Cardinals Praying For A Miracle

It’s no secret 2011 has not gone as expected. The Reds dropped from the graces of the Central crown and the Brewers are now at the top of the leaderboard a mere 4 games that seems almost impossible to catch up to. When we win, they win. When they lose, we lose. It seems as if we cannot gain ground on the current head of the pack.

All offseason and early on I had to hear Cincinnati was repeating, making another run in our division and possibly even further. Now they are struggling just to reach .500 and yet here the Cardinals are in the clutch of the battle for first, once again finding themselves coming up short in a close second place.

We can cross our fingers and wish for the best, but I am hard pressed to see the Brewers stopping anytime soon. So what then? Do we pray the Braves have a meltdown of monumental proportions? They are in face two games up on even the Brewers which makes this almost a take the Central or your out type of scenario.

All year we have heard look for the Wild Card to come out of the East and they are surely not disappointing. The top two teams in that division are the best teams in the NL in win percentage by a rather large margin. They are almost the Yankees and Red Sox of the NL this season, no matter how well your team is doing, their record is just that much better than yours. Philly is the new benchmark this season as they made a slew of offseason acquisitions and Charlie Manuel has done a wonderful job along with the front office staff building a winner. There must be something in the water in Philly, just look back to the Eagles as well. Looks like we have our new “Sports City USA.”

I’m getting off topic though.

What are the Cardinals to do? They made those big deadline deals two weeks ago and yes they have worked fairly well thus far. We are still within the clutches of grabbing the lead again but just have trouble throwing our leg over the horse to get in the saddle.

We dumped the baggage and picked up much stronger arms in the pen plus a great starter in Edwin Jackson (minus the game he recently had against, guess who, the Brewers). This week we even reached out to sign Arthur Rhodes who was recently cut from the Rangers. All seemed to finally be right in Cardinal nation and those red hot Brewers led by Prince and Braun just absolutely have been on it lately. They are an exciting young club that has earned this. For years they have been building into the team to beat in the Central and now is their time to shine it looks.

The Cardinals will be hard pressed to go after a team like this each and every season. It is equally important for them to stay on the ball and start thinking ten steps ahead. We have a terrific team that could be much better than the Brew Crew. Albert, stay or go, we still have quite the contender. Our biggest problem seems to be capitalizing.

One thing is certain, if we expect to go out and contend, we need to take that last series from the Brewers and a sweep would be LOVELY. I didn’t think we would let them take 2 of 3 from us this last time, and that almost drove the stake through our heart.