St. Louis Cardinals: End of season team awards

The end of a season is often sad especially when the St. Louis Cardinals aren’t playing in October. With the end, though, comes a recognition of successes during the season.

Now that the St. Louis Cardinals baseball season is over, it’s time to give out our team awards for the season. Even though there’s not a trophy or money in it for the winners, they do get clubhouse bragging rights for the entire 2019 season.

Team MVP: Matt Carpenter

Seems like you were just reading about him, right? Well, Matt Carpenter seems like the obvious choice for the Team MVP award.

He finished the season with a 4.9 WAR, which is eighth in the National League in that category. He will likely finish top-10 in the NL MVP ballots, though he did seem like a legit MVP choice before going on a cold streak in September.

You might hate him for his cold streaks, but let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for him, we would have went nowhere near 22-6 in August. He delivered with big time home runs and clutch hits. He even took home NL Player of the Month back in July when it seemed like he could not stop hitting dingers.

After he was out for a couple of days with a wrist injury in mid August though, his bat went dead silent, and it seemed like nothing could go right for Carpenter. Some fans believe that it was a broken wrist, and he lost power trying to hit on it instead of taking time for it to heal. Others believe that the “Magic Salsa” wore off for Carpenter.

Even though he was streaky and went silent when the Cardinals were pushing heavily for a playoff spot, the Cardinals would have not been in the position they were in if it wasn’t for Matt Carpenter.

Let’s go back to Mid-July, after losing two straight games to the Cincinatti Reds, the St. Louis Cardinals fired manager Mike Matheny. Two weeks later, the Cardinals sold MLB talent including Tommy Pham at the trade deadline for prospects. It seemed like the Cardinals were starting to shift towards 2019 early, but Carpenter played a huge role in shifting the Cardinals momentum forward and leading them to that historic August.

That is why Matt Carpenter is your Redbird Rants TEAM MVP.

Do you agree with the choices? Do you think that your list is better than ours? Leave your thoughts and put your award winners in the comments below! Thank you for reading.