Location: St. Louis, Mo. | Ballpark: Busch Stadium (46,861) | Spring Training: Jupiter, Fla.
Owner: William DeWitt, Jr. | GM: John Mozeliak | Manager: Tony La Russa | World Championships: 10
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POWER RANKINGS
Power Rankings
Date
Ranking
Previous
07/07/2009
12
13
It might be time to start throwing around the word "historic" when referencing Albert Pujols' 2009 campaign. The cherry-picked stat that makes my chest swell with something that's either pride or the first sign of an imminent cardiac episode: 31 HRs, 34 strikeouts. That's inhuman ... Everybody/everything else about the Cards? Meh. Chris Carpenter is good again, I guess.
06/30/2009
13
6
The Mark DeRosa deal was a good start, but they're still offensively deprived in the outfield ... Hitters behind Albert Pujols had put up a .220/.297/.387 line through Sunday. Remind me again: why is this guy seeing any pitch that's vaguely hittable?
06/23/2009
6
13
Here's what I'm predicating this week's love of the Cardinals upon: They've got the best player and they've got the best manager. Sometimes these rankings are most useful when they don't venture beyond duh-really territory ... The drawback of having close-up seats for Cards/Metsies on Monday night? Stadium officials required us to don goggles, pith helmets and full-body Kevlar padding every time Albert Pujols came up to bat against Tim Redding. The quote I got from a stadium exec, who himself was clad head-to-toe in bubble wrap, was "we only have so much homeowner's insurance." FYI, Pu merely doubled once in three at-bats against Redding.
06/16/2009
13
9
The injuries have caught up with them ... As we saw over the weekend, the team lacks a viable DH candidate. Hence it's a good thing most of their remaining interleague games are scheduled on friendly NL turf ... Todd Wellemeyer acknowledged the obvious the other day: namely, that he sucks. OK, fine, technically he just said that he's lost velocity, but you could hear the I-suck part in his voice. Y'all gotta learn to pick up on these verbal clues.
06/09/2009
9
8
Never mind the sweep at the Rockies' hands: This ain't a great team right now, with patchwork starting pitching and a lineup that practically begs opponents to pitch around Albert Pujols. I realize that most pitchers have the chest-thumping "me macho! me throw fastball!" thing baked into their professional DNA, but there's no shame in refusing to let the one legit offensive threat in the lineup take you down.
06/02/2009
8
8
Everyone except Cardinals fans give Tony La Russa guff for his I-am-smarter-than-you-so-don't-question-me-and-by-the-way-be-sure-to-get-your-kitten-spayed act, but damn: The guy's winning with outfielders playing second base, a running audition to fill the void at third and a role-resistant pitching staff. ... Looking at the Cards' roster, you'd peg them as a sub-.500 team. It's to La Russa's credit that they're consistently greater than the sum of their parts, as cliché as it sounds.
05/26/2009
8
10
This isn't to diminish what Cards pitchers accomplished in allowing a mere six runs over their last seven games, but let's not forget that six of those games were against the Royals and an injury-gutted Cubs lineup ... C'mon y'all, give Chris Carpenter a hand! No, wait -- no, I didn't mean literally. Dammit! Okay, who wants to call the orthopedist?
05/19/2009
10
3
The pitching apocalypse is upon us, with Cardinals hurlers issuing 23 free passes during the three-game sweep at Milwaukee's hands. ... They're 4-10 in their last 14, with series against the Cubs, Royals and Brewers on the immediate horizon. This could be a sub-.500 team by the time we meet again. ... My sources tell me that delicate fawn Chris Carpenter will return to the mound on Wednesday clad in a Styrofoam-padded uniform, plus he'll be chauffeured in from the bullpen in the Popemobile. The flinty Rick Ankiel, on the other hand, won't even feel the need to wear a cup.
05/12/2009
3
3
Albert Pujols has notched more extra-base hits (17) than strikeouts (11), and nobody has noticed. He's set the bar kinda high ... Smarter-than-you pitching coach Dave Duncan has spotted an arm-angle flaw in Adam Wainwright's delivery that may or may not be responsible for the hurler's recent lack of command. Instead of putting his left foot in, Wainwright was putting his left foot out and shaking it all about ... Speaking of woebegone Cards pitchers, operating-room mainstay Chris Carpenter reportedly "threw aggressively" in the outfield on Sunday. Next up, in approximate order: a mound session, another mound session, two carefully monitored appearances in minor-league games, then a return to the DL after he lacerates the webbing between his ring finger and pinky while signing an autograph.
05/05/2009
3
3
The slo-mo replay of the crash looked as bad as anything we've seen this season, but somehow Rick Ankiel's skull seems to have battled the center-field wall at Busch Stadium to a stalemate ... Six weeks into the convert-Skip-Schumaker experiment, watching him attempt to make a routine play gives rise to the same sensations as watching a drunk attempt to juggle ... Now that we've gotten past the "Zack Greinke is a good pitcher but a GREAT story" media avalanche, your next flogged-to-death national feature will be "Yadier Molina: a terrific glove, but SO much more."
Preseason Power Rankings
Date
Ranking
Previous
02/16/2009
14
-
How the hell did they win 86 games last season?... The core talent is largely unchanged, so I'll just assume Tony La Russa and Dave Duncan will somehow wring 80-something wins out of this bunch. That is, if La Russa's head doesn't explode first, after the Cardinals led the league in blame-it-on-the-economy mea culpas this offseason. One gets the impression he and GM John Mozeliak will spend the next nine months exchanging passive-aggressive non-compliments ("John definitely leaves his mark," "Tony has managed a lot of great players"). ... I say fill the vacancy at second base with an American Idol-ish competition. Better to give the public some say in the matter than to hand it over to a flighty mite (Brendan Ryan) or a defensive abomination waiting to happen (to-be-converted OF Skip Schumaker). Why hasn't Orlando Hudson been brought into the fold?
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