From vivaelbirdos.com:

before each of the last two series, i rough-gauged the cardinals' odds per voros mccracken's postseason crapshoot matrix and james click's chance estimator. those instruments placed the probability of a st louis upset over the mets at about 1 in 3; i'll spare you the math, but the quotients in this series are about 40 percent. that is, the cardinals have about a 2 in 5 chance to win. sounds reasonable to me; the tigers won 12 games more than the cards, finished with the 3d-best record in baseball, led the majors in era, and have gone 7-1 against playoff opponents -- they should be the favorites. but insofar as the cardinals are the 2d weakest world series team in history, a 40 percent shot against a foe as strong as the tigers ain't bad at all. at those odds, you wouldn't call it a shocking upset if the cardinals were to prevail. history's two most similar world series teams -- the '87 twins (85 wins) and '73 mets (82 wins) -- both took superior foes to 7 games; the twins actually won it in 7. the 1997 cleveland indians (86 wins) came within 2 outs of winning the series; the 2000 yankees (87 wins) won it all.

historically, weakling series teams have made a pretty damn good showing. if nothing else, we should expect a competitive series.

More about the Tigers:

From getupbaby.net:

They’re mostly ace-less. From the hushed tones in which their rotation was discussed during their series with the Yankees and the Athletics one would think that their team was like the 2002-vintage Athletics, built around three aces that could go against anybody’s number one. On the contrary, the Yankees actually possessed similar frontline guys. The difference is that the Tigers can go the whole series without starting someone whose ERA+–normalized ERA, in which 100 is the league average–is under 111. In that regard, they’re similar to–though less impressive than–the 2005 White Sox, who had four starters with an ERA over 115. (And a frontline starter, Mark Buehrle, to boot.)

Yes, the Tigers are built such that they will only give up a pitching advantage in the game(s) Chris Carpenter pitches. That said, if power pitching is your thing the Tigers aren’t your team; only Jeremy Bonderman fits the classic strike-em-out profile, and Kenny Rogers rode to the rescue with one of the lowest K/9 marks from a solid starter in recent memory. Bonderman makes mistakes, and the rest of their starters can be knocked around if you’re patient.

They’re the anti-OBP dream team. Regarded as a solid-hitting team almost by default, the Tigers nevertheless had the lowest on-base percentage of any team in the playoffs. They were 12th out of fourteen teams in the category; their slugging percentage, on the other hand, was fifth.

Their OBP of .329 is driven down by a few holes in the lineup–not truck-wide like the ones on the Cardinals, but just big enough to lose a win inside. They’ve got a mess at first base, with Sean Casey having scuffled since reaching the AL and hurting as of late; if they slot MVP candidate Carlos Guillen there, as planned, they open up a spot for the execrable Ramon Santiago. Brandon Inge and Craig Monroe are both low-OBP sluggers of the Juancarnacion variety, and AAA find Marcus Thames, owner of the highest slugging percentage on the team, hit just .199/.278/.432 after the all-star break. Everybody in the lineup can hit for power, but there’s nobody to fear on the order of a Beltran, Delgado or Wright.
Todd Jones is their closer. The Cardinals had better take advantage of this fact at least once.

You'd obviously rather have Jones than Wainwright and the Tigers starters compiled those numbers in the AL, making all 4 aces by any measure.

The '87 Twins had Viola, Blyleven and Reardon.

The '00 Yankees had Clemens, Pettite, Cone, El Duque, Neagle & Rivera (plus, Stanton, Gooden, Nelson, etc.)

The comparison to this Cards staff is lunatic.

Go Redbirds!!!

I'M NOT LISTENING TO OJ!@!!!!

LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA !!!

Reyes looked pretty good tonight, even in those high striped socks. The Cardinals may just grit it out. The Tigers have had a week to read their press clippings, which can't help.

Tigers looked predictably rusty, but there's no excuse for pitching to Albert.