, eighth-inning guys, LOOGYs, etc.  Still, he knows that you can't go to them too early during a 162 game grind.  Playoff Tony?  Dude, every game is a bullpen game.  Tony does that occasionally in the regular season when there's too many games in not enough days and the rotation needs a breather.  He starts a reliever and then uses a parade of them through the game.  That's basically been his philosophy throughout the playoffs, just that that initial "reliever" is actually a starter.

The knock on Tony is that he doesn't care for the young guns, preferring veterans to do the work.  Yet, as he did in 2006, Tony's riding the young bullpen arms for this run.  Obviously Dotel isn't one of them, but he's still an effective reliever and apparently knows just how to pitch to Ryan Braun.  I was a bit surprised that TLR went to Marc Rzepczynski last night instead of Arthur Rhodes against Prince Fielder late in the game, but I was fine with it.  In fact, the one guy that hasn't been seen much in this series is Kyle McClellan, whom you would normally expect to be playing a prime role.

Plus regular season Tony can be viewed as a bit of a grouch.  Playoff Tony?  He's talking about squirrels and tortoises, for heaven's sake! 

You'll notice also that the Cards won that game without a home run.  Yadier Molina's drive in the third almost went out, but stayed in for a double, which turned out to be irrelevant when he and Lance Berkman scored on the error by Jerry Hairston Jr.  Other than that, it was keeping the pressure on, getting key hits, putting runners on base.  Milwaukee helped out, it's true, by making four errors, but the Cards had to capitalize and they did.

Now that the Cardinals are having a happy flight to Milwaukee and Game 6 on Saturday, let's take a little look at the narrative that is forming.  The first part is that Milwaukee is such a tough home team, that they have a remarkable winning percentage at home.  That's very true: Milwaukee was 57-24 in Miller Park this year, the best record in baseball by five game.  There's no doubt that, whatever mojo they have at home, it's some powerful stuff.

Yet, look at the 24 losses.  Stack them up and run down them and you know what you'll see?    St. Louis's name on there more than anyone else.  The Cards beat them six times in Milwaukee in twelve tries.  They swept them in Milwaukee late in the year.

Look at Milwaukee's postseason run.  They are 3-1 in Miller Park, which is a very nice rate.  However, what's that one?  Oh, right, the Cardinals.  Beating Shaun Marcum, who is scheduled to start on Saturday night.  (I honestly was surprised they used Chris Narveson in Game 5.  I expected them to use him as a starter if Game 6 was an elimination game for them.)  The home field thing may be a bit overrated when it comes to these two teams.

The second thing is that the Cardinals haven't won a Game 6 on the road in the postseason since 1982.  Which is all of four games, and the first game of that stretch was the Denkinger game, which they should have won.  The Cards lost Game 6 to the Mets in the 2006 NLCS, and we know how that turned out.  They lost Game 6 in 1987 to the Twins and they lost Game 6 to Atlanta in the 1996 NLCS, both series which they went on to lose.

However, this Cardinal team still has its ace going for Game 7, if necessary, but they are facing a pitcher that really has struggled lately in Game 6.  Marcum had a 6.65 ERA in his last four regular season starts (Philadelphia, Colorado, Chicago and Pittsburgh) and the only one that was on the road was Chicago, which happened to be the best one in the bunch.  He obviously has had a rough season, getting torched in Arizona and Milwaukee alike.  Unless he has a resurgence like Randy Wolf did in Game 4 (which is completely believable, unless he has some physical problem that we don't know about), the Brewers are going to have to win this game by outslugging the Cards.

Edwin Jackson will be back on the mound for the Redbirds.  Jackson pitched fairly well in Game 2, giving up just two runs, but La Russa yanked him in the fifth with the Cards up 7-2 but the Brewers threatening with two on and one out with Fielder coming up.  With Jackson's work for the Redbirds in the regular season, coupled with Marcum's struggles, the pitching matchup definitely goes to St. Louis for Game 6.

Winning that one would be big, because as we talked about yesterday, it doesn't take much for things to shift.  Do you really want to go into another Game 7 on the road?  Sure, Chris Carpenter would be on the mound, but so would Yovani Gallardo, who shut the Cards down after the first inning in Game 3.  Do you want the series to come down to one errant pitch, perhaps?  I don't.  I'm not that hardcore.  Let's just have the Cards win Game 6 and get ready to host their 18th World Series, what do you say?

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3 Comments

3 Comments | Leave a comment

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format | October 15, 2011 3:19 PM | Reply

wow. Dotel pitched 18.2 innings for the Dodgers last year and was absolutly horrible. what in the world happened to him? IM so happy for Furcal. hes been on of my favorite Dodgers for years. he deserves to win a world series. man Chris Carpenter is a beast

user-pic
Bob Netherton | October 16, 2011 3:36 PM | Reply

A terrific introduction for the most important game of the season, which I guess we can say about every game since early August. I really hope the Cardinals get it done tonight, in Game Six. I don't think my system can take another Game Seven thriller.

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Jon L. | October 16, 2011 5:51 PM | Reply

Good luck Cards. Beat the Brew Crew!

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Heroes
Matt Holliday (5)
Matt Carpenter (4)
Rafael Furcal (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
Jon Jay (3)
Kyle Lohse (3)
Lance Lynn (3)
Yadier Molina (3)
David Freese (2)
Jaime Garcia (2)
Adam Wainwright (2)
Lance Berkman (1)
Allen Craig (1)
Shane Robinson (1)
Fernando Salas (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2011 Top Hero: Lance Berkman (24)
2010 Top Heroes: Matt Holliday and Albert Pujols (24)
2009 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (28)
2008 Top Hero: Albert Pujols (25)

Goats
Matt Holliday (4)
Carlos Beltran (3)
David Freese (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Marc Rzepczynski (3)
Adam Wainwright (3)
Rafael Furcal (2)
Tyler Greene (2)
Jason Motte (2)
J.C. Romero (2)
Fernando Salas (2)
Mitchell Boggs (1)
Matt Carpenter (1)
Tony Cruz (1)
Daniel Descalso (1)
Jon Jay (1)
Erik Komatsu (1)
Kyle Lohse (1)
Victor Marte (1)
Eduardo Sanchez (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2011 Top Goat: Ryan Theriot (12)
2010 Top Goat: Brendan Ryan (14)
2009 Top Goats: Rick Ankiel and Todd Wellemeyer (13)
2008 Top Goat: Troy Glaus (13)

2012 Happy Flights
Happy Flights: 7
Happy Flight Opportunities: 12
Happy Flight %: 58%

Through 5/20

    Cardinal Nation Approval Ratings (March 2012)
    Adam Wainwright 91.9% (down 2.8%)
    Chris Carpenter 90.1% (up 3.2%)
    Lance Berkman 88.6%
    Tony La Russa 88.2% (up 17.4%)
    Yadier Molina 87.4% (up 3.7%)
    Matt Holliday 87.3% (down 3.8%)
    David Freese 85.5%
    John Mozeliak 85.4% (up 13.3%)
    Mike Shannon 85.3% (up 0.4%)
    Jose Oquendo 84.7%
    Derrick Goold 82.8% (down 5.0%)
    Mark McGwire 82.6% (up 20.1%)
    John Rooney 81.5% (down 2.8%)
    Mike Matheny 81.1%
    Bill DeWitt 79.8% (up 8.8%)
    United Cardinal Bloggers 78.9%
    Skip Schumaker 73.3% (up 9.2%)
    Jim Hayes 71.9% (down 4.2%)
    Jon Jay 71.1%
    B.J. Rains 69.5% (down 0.9%)
    Kyle Lohse 68.9% (up 13.8%)
    Dan McLaughlin 68.0%
    Joe Strauss 67.7% (up 10.2%)
    Ricky Horton 67.5% (down 1.6%)
    Al Hrabosky 66.4% (up 3.2%)
    Albert Pujols 54.9% (down 45.5%)
    Colby Rasmus 46.5% (down 35.3%)

    2011
    Dave Duncan 87.9% (up 0.9%)
    Matthew Leach 85.5%
    Pop Warner 76.7%
    Ryan Franklin 72.8% (up 3.1%)
    John Vuch 68.9%
    Jeff Luhnow 66.4%
    Dan Lozano 58.7%

    2009
    Rick Ankiel 83.9%
    Chris Duncan 69.1%


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