AND YADIER:

Ignore the Win Total; Cards Are No Fluke (TIM MARCHMAN, October 30, 2006, NY Sun)

The 2000 Yankees won all of 87 games, which wouldn't have been good even for second place in either the American League Central or the American League West; does anyone think they weren't real champions? Of course not. That team was just one in a line of excellent teams, and some quirks of the way it was constructed made it a more effective team in October than it had been in the regular season. There was some or a lot of luck involved, too, but then there is for every team that wins a World Series.

Like those Yankees, the Cardinals were a better fit for the playoffs than they were for the regular season, largely because two starting pitchers they didn't need in October soaked up a ton of innings in the regular season. Mark Mulder and Jason Marquis were absolutely horrible this year; replace those two with the sort of average pitchers St. Louis is usually able to dig up, and they'd have won their customary 95 or so games. Yes, the Cards were lucky to make the playoffs in the first place, but so were the Yankees in 2000 and plenty of other champions. What matters is how you do once you're there, not how you got there.

The Cardinals team we saw over the last few weeks is the same one we've seen pretty much every year this decade, when they've been on one of the less-remarked upon runs of greatness I can think of. With the exception of this year and 2003, the Cardinals have won between 93 and 105 games every year this decade. In every year save 2003, they've either won the National League pennant or been beaten by the team that did. Short of the Yankees and Braves, no team has had a more successful run in the wild card era.

Because of that, and because this team, built around Albert Pujols, Scott Rolen, Jim Edmonds, Chris Carpenter, and a set of mix-and-match utility guys, chumps, washouts, rookies, scrubs, and scrappy hustle guys, is exactly the same team that's been winning 95 games a year this decade, it's impossible to see how this team can even enter into the conversation about which team is the most illegitimate champion. This wasn't a one-off fluke, but the crowning and validating achievement of a truly great team that's been truly great since before George W. Bush was in office and will probably continue to be great after he's left office. During nearly all of this time they have had a transcendently great player in Pujols, likely future Hall of Famers in Rolen and Edmonds, several short-term aces like Carpenter and Matt Morris, and a legendary manager in Tony LaRussa, like his style or not (I don't). That isn't the makeup of a team that's going to baffle baseball historians in future decades while they're going through World Series winners trying to pick out the weak ones.

It hardly seems a coincidence that the Tigers and Cards had defensively dominant catchers.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 30, 2006 12:06 AM