Filed under: Cardinals , NL Central For a couple months now, skeptics (read: me) have expected the Cardinals to fold up and collapse in the National League Central race. They stubbornly refused to do so and with a four game series against the Brewers this week, they had a chance to prove that they were really for real. Instead, they got swept by the Brewers and find themselves three games behind them for the NL Wild Card as July closes up. The kicker is that the Cards had leads in three of the four games and their bullpen took three losses in the series. With a chance to salvage one win from the series and stay within a game of Milwaukee, Ryan Franklin served up a two-run homer to Ryan Braun in the ninth inning last night to turn a 3-2 lead into a 4-3 loss. The Cards' pen has been a problem all year, but this disaster of a week suddenly puts their playoff push in jeopardy. Of course, it's not fair to just blame the bullpen. They only scored nine runs in the four game series and barely even presented a road block to the cruising CC Sabathia on Wednesday night. Now that Chris Duncan is back on the DL, the Cards could probably use both a bat and several relievers before next Friday. That's a tall task for new GM John Mozeliak . The Cards' aren't out of the race yet, but if they don't right the ship in the next week or so, they will be. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments ...
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Filed under: Cardinals , NL Central For a couple months now, skeptics (read: me) have expected the Cardinals to fold up and collapse in the National League Central race. They stubbornly refused to do so and with a four game series against the Brewers this week, they had a chance to prove that they were really for real. Instead, they got swept by the Brewers and find themselves three games behind them for the NL Wild Card as July closes up. The kicker is that the Cards had leads in three of the four games and their bullpen took three losses in the series. With a chance to salvage one win from the series and stay within a game of Milwaukee, Ryan Franklin served up a two-run homer to Ryan Braun in the ninth inning last night to turn a 3-2 lead into a 4-3 loss. The Cards' pen has been a problem all year, but this disaster of a week suddenly puts their playoff push in jeopardy. Of course, it's not fair to just blame the bullpen. They only scored nine runs in the four game series and barely even presented a road block to the cruising CC Sabathia on Wednesday night. Now that Chris Duncan is back on the DL, the Cards could probably use both a bat and several relievers before next Friday. That's a tall task for new GM John Mozeliak . The Cards' aren't out of the race yet, but if they don't right the ship in the next week or so, they will be. Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments ...