Blogs By FansC70 At The Bat
Sponsor
Cardinals_WideSkyscraper.jpg

Baseball Schedule is your best source for the latest St Louis Cardinals Schedule information as well as keeping up with division rivals including Cubs Schedule, Reds Schedule, Brewers Schedule and Astros Schedule.

Bet on the Cardinals with Sports Interaction's MLB betting lines


Slots Galore Casino Tournaments

Get your tickets from Bubba! Cheap St. Louis Cardinals Tickets and more, including tickets for the next MLB All-Star Game. Bubba's got Boston Red Sox Tickets and New York Yankees Tickets

Subscribe
RSS Feed

Archives

Players

Categories


Alliance tickets has an extensive inventory of St. Louis Cardinals Tickets , Colorado Rockies Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and Seattle MarinersTickets.

With all of the St Louis tickets out there, Cardinals tickets and Rams tickets make for great presents. GoTickets.com can fill all of your sports tickets needs, just check out our testimonials!

Quick Check-In

Posted on October 5, 2011 at 6:44 AM
Filed Under: Philadelphia Phillies | St. Louis Cardinals
The beginning of October, I always have a bank audit to do for my real job.  (If only blogging paid the bills!)  It's a two-hour drive, so I'm out of the house before dawn and back not much before dark, with kids to see and things to do before getting to bed earlier than normal to make sure I don't snooze on the next day's drive.

Sometimes, that's not a huge deal.  If the Cards miss the playoffs, as they have three of now-five postseasons since I've started blogging, it's not like I'm missing much.  However, when they make it like this year, it leaves me behind the eight ball.

Which is a long winded way of saying I wish I could be writing about these games and probably will try to look back on them this weekend if I can get a chance.  However, I have a couple of minutes this morning before I head out of town and I want to talk about a point in yesterday's game that could have been the turning point of the whole series.

A lot of focus is being put on the seventh-inning intentional walk of Carlos Ruiz, and with good reason.  I listened to most of the game driving back in my car yesterday afternoon and I was talking to the radio much of the drive, but especially then.  I know there was sound baseball logic to it--Ruiz was probably more likely than a pinch-hitter to get a base hit that would have driven in Shane Victorino from second.  It sets up a force play as well and gets Cole Hamels out of the game (though at 117 pitches, he probably was out anyway).

So I understand why Tony La Russa made the call.  I just know that so often times, that kinda thing backfires.  He got away with it earlier by walking Hunter Pence to get to Ryan Howard, which I thought was a gutsy but smart move with the way Howard had looked against Jaime Garcia (and his typical struggles against lefthanders).  I just wasn't sure that he could get away with it again and, sure enough, Ben Francisco put one over the wall.

However, that might not have been the turning point of the game.

I wasn't on Twitter at the time and I've not had a lot of time to look at our intrepid Cardinal bloggers, but I'm not sure a lot of discussion is going on about the bottom of the sixth.  After two strikeouts, Ryan Theriot singles and they wind up walking Jon Jay with Garcia up next.  Two on, two out against Hamels, who really seemed to be laboring from what I was hearing on the radio.

Now, I know Garcia was pitching a strong game up to that point.  That said, it's October.  Don't you have to take a better shot there than letting Garcia hit?

You've got a rested bullpen for the last three innings, allowing you to mix and match however you want.  Garcia had just gotten past Howard after walking Pence, so you aren't going to have him come back up and you are looking at 5-6-7, which is less formidable than 2-3-4.  A base hit here gives you the lead, which would have been huge in a 0-0 game.

If this was April's bullpen, I'd have understood the move more.  You wanted to keep that bullpen off the field as much as possible.  Now, though, the pen is a strength, or at least not a weakness.  You'd feel pretty confident with those guys and a one-run lead, also figuring that the bullpen moves for Philadelphia might be different if they are behind than if they are ahead and you can likely hit them better than you have Hamels anyway.

Cards have their backs against the wall today, sending Edwin Jackson out against Roy Oswalt.  Oswalt's been tough on the Cardinals in the past, but after facing the other three Philadelphia pitchers, I feel pretty good about the Cardinals' ability to put good at-bats together and score a few runs off of him.  This will be Jackson's first postseason start, though, so I'm a bit concerned with how his game is going to go.  You have to figure he'll be yanked at the first sign of trouble because of the import of the game.

No matter the outcome of today's game, it's been a good series.  That said, be nice to see Roy Halladay vs. Chris Carpenter in a Game 5, wouldn't it?


Leave a comment




1 Comments

1 Comment | Leave a comment

user-pic
Jon L. | October 6, 2011 1:59 PM | Reply

Do or die day tomorrow for the Cards. Let's see them beat the big bad Phillies.

Leave a comment




Cardinals_MediumRectangle.jpg

UCB_11_trans_dark_sm.png

Search

 

You can also hear Conversations With C70, along with other great podcasts, at Baseball Podcasts.net.

BallHyped Best Sports Blogs Book
This blog was featured in the Best Sports Blogs of 2010 Book! (As well as the 2012 version!)
• Pick up the limited print edition
• Free Best Sports Blogs ebook 



United Cardinal Bloggers

FRIENDS OF THE UCB


Some Guy Named Robb--The Music of Conversations With C70 (coming soon!)

Check out the UCB Network over at LockerDome!
lockerdome-share_63x63.png
  


Other Cardinal Blogs

Recommended Cardinal Forum

Other Cardinal Sites

General Baseball Blogs/Sites

Get a Cardinal theme for your browser!

Cardinals banner.jpeg


Heroes
Carlos Beltran (5)
Matt Holliday (4)
Jon Jay (4)
Daniel Descalso (3)
Matt Carpenter (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Shelby Miller (3)
Yadier Molina (3)
Adam Wainwright (3)
Allen Craig (2)
Pete Kozma (2)
Lance Lynn (2)
Edward Mujica (2)
Jake Westbrook (2)
Joe Kelly (1)
Seth Maness (1)
Trevor Rosenthal (1)
Ty Wigginton (1)

2012 Top Hero: Matt Holliday (17)
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
David Freese (5)
Jon Jay (4)
Joe Kelly (4)
Mitchell Boggs (3)
Matt Carpenter (3)
Allen Craig (3)
Daniel Descalso (3)
Jaime Garcia (3)
Pete Kozma (3)
Yadier Molina (3)
Matt Carpenter (2)
Lance Lynn (2)
Carlos Beltran (1)
Matt Holliday (1)
Seth Maness (1)
Shane Robinson (1)
Fernando Salas (1)
Adam Wainwright (1)
Jake Westbrook (1)

2012 Top Goat: Rafael Furcal (11)
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)

Cardinal Nation Approval Ratings (March 2013)
Yadier Molina 96.2% (up 8.8%)
Chris Carpenter 89.8% (down 0.3%)
Derrick Goold 89.1% (up 6.3%)
Matt Holliday 88.4% (up 0.9%)
Allen Craig 88.3%
Adam Wainwright 88.2% (down 3.7%)
Jose Oquendo 87.1% (up 2.4%)
Jason Motte 86.9%
John Mozeliak 86.5% (up 1.1%)
United Cardinal Bloggers 85.2% (up 6.3%)
Bill DeWitt 85.1% (up 5.3%)
Mike Shannon 85.1% (down 0.2%)
John Rooney 84.5% (up 3.0%)
Mike Matheny 84.4% (up 3.3%)
David Freese 82.9% (down 2.6%)
Jon Jay 81.8% (up 10.7%)
Lance Berkman 80.6% (down 8.0%)
Jenifer Langosch 79.5%
Lance Lynn 79.5%
Dan McLaughlin 76.0% (up 8.0%)
Jim Hayes 73.0% (up 1.1%)
Ricky Horton 65.5% (down 2.0%)
Jaime Garcia 64.1%
Albert Pujols 59.2% (up 4.3%)
Ballpark Village 58.3%
Joe Strauss 54.3% (down 13.4%)

2012
Tony La Russa 88.2% (up 17.4%)
Mark McGwire 82.6% (up 20.1%)
Skip Schumaker 73.3% (up 9.2%)
B.J. Rains 69.5% (down 0.9%)
Kyle Lohse 68.9% (up 13.8%)
Al Hrabosky 66.4% (up 3.2%)
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%


Looking for St. Louis Cardinals Tickets?  TicketCity is your source for New York Yankees Tickets and World Series Tickets.

Looking for Cardinals tickets? Stop by OnlineSeats. We’ve got Blues seats and even Rams games. Go to the coasts as well and catch a Celtics game or get Dodgers tickets.

Referrals