[Fellow SweetSpot blogger Austin Swafford at Austin's Astros 290 Blog is running a series of NL Central team season previews. The following is our comparison of how the Cardinals stack up against the Astros.]

The Astros are typically like the Cardinals in that they seldom go into a dedicated rebuilding mode. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Houston was a near-perennial contender in the NL Central. But with the departure of their competitive core over the last few years — Craig Biggio, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman — the’ve fallen into a prolonged rebulding program. The Cardinals, of course, continue to reload, and are the superior team again for 2011.

That’s not to say that the Astros don’t have some competitive, well, not exactly advantages, but similarities. Take their starting rotation, which, with the Cardinals’ loss of Adam Wainwright, is now comparable to the St. Louis starting five. Wandy Rodriguez, Brett Myers, J.A. Happ, Nelson Figueroa and Bud Norris — or Budchuck, as he is known to Cardinal fans after his uncanny success against them and Albert Pujols’s unwitting reference to him as "Chuck" — may surprise some people this season. The rotation was also one of the Cardinals’ strengths, but without Wainwright, they are merely middling. Chris Carpenter, Jaime Garcia and Jake Westbrook pose a reliable if not uniformly dominant or risk-free front three, while Kyle Lohse and erstwhile reliever Kyle McClellan are wild cards. But assuming a bump of .50 in ERA for McClellan as he moves to the rotation, the two staffs project (by Marcels) to be statistically even, with a 3.92 ERA for the Astros and 3.91 for the Cardinals.

That’s where the comparison ends, however. The Cardinals have a hitting advantage at just about every position otherwise (Marcels projections):

Quite simply, the Astros are going to have a tough time getting on base and therefore scoring runs. The Cardinals may give up something on defense, namely at second base and right field, but they should have a potent offense, probably the best in the division. The benches and bullpens don’t offer any significant edge for either team.

The Cardinals may eventually face the same fate as the Astros of the last few years and be forced to rebuild. For 2011, at least, the Astros — and Bud Norris — may find a way to keep their head-to-head games interesting, but the Cardinals, with that ancient Astro avatar himself, Berkman, should resemble Houston’s success of the early 2000s. The only problem is that the Astros won’t be around for the rivalry.

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 at 10:47 pm and is filed under analysis. 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.