There’s Some Fight Left In These Birds After All

On the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01 and the first week of NFL football, it’s easy to forget we still have baseball going on. This is the time of year fans start abandoning their MLB playoff hopes or just wait for the postseason to tune back in.

The Cardinals we all figured were on the verge of missing the playoffs yet again until recently when they finally decided to show up and make things interesting.

If you have been living under a rock, this is what has been in the works lately:

* Cardinals are 12-4 in their last 16 and are officially back in the playoff hunt.
* In the past two weeks, the Brewers have lost 5 of 6 against the Cards and almost suffered another sweep until they came back and won the finale today against the Phillies.
* The Braves were were swept by the Cardinals this afternoon. They lost two of three to the Dodgers and were swept by the Phillies before taking two from the Mets in a makeup game Thursday.

If the league would expand, we would easily be the 5th team fighting it out with the Braves in a few weeks to decide the final playoff spot to play the division leaders. They have not gotten that far in negotiation, so what matters now is only the top four go to the playoffs in a given year. As it stands 9/11/11, the Cards are now officially 6 games out of the Central and 4.5 back from the Wild Card.

The Cardinals now face the surprisingly good Pirates in Pittsburgh the next three days before enjoying a four day stint in Philadelphia that will either be make or break going forward. The two teams we are chasing have to continue to skid and we really have no room for error from here on. The Brewers may have the easiest schedule of the three going forward, we may want to finally forget about the Central. The Braves end the regular season at home against the Phillies, but six of their remaining fifteen games come against a Florida Marlins team they have absolutely dominated this season, going 8-1 against them in the regular season.

If we have ever needed this team to get hot, they sure picked the perfect time to do it taking out their biggest adversaries in dominant fashion. Why can we sweep these teams and go on to lose relentlessly stupid games against sub .500 teams again and again.

Hopefully this is the turning point. It’s a long shot, but I would much rather be talking about the playoffs instead of the inevitable Albert Pujols negotiations. It will look much better on the team if we are at least coming off of a playoff appearance or being very close to it.

We have 16 games to show up and put on our best performance. 16 games to prove we are as good as we look on paper. 16 games to prove the St. Louis Cardinals are truly relevant once again.