St. Louis Cardinals: Proud and exciting night in the Bluff City

The St. Louis Cardinals’ AAA team have gone back-to-back as PCL Champions and I was lucky enough to be in attendance as the baby birds rocked their town.

The St. Louis Cardinals have plenty about which to be proud as the Memphis Redbirds have- for the second year in a row- defeated their competition to the tune of keeping the PCL Championship trophy in Memphis. I was lucky enough to be there last night as this incredible team closed the door and kept the title for the second straight year.

Memphis, under Stubby Clapp‘s leadership, once again out-performed the other teams in the Pacific Coast League. Quite honestly, they out-performed the St. Louis Cardinals too. This was evident early in the 2018 campaign as the Redbirds were 14+ games ahead of their competition and at a time when the Cardinals were struggling to stay in third place.

Then the change came to the St. Louis Cardinals and several of the Memphis greats saw themselves riding the I-55 shuttle to St. Louis. In spite of this ever-volatile roster, Clapp lead his team once again into the AAA postseason.

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Included in these names were Adolis Garcia, Carson Kelly, Adam Wainwright, Alex Reyes (briefly), Harrison Bader, Tyler O’Neill, Matthew Bowman, John Brebbia, and Saturday’s grand-slam-slugger Patrick Wisdom. These names made Memphis great and are helping revitalize the St. Louis Cardinals 2018 season.

Through the 2018 playoffs, the Memphis Redbirds have lost only two games while winning six. An amazing .750 winning percentage in the postseason allowed the Memphis Redbirds to be names the PCL Champions for a second year.

In last night’s decisive game at Autozone Park, Jake Woodford was simply unstoppable on the mound. He pitched seven innings of shut-out baseball and watched his playoff ERA drop well below the 1.00 line. Helping him with this effort was an incredible 2-home-run night from Randy Arozarena.

Mark my words, the two names above are ones to keep on the radar for 2019. Joining them, Tommy Edman (who was awarded the PCL co-MVP with Arozarena) has also been unstoppable and is carrying a postseason batting average north of .400.

All-in-all, the Memphis Redbirds are champs once more and will play in the AAA title game on Tuesday night. The game will be televised on NBC Sports Network. The Redbirds will face off against the Durham Bulls, Tampa’s AAA team.

Will you be watching the AAA championship game? I know I will along with watching the St. Louis Cardinals game of the same night– I must remember that they are still playing too. Go Cardinals!