We’re just taking every opportunity that they give us. They make some errors, we take advantage.

– Albert Pujols

In a back-and-forth affair of waxing and waning win probability, an imperfectly played Game 4 hinged on the small, elemental aspects of the sport. The Cardinals, too, made errors, though not of the type that will show up in the box score. Both bunting situations were strategically wrong moves, according to probability stats, and TLR opted for John Rodriguez over the more reliable Scott Spiezio in a key pinch-hit role and refused to pinch-run for Yadier Molina in that momentous 8th inning (talk about loyalty). But in a game in a series that the Cardinals increasingly seem destined to win, not only did the team not have to pay for their strategy slips, they were rewarded for them. Of course, if the game were run by databases and spreadsheets, we wouldn’t have the delightful human drama, the kind that manifests itself in the heretofore stoic Tony LaRussa hopping around in glee at the end of the dugout. When calculating win probability, there isn’t an input for field conditions, nor for surehandedness of relief pitchers. Taguchi’s bunt may not have been the right “book” move, but we were far more pleased with the resulting storyline of the unhittable Fernando Rodney flipping the ball over a Baryshnikov-like Placido Polanco, the hustling Tagachi and Eckstein at opposite sides of the diamond racing around the bases at the behest of their arm-waving coaches.

Eckstein’s a little guy. You don’t expect him to hit it that far. But Zoom was throwing 100 and he put a good swing on it. But if I had to do it over again, I’d play him the same way.

– Craig Monroe

I was hoping it was going to find a little bit of dirt, grass out there. But the ball was kind of straightening out, and it kept going. … It just barely got out of the reach of his own glove, hit off the tip.

– David Eckstein

This postseason, the Cardinals have witnessed the inch-long difference between the frustration of being robbed of a big hit (see Rolen, Scott, or Chavez, Endy) and the sheer release of the big hit hitting grass safely. But the stage was set one batter prior. At the time, of course, Juancarnacion’s advancing of Miles via wild-pitch strikeout seemed like merely the best outcome for an overmatched and perhaps inopportunely inserted Encarnacion: Hey, at least he moved the runner up. But, as is the case in baseball, plays impact subsequent ones, sometimes imperceptibly and often meaninglessly. In this case, Miles dancing off second base meant that the go-ahead run would score on a simple single, so leftfielder Craig Monroe moved a few steps closer to home plate. And that made all the difference.

Somehow it was apropos that the little man who had been chided for having only two hits coming into Game 4 ripped three doubles, even if two of them were misplayed. Speaking of doubles, let’s hear it for Scott Rolen, whose double of the hustling variety was vintage Sco-Ro and an example of aggressive baserunning that old Whitey would’ve been proud of.

You have to come back and score [after falling behind]. It does a lot for the morale of the team, in the dugout. It does a lot for the pitcher. He feels like, ‘OK, we’ve got a game here. We’re going to get this going.’

– Aaron Miles

Even watching on television, the game definitely did have a palpably different feeling as the Cardinals scratched back into it, with single tallies in the 3rd and the 4th. Perhaps it was because the hot-blooded Bonderman seemed beatable, lacking command at times and confidence. One telling moment was Albert Pujols’s at-bat in the 5th. After making Pujols look bad in his previous two appearances, Bonderman pitched to Pujols as if he had hit two home runs instead of striking out on three pitches and meekly grounding out. With a one-run lead and the lefthanded Edmonds on-deck, Bonderman unintentionally intentionally walked Pujols to bring up the go-ahead run. It was a testament to both Pujols’s puissance and Bonderman’s lack of killer instinct (can you see Carpenter, or other top pitchers, like Oswalt, Schilling or Santana, taking the easy way out?).

I was able to go six and try to keep it close. I think for a pitcher like myself, obviously command and changing speeds are so important. And there were times when I just wasn’t putting the ball where I wanted to. When that happens, you have a different plan of attack. You have to change speeds more. You have to sometimes miss by a lot instead of missing down the middle.

– Jeff Suppan

He wasn’t the Suppan of the NLCS, but he gutted it out in typical Suppan fashion. Though Bonderman outscored him in Game Score (48-46), Suppan matched him with less than his best. He made a mistake to Casey, whose home run was the difference in Suppan’s FIP ERA of 4.82 (Bonderman kept the ball in the park, and despite allowing four walks, had a 3.95), but limited the damage, notably shutting down Detroit cleanup hitter Maggio Ordonez.

It definitely wasn’t the surface, because I would’ve just slipped across the top. But I ended up taking a big divot and a big chunk out, so for some reason, I ended up moving a little piece of the dirt and the grass.

– Curtis Granderson

I didn’t see it when it left the bat. I misjudged it. Yes, I lost it for a split second in the shirts behind the plate, but it was a ball I should have had. Look, maybe I played him a bit too shallow. If I had been back a little further I might have recovered in time … The field had nothing to do with it. I did the best I could, but I guess it wasn’t good enough.

– Curt Flood, Chicago Tribune, Oct. 11, 1968

Right now, I’m not real interested in Curt Flood.

– Jim Leyland

Leyland may not be interested, but we couldn’t help but be fascinated by the parallel of Curt Flood’s slip in the middle of his pursuit of Jim Northrup’s 7th-inning triple in Game 7 of the 1968 series. We did some research on Flood’s play, which was similar enough to draw some comparisons, but was different in a few important ways:

• Flood’s misplay — to hear him describe it — was more a case of misjudgment.
• Northrup’s ball was hit so well that Flood probably wouldn’t have caught it, anyway.
• Flood didn’t fall down but merely slipped.
• The field conditions were substandard not so much because of rain but perhaps because of the NFL game played at Busch Stadium the preceding Sunday.
• Northrup was hitting with runners on, as opposed to being the leadoff man, so the effect of the play was immediate rather than eventual.
• Northrup’s hit led to the championship-winning runs scoring.

Not that Granderson’s Grand Slip wasn’t a key moment. It will go down as one of the memorable plays in a gripping Game 4 that led to the Cardinals’ win and (hopefully) ultimate championship.

Hey, the baseball gods are funny. You’ve got to go ahead and continue believing in them. They go ahead and even things out, so if it’s that case, you know a lot of good things should be happening very soon for us.

– Curtis Granderson

The field conditions gave and they tooketh away. Just a half-inning earlier, rightfielder Chris Duncan — unsteady already in the outfield — kicked up a divot and almost lost Sean Casey’s drive. But Duncan’s cleats stuck in the nick of time, and the play will be little remembered hereafter (though it probably was more than a fleeting memory for TLR, who replaced Duncan the first chance he got). Granderson’s baseball gods may not exist, but it’s true that baseball events even out over time. The problem for the Tigers is that, this being a best-of-seven series, they’re running out of it.

This entry was posted by Pip on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 5:51 pm and is filed under quotebook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.