It sounds corny, but we talked about it. We wanted to play a game that Stan would enjoy.

– Tony La Russa

Being not only the best Cardinal player of all-time, Stan the Man is also one of the biggest Cardinal fans of all-time, so we’re sure he enjoyed the win. The series opponent made for a strange, if not unenjoyable, game, though: When Musial retired after the 1963 season, the only major-league baseball played in Tampa was when the Reds had spring training, teams from the American and National leagues only played each other during the World Series, “division” was merely a a math term and a team’s uniform tops matched their pants.

But Stan might’ve enjoyed the fact that the Cardinals, buoyed by 10 walks, actually created 8.4 runs Sunday, or 9.1 RC27, since the winning run scored with only one out in the ninth. And that’s just about what the team would’ve produced if their lineup consisted of nine Musials: His lifetime RC/G was an incredible 8.9.

It was a good win on Stan’s day, that’s for sure. It was a good win for us, too.

– Skip Schumaker

Sadly, we don’t have Win-Probability Added stats for players in Musial’s era. But he had his share of big hits, just like Schumaker did Sunday. It’s a new era in St. Louis: After Albert Pujols (1.97 WPA), the next-best hitters on the team are Ryan Ludwick (1.60) and Schumaker (1.00).

They were just missing. I don’t know that they were trying to be too fine, they were just missing. I can’t say we were getting squeezed at all.

– Joe Maddon

We haven’t done an in-depth analysis, but it seemed that home-plate ump Brian Runge’s zone did narrow as the game went on. Not to take too much away from Cardinal starter Kyle Lohse, who had his best game of the year with a 68 FIGS, but he was certainly the beneficiary and wasn’t "getting squeezed at all": four of his five strikeouts were looking, and on all four, the coup de grace was out of the strike zone. Check out the location of each of the final pitches in these at-bats:

Player	Inning	At-Bat
Upton	1
Pena	2
Longoria	4
Navarro	4

You can’t let things get into your head. I just go out there thinking it’s any old game.

– Chris Perez

One of those things you can let get into your head as a pitcher (or a fan) is how many of Tampa’s balls in play fell for base hits, and in Sunday’s game, for extra-base hits. Over a season, the batting average of balls in play for all teams is around .290-.300. However, for the weekend series in St. Louis, the Rays had an uncanny rate of balls landing safely: .411. It’s hard to make the case that they were anything but fortunate, given that they faced nine different pitchers. By contrast, the Cardinals were more in-line with the typcial rate, at .325. So it’s possible that the series was closer than it should’ve been, had the Rays received their standard share of "luck."

I haven’t felt quite as sharp yet, but that’s no excuse now. By this time, I’ve got to be ready to roll. I just didn’t make pitches today, that was the bottom line.

– Gary Glover

You know you’re having a tough day at the office when you walk Jason LaRue (who now has more walks than hits on the season).

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 2:52 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.