Photograph by Jeff Curry
Eventually the St. Louis Cardinals' bullpen was going to give up some runs. The levers can only be pulled so many times before one of them misfires, and in the Cardinals' Game 2 loss Thursday night a combination of less-than-perfect command from Jason Motte, a bloop single into an excessively conservative defensive alignment, and failure to cut off a poor throw from the outfield doomed the Cardinals to going into Game 3 of the World Series tied 1-1 with the Texas Rangers.
As far as being doomed goes, things could be worse.
That said, the Cardinals have a tough road ahead in Texas, where the home-run-happiest ballpark in the Major Leagues awaits the Cardinals' third and fourth starters—Kyle Lohse and Edwin Jackson, apparently interchangeable. The bad news is that the Cardinals will have to deal with the Rangers' deeper starting rotation, with Derek Holland and Matt Harrison still on the way; for all the talk about their offense, the Rangers' greatest asset is their five-deep rotation, which started all but five of their regular season games. It's the kind of rotation that propelled another offensive juggernaut, the 2004 Cardinals, to 105 wins. (And, he reminded the gods of baseball, some bad World Series luck.)
the good news is that these Cardinals are the rare National League team that improves relative to its competition when designated hitters are factored in. In their home park the Rangers will DH Michael Young to make room for Mitch Moreland, a first baseman coming off a below-average offensive season, while the Cardinals will field Allen Craig, who had a .917 OPS in 75 games in 2011, in some permutation of their usual outfield.
The Cardinals were always going to be the underdogs this week; the Rangers led their division almost wire to wire, and finished the season as hot as the Cardinals besides. They're a 90-win team that ended up, all of a sudden, a 96-win team, not an 84-win team that finished with 90. But the Cardinals have always had a chance; they had it when they won Game 1 and they have it now, having lost Game 2. It'll take, I should think, Edwin Jackson and Kyle Lohse being interchangeably brilliant.
