The Cardinals recent play has been embarrassing. In the heat of a pennant race, the Redbirds seem to be wilting and they don’t seem to care either. That’s the most disappointing part of it all. The reason ballplayers play ball is to compete and to win and to win in October. The goal is the same every year. Everyone wants a ring. And every April, excitement and anticipation for a summer of baseball go through the roof. This April was no different in cities across the baseball landscape.
St. Louis had every reason to believe their Cardinals would cruise to another [...]

On a night filled with action and entertainment in Washington, the Cardinals were left with mixed emotions following a heartbreaking 11-10 loss to the Nationals in 13 innings. Albert Pujols belted his 400th career home run off Jordan Zimmermann, becoming the third youngest player in history to reach that milestone. In doing so, he joined fellow Cardinal Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and Babe Ruth as the only players with 400 home runs, 1,200 RBI’s, and a career batting average of .330.
That’s not a bad list to be on if you ask me. However, the homer was not enough [...]

Albert Pujols hit the 400th home run of his brilliant career Thursday against the Washington Nationals. Pujols drilled an 0-1 pitch from Jordan Zimmermann into the right-center sits in the fourth inning to reach the milestone.
He became the 47th player in major league history and the second Cardinals slugger to reach No. 400. Stan Musial who hit 475 home runs in his Hall of Fame career is the other. Pujols is the fifth-fastest to 400 homers in history and has a good shot at the all-time record.
The home run, his league-leading 34th this year, continues his hot August which has [...]

Cincinnati was once the center of the baseball universe. The Big Red Machine was one of the best teams ever assembled. Its exploits are well-documented in baseball’s history. Sparky Anderson was at the controls and ended his career in the Hall of Fame. Joe Morgan, Johnny Bench, and Tony Perez all joined him in Cooperstown and there was Pete Rose, too. The all-time hits king and crazy man was the leader who played with reckless abandon and played to win. The great players pushed each other higher and higher. And the Reds won back-to-back World Series in 1975 and 1976. [...]

Over the last four seasons, Albert Pujols has never hit less than .307 during the month of August. This includes an incredible batting average of .398 in 2008. Not to mention, he has accumulated a total of 28 home runs and 75 RBI’s during that span.
This August is proving to be no different for Albert, who is hitting .481 with four homers, ten RBI’s, and eight runs scored in just six games. He has homered in five of his last seven games and since July 29th, his batting average has gone from .295 to .311, quite a turnaround in such [...]

With last night’s blowout win against the Pirates, the Cardinals are now 11 and 5 since the All-Star break, including a seven game win streak during that stretch. On a night when the offense broke out for 11 runs, Jeff Suppan won his first game since last September, and Albert Pujols hit his 24th homer of the year, the biggest news came when the Redbirds added Jake Westbrook in a three-team deadline deal.
There is no doubt that this was one of the busiest trade deadlines in recent history with an abundance of talent on the market. In the end, St. [...]

Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated examines the quiet greatness of Stan Musial years after his career. It is a must read. Cards fans should certainly keep an eye out for the magazine on newsstands in St. Louis. It is the seventh time he will be featured on SI’s cover, but the first that he will be the lone player.
Once dubbed baseball’s Perfect Knight, the greatest Cardinal of them all played his entire career with quiet brilliance and boundless good will. Today The Man remains a vibrant, vital part of baseball in St. Louis and a model of grace for the [...]

Albert Pujols has been a class act his entire career. His latest act of kindness came as part of ESPN’s ‘My Wish’ series. The game’s best slugger spent the day with Jacob Trammell of Willard, Mo., a teenager who battled cancer. Jacob loves baseball and plays for his school. The highlight came when he got a hitting lesson from Pujols and enjoyed a round of batting practice. It’s a great story as are all of ESPN’s ‘My Wish’ pieces.
Jacob’s mother reacts to Jacob’s day with the Cardinals and how he has been since the show.

As it stands now, Albert Pujols ranks 15th among position players in Wins Above Replacement (WAR). That’s great for most guys, but Pujols has finished at the top of that list in three of the last five years, so something seems wrong. Pujols’ Weighted On Base Average (wOBA) is .412, which is 23 points lower than his career average. And after examining some Pitch F/X data, we can see why Pujols is “struggling.”
ESPN ran this story on the MLB page last week in hopes of breaking down why the great Albert Pujols was having a down year. The ESPN Insider [...]

The St. Louis Cardinals have been frustrating in an up-and-down first half of the 2010 season and at times embarrassing according to one St. Louis baseball expert.
The All-Star Game selections were a surprising highlight for this struggling Cardinals team. St. Louis tied the Atlanta Braves with five selections for the most in the National League. Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina were voted in by the fans as starters. Pujols led the league in voting for the second straight year despite a ho-hum first half. It will be his ninth consecutive All-Star appearance. Molina, hitting .231, benefited from fan voting and his [...]