It’s a tough loss, but we have a tough team. We’ve battled a lot of tough things this year. We’ve had a lot of tough losses in the beginning of the year, and all throughout the year. We’ve had to come back the next day and strap it up and come back and get a win.

– Allen Craig

Going up 2-0 would’ve been too easy for the Cardinals, who have flourished as the underdog this year. Are they procrastinators or just lucky late?

I knew there was no outs, and he hit it pretty hard, so I was just trying to keep my throw low, but it wasn’t a good enough throw. I was just trying to make sure I kept the ball down.

– Jon Jay

Credit Jay for manning up. True, his throw wasn’t great, but it didn’t require a Gold Glove first baseman to field it.

Feliz gets us three outs, and here we are with a win.

– Ron Washington

It didn’t help that after Yadier Molina walked on five pitches leading off, Nick Punto went up sac bunting. He struck out on three pitches out of the strike zone. We understand sac bunting in that situation, but TLR needs to pause and rethink the obvious, automatic move occasionally. Feliz is not infrequently wild — why not make him throw a strike first?

I blame it on myself. I didn’t make my pitches. I had a job to do, and I didn’t do it.

– Jason Motte

Motte’s being a bit hard on himself. He can’t be blamed for the leadoff flare, and TLR should’ve let him stay in, given that he was the best option for the situation, in which the team needed a strikeout (twice, actually).

I knew he was swinging at the first pitch, no matter what.

– Arthur Rhodes

For apparently knowing that Hamilton was first-pitch swinging, the pitch that Rhodes threw was awful. An 81-mph slider up in the zone is more like a get-ahead in the count pitch rather than an out pitch. If that’s the best pitch Rhodes has, he shouldn’t be playing for the Rangers or the Cardinals.

Mostly. it comes down to you make a move, and if it works, ‘Hey, what a good move.’ If it doesn’t work, ‘What was he thinking?’ That’s just the name of the game.

– TLR, before the game

If wise words are a sign of genius, then we give La Russa some credit here.

When I looked at St. Louis’ pitching, I don’t look at their pitching like a (Detroit ace Justin) Verlander, where you say boy, ‘Verlander is on, we’re going to hope that something good has to happen.’ I’m not downplaying the Cardinals’ pitching by any means.

– Nolan Ryan

It’s funny how people think that they can say one thing and in the next breath disclaim it, as if to head off any criticism for the first remark. As a player, Ryan was man enough to stand behind his pitching. As GM, he should be man enough to stand behind his words.

Classic ninth inning.

– TLR

We’re not sure what TLR’s definition of classic is, but pulling your best reliever for one of your worst with the game on the line isn’t ours. Can anyone imagine Whitey Herzog bringing in Jim Kaat for Bruce Sutter?

“”

– Albert Pujols, after the game

I think we have a responsibility and we’re willing to live up to it. But somebody has got to be fair with us. I heard the criticism and it offends me because I know our attitude as an organization is 180 degrees different from the way it’s being portrayed. Nobody asked for those guys, and they got out of there. They had other things to do.

– TLR

If it’s true as reported that Pujols was in a media-free lounge after the game, this is a patently disingenuous statement by La Russa. For someone who has a history of such statements, not least of all throughout Mark McGwire’s career, it is not surprising.

To try to rip somebody’s reputation for something like this I don’t think is fair. But you know what? I don’t throw rocks at you guys. You guys are human. You guys make mistakes just like I do.

– Albert Pujols

Pujols doubles down by insulting the media after shirking them. His manager’s superciliousness appears to be rubbing off.

It was a good throw. It was a catch that I make 99 out of 100 times. It wasn’t a tough throw. It was more because I took my eyes off the play a little bit because I wanted to make the throw to third base. I don’t think it was Jay’s fault.

– Pujols

Jon Jay thanks you for clarifying — a day after he had to face reporters and protect you. Credit to the scorers, who ultimately got the call right in ruling an error on Pujols. As readers will note, we’re not a big fan of errors, but as long as they’re in the rules, scorers should apply them accordingly.

They’re just like we are, never say die, till the last out is made. It makes it fun.

– Josh Hamilton

Well said. Not only are the two teams similarly matched (top-of-the-league offenses, with better-than-average pitching), it appears that they both “play a hard nine.” We expect to see you back in St. Louis, Hamilton.

We kind of thought that Holliday was, at least tonight, swinging the bat a little bit better than Albert. It was a tough call. We were going to try to leave the ball away, make him hit it on the ground someplace and hopefully we would be able to get it. We were playing with fire and we got burned.

– Jerry Manuel

As the preseason ad said, pick your poison. With Albert Pujols featuring a below-career .398 wOBA and Matt Holliday an above-career .394, Manuel didn’t even need to limit his claim to "at least tonight" — the two sluggers are basically the same player this season.

Whereas Tony La Russa was largely responsible for his team’s loss in the 20-inning game earlier this year, this time, it was Manuel’s turn to mismanage his team, though, in fairness, it was nothing even approaching La Russa’s debacle. Credit the Cardinal manager with learning from his prior mistake by not switching the pitcher spot into the cleanup spot. But even TLR didn’t get off scot-free this time: We disliked his upside-down approach to deploying his relievers, using the inferior Mike MacDougal before Ryan Franklin. If the Mets had scored in the 12th off the recently promoted MacDougal, how does TLR explain losing a game in the 12th inning with his "closer," which we assume to him means his best reliever, on the bench?

Both managers had emptied their benches and were forced to have pitchers hit in the 13th inning. The only difference was that TLR had Wainwright, a career .259
wOBA hitter, as a final bullet. Then again, Manuel’s Raul Valdes had a .564 wOBA going into his plate appearance. In 10 career plate appearances.

I pulled back, and that’s the smart play. You can look at it a different way. You can look at it like I wasn’t hustling, but you know what? Late in the game like that, if I feel good, I’m going to do everything that I can to try to break up the double play. But when you don’t have anybody in extra innings and you feel something, the last thing you want to do is hurt yourself and be the last guy and throw a pitcher out there to play your position.

– Albert Pujols

This is a perfectly reasonable explanation. It was also the reasoning that another Cardinal first baseman once gave for what appeared as less than 100% effort: Keith Hernandez. The difference, of course, is that whereas Pujols calls the tune with the current Cardinal manager, Whitey Herzog maintained uniform discipline across his roster, such that no player, not even the team captain, multiple-time All-Star and former league MVP, was above the team.

Usually in the first inning, you’re focusing on your first-inning pitching. Not hitting. But I was up there, and I’m like, ‘I’m not just going to strike out swinging at bad pitches. He’s going to have to throw me good pitches.’ It was a huge at-bat for our win today.

– Jaime Garcia

The Cardinals ran their win expectancy as high as 92.8% in the first inning. It went as high as 96.7% at the end of the seventh inning before the Mets swung the game 60.0% points their way in the eighth.

Speaking of the win-expectancy game, the bad-running Cardinals made another unnecessary out on the bases last night, this one in the 13th inning. Jon Jay tried but failed to score from third on a pitch in the dirt. Adam Wainwright was pinch-hitting with two out and the bases loaded. Was it a good attempt? Judging by the win-expectancy table below, it was:

So the potential reward was worth the risk. Sometimes, the chance is worth it.

Just to get through six, I kind of had to scratch and claw to get there. It definitely helps the bullpen out a little bit. Ryan and Skip up the middle, the last few games have been awesome. Skip has been playing his butt off. It helps, especially when you are not getting a lot of strikeouts.

– Blake Hawksworth

In pitching six full innings, Hawksworth faced a career-high 28 batters. In addition to yielding three walks, the reason he didn’t pitch deeper than six innings was his team’s inability to convert balls in play into outs, as indicated by their .583 defensive-efficiency rate (or, depending on your point of view, the Phillies’ BABIP of .417). The accolades notwithstanding, Schumaker mishandled a couple of balls that might’ve led to additional outs.

I think our defense we have stepped it up to a different level. We played great defense in the first half but I think over the last two weeks you can see our defense. We are on our toes, helping the pitchers and making some great plays.

– Albert Pujols

Team DER over last two weeks: .673.
Team DER previously: .696
To be sure, DER includes a lot of non-fielding noise, but it seems that the team’s improved defense over the last fortnight is illusory. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the team isn’t hustling or that that hustle won’t pay off in the long run.

I think there are guys in here who are motivated to have a very good second half. Part of it is getting a break to clear your mind and re-evaluate where you’re at. … I think there are a lot of guys in here who are really motivated to turn their season around. Whether it’s Craig or (Jon) Jay who you want to give some credit to, that’s fine, no doubt about it. But there’s a lot of (veterans) in here who want to turn their season around not only for themselves but because it’s going to better the team. We are such a better team than we showed in the first half.

– Skip Schumaker

Amid a handful of well-established stars, the team clearly has some players who are still hungry. As we wrote in our Trade Deadline Primer, Schumaker and Yadier Molina are two such players poised to regress to their normal selves. Schumaker’s BABIP has increased from unseemly low levels, due in large measure to his team-leading line-drive rate. Molina, whose BABIP is still a low .248 (career: .278) and who has a better LD% than Pujols, should follow. And Brendan Ryan is at a critical point in his career, on both sides of the ball.

But even in the case of the stars, players have significant motivators: Holliday, who lacks no job security, wants to prove worthy of his fat contract. Pujols himself, by dragging his feet on a contract extension, is gambling that his skills won’t markedly degrade and, perhaps ironically, needs to prove that he’s still the best player in baseball. And Chris Carpenter, whether because he is "a competitor" or simply proud, appears dissatisfied with his performance. Perhaps all of these factors will coelesce into a firy team dynamic throughout the second "half" of the season.

Wasn’t my best. This win is all about the guys. The lineup. The defense. It was a lot of fun to see those guys swing it.

– Hawksworth

Kudos to Hawksworth for his endurance on the field as wisdom off it. Whereas lately he had exhibited more power pitching, his performance Monday was more typical of what we might expect from him as a starter: A lot of ground balls in play (54%) and unimpressive K/BB and K/9 rates (0.33 and 1.50, respectively).

Would that Hawksworth’s view on winning were shared by others. If you’re scoring at home, or at least checking Fangraphs, you’ll note that Hawksworth — "the winning pitcher" — contributed a net negative WPA of -.170. Of course, that’s not exclusively his responsibility, but it certainly puts the idea of attributing "wins" to pitchers into perspective, doesn’t it? For the record, Albert Pujols led all players with a +.282 WPA, followed closely by Jon Jay at +.237.

When he was working out, he dropped a (weight) plate on his toe. They’re saying it may not be any longer than his ankle. I don’t really know except now he has that to deal with as well.

– Tony La Russa on David Freese’s latest injury

Let’s hope that Freese, who has a history of making bad decisions, didn’t simply forget to use a safety clamp on the end of his weight bar. At any rate, his eventual return will only benefit the team, whose September may look a little like that in 2006, when several key players returned from injury to buoy the team’s playoff roster.

Winning is the big cure-all

– Randy Winn

A veteran of 13 seasons and 1661 games, Winn should know, but not necessarily through personal experience: His teams’ won-loss record over the years is 752-909, a miserable .453 winning percentage. Here’s hoping the club’s fourth outfielder enjoys the salutary experience of a division title this year.

I threw a lot of pitches early in the game, I threw a lot of pitches to get out of innings and things like that.

– Jeff Suppan

Ah, "things like that." Perhaps Suppan is referring to the high number of balls that he allowed the Diamondbacks to put into play, many of which fell for base hits. When your strategy is akin to that of slow-pitch softball pitchers — let batters hit the ball — some of those are going to find holes. Sad to say: Suppan’s — and the Cardinals’ — strategy is not working. Suppan’s expected FIP is now an untenable 5.08, and given that his xFIP has been rising steadily over the last four years, it’s not going to get any better. It’s time to pull the plug.

Gutierrez came on in as tough a situation as you can put him in with Pujols and the bases loaded. That’s what everybody pays to come see in this ballpark.

- A.J. Hinch

The pace of the game was not entertaining.

– Tony La Russa

Indeed, give Hinch and Gutierrez credit. In addition to Albert Pujols’s rally-killer, the pace explains why we saw so many fans on the Metrolink before the game ended. We sympathize with fans who figure three hours — not to mention nearly four — is enough time to determine a winner. But we’ll never understand those who, barring medical emergencies or family needs, leave a perfect-weather afternoon game early.

Yeah, we had some chances. We definitely didn’t create as many chances as we should have. We should have had more opportunities than we had. And the ones we had, we could have done more with those. I am not going to get into explanations.

– La Russa

There’s no need to try to explain. As we’ve noted before, runners left on base are an indication of offensive potency, rather than of ineptitude. Given some randomness in a single game, occasionally a team get what the Cardinals did Wednesday: A lot of runners on base without many runs to show for it. If we understand that scoring runs is not a function of some mythical, exceptional clutch-hitting skill but of sustained ability to avoid outs, this makes sense, inasmuch as sometimes those hits or walks come at the beginning of the inning rather than with a runner on third. But for the most part, runners on base translate to runs, and fans and writers shouldn’t get too bent out of shape over it. Leaving runners on base certainly beats the alternative of getting few runners on base.

We had a chance today to sweep, and it seemed like in any situation we could get a big hit today, we didn’t come up with it. Why, for whatever reason? I don’t know. Hopefully, when we get in this situation again, we can turn this streak around.

– Jason LaRue

According to RB Fallstrom, St. Louis has won the first two games and lost the finale of a three-game series the last four chances at home, and eight times overall. That may be a case, like getting hits with runners in scoring position, simply of randomness. That is, if a team wins two-thirds of its games, sometimes those two wins will come at the beginning of a series. The more important statistic, like aggregate hitting ability in the batting with RISP argument, is that the team is winning two-thirds of its games. It also might be a sign of the team lacking a killer instinct. We’ll see if it continues in the second half.

I’ve always said I’d like to play here again.

– Dan Haren

And we would like you to, Dan. We dare say that a Haren-Wainwright-Carpenter trio for October would be pretty dominant. So, Josh Byrnes, what do you want?

If so inclined, the SABR guys could make a case for Holliday. Though I doubt that any of my SABR friends would do that.

— Bernie Miklasz

Why would Bernie doubt that? He makes a strong case for the Cardinal leftfielder himself, picking up on what we thought was the strongest argument that we used in our ESPN piece: Matt Holliday leads all NL outfielders in WAR. How would anyone make a case against him?

What I did today is what I try to do every time. Throw at least seven, keep the ball down and not have as many walks. It was a good start.

– Jaime Garcia

El Gato is too modest. Wednesday’s gem was actually the best start of his major-league career by Fielding-Independent Game Score:

It was the third time that Garcia reached his goal of pitching seven innings, but it was the fifth time this season in which he faced at least 27 batters, which seems to be a less-variable measurement of endurance than innings pitched. And contrary to the Post-Dispatch game story, which held that "Seattle lefty Jason Vargas just did Garcia one better," Garcia actually outpitched his Mariner counterpart, who, outstanding as he was, scored only a 63 FIGS. Rather than attribute the "one better" to Vargas, it is more accurate to say that Seattle’s "luck" and defense were better. Indeed, Seattle’s defensive efficiency (the rate at which a defense coverts balls in play into outs) behind Vargas was .792, whereas the Cardinals’ behind Garcia was .722.
(Cardinal batters’ lack of execution undoubtedly contributed, too.) A case in point was the fourth inning: Jose Lopez reached on a meek groundball, and the forceout on which Milton Bradley scored might’ve been a double play. In neither play could or should Garcia be debited.

Garcia pitched perfect. But we didn’t give enough run support for him to win the game.

– Albert Pujols

How about changing the thinking to "for us to win the game"?

I give credit to Vargas, I am not sure why, but we were under the ball. If you are under the ball, that is tough to be productive. If we stay under the ball, we will be not productive the next time we play. For whatever reason. That is where you have to leave it.

– Tony La Russa

The Cardinals hit fly balls on 13 of their 26 balls in play. The run value for ground balls is slightly higher than for fly balls. Better still, of course, is the value of line drives.

When I hit that ball, I thought it definitely was going to go a long way. When I was on second, I was talking to Chone Figgins, and he said, ‘Man, when you hit that ball, I thought it was going to go a long way, but it didn’t.’ He made a great catch and pulled it back. Obviously, the ball was on the other side of the wall. But I was happy I got a double out of it. It could have been worse. He could have grabbed that ball and it wouldn’t have given Ludwick a chance to drive me in.

– Pujols

Credit Pujols for his glass-half-full interpretation of the event. We’re still not sure why plays like this need to be reviewed; we fear that, as with so many instances of technocracy, they review simply because they can, without any regard to whether they should — or, as is often the case, whether a simpler, non-technical solution (the horror!) might actually be better. In this case, ballparks can be designed in a way in which it is abundantly clear whether a ball is a home run. What’s the problem? It’s not that hard, people.

Well I think that is just basic baseball. You are down a run … we got five or six hits the whole game. What are our chances?

– TLR of his decision to bunt with a runner on second and none out in the eighth

Perhaps it’s time for La Russa to rethink the basics. Nowadays, we can figure out pretty close to what those chances are, and so what he considers "basic baseball" may not be true. Brendan Ryan may not be the best hitter on the team — he hits eighth or ninth for a reason — but he still has a .290 OBP. If the pitcher is batting, a bunt makes sense. But, according to Second Guesser, Ryan bunting there is a bad idea, given that the net win expectancy hitting away is 7.50, whereas sac bunting is only 6.46 (the breakeven OBP is around .246).

Anytime you win your division, I believe it’s to be considered a tremendous accomplishment. I’m fairly certain that most analysts didn’t see us winning it at the start of the season. But we did. It’s something I believe everyone connected to the team should be proud of.

– Bill DeWitt

Indeed, the entire organization should be proud, not the least of whom should be DeWitt himself, who spent the season (as usual) as an undeserved target of class-warmongering. Only after the Holliday trade did the “DeWitt is cheap” catcalls subside, though we fully expect it to return in a few weeks (this for an owner with a payroll consistently in the top third of MLB despite being in the 24th adjusted-size market). When many teams are happy to merely have a winning season half the time, the Cardinals during the DeWitt-La Russa era have won a division championship seven times in 14 seasons.

Every spring you go into the season with the goal of winning your division and playing postseason baseball. When you have that opportunity, you do whatever you can to do it. It doesn’t mean every year you’re going to reach the postseason, but the better your opportunity, the better your chance of winning a world championship. Winning a division title is a tremendous accomplishment by itself.

– DeWitt

Spoken as someone who "gets it" about the nature of how championships are won (basically, just get into the playoffs and see how far your luck takes you) and how success should be measured in the Bud Selig era of baseball.

I think there’s plenty of reason to feel good about the situation going forward. I think we all understand our needs and our capacity to address them.

– DeWitt

True, some fat comes off the payroll and, despite the reality that the team may be left with nothing from their Brett Wallace trade, several young players wait in the wings and can add to the club in 2010.

It’s a high priority to sign Albert to make him a lifetime Cardinal.

– DeWitt

Cue the record-needle scratch sound effect. We were with Mr. DeWitt all the way, until now. The expression "lifetime Cardinal" sounds impressive, but when we hear "lifetime," we think of Bruce Sutter and the Braves. The expiration date of Pujols’s current contract — assuming none of his appendages has fallen off, the team will pick up his 2011 option — sets up an awkward conclusion. At the end of the 2011 season, Phat will turn 32, not quite Jim Edmonds-contract-extension terroritory, but almost certainly beyond Pujols’ peak years. A "lifetime" contract would have to mean extending another seven (or more) years, which undoubtedly would require overpayment. Would the overpayment in the latter years be offset by the surplus value in the earlier ones? It all depends on whether Pujols will be true to his word that he merely wants to play for a winner. The Cardinals continue to make good on their end of the bargain. Will Pujols?

I don’t think [the team] was flat as much as it wasn’t executing. ‘Flat’ to me means guys aren’t into it, aren’t trying or don’t care. I never got that. It just didn’t work. You played your best baseball in August and you played your worst in October. It’s not great. It’s not fair. But it is what it is.”

– John Mozeliak

Aside from the lame throwaway phrase at the end, Mozeliak’s comments make sense. As we’ve noted, it’s important not to read too much into a three-game losing streak at the end of the season.

Fairly or not though, it just seemed like he [Holliday] was just the most obvious [goat of the NLDS].

– Brian Burwell

"Fairly or not," that’s not going to stop Burwell from enumerating the reasons. Then again, Burwell isn’t exactly known for fair treatment of his subjects. We’ve come to expect populist screed and ideologically-induced downright sloppy journalism (he and his P-D editors failed to go beyond a single, obscure source to support his Rush Limbaugh hatcheting) from the race-baiting Burwell, but it’s possible to write about Holliday’s unfinished business more compellingly. We’re not excited by the prospect of Holliday leaving, either, but we’re not going to demand that Hollliday stay because he cost the Cardinals dearly in trade. While we tend to agree that Holliday should strongly consider the "unfinished business" in his contract decision, we’re not going to envy a man his right to make money, as it appears Burwell does.

As of right now. I plan to.

– John Smoltz on playing in 2010

Here’s hoping that Smoltz will return as a Cardinal, in whatever capacity. If nothing else, it sounds like the team’s veterans could learn from his example of sticking around to face the music.

"We’re in this era where people want to judge other people," Pujols says. "And that’s so sad." He would like to leave it with those three words—that’s so sad—but then people might wonder.

Right, we wouldn’t want to judge anyone for their actions, because that would mean that people would have to be responsible for their actions. This is of course the oft-used trope that confuses the word’s popular meaning of "feel morally superior to someone" and its denotation of "infer, think, or hold as an opinion; conclude about or assess." It’s convenient for Pujols to hide behind the former when he’s really talking about the latter.

So he continues: "But it’s like I always say, ‘Come and test me. Come and do whatever you want.’ Because you know what? There is something more important to me—my relationship with Jesus Christ and caring about others. More than this baseball. This baseball is nothing to me."

Pujols has been inviting people — not anyone who actually has been the recipient of a blood or urine sample, mind you — to test him since at least May 17, 2006, when he told the AP that Major League Baseball could test him for illegal drugs "every day if they want." It has now been 1029 days (or 2 years, 9 months, 22 days) since that interview in which he added "I’m happy with my career so far and what I’ve done in my career, and I don’t need anything extra." Gosh, it seems like we’ve heard that before somewhere. At any rate, it’s time for Pujols to put up — as in a blood sample — or shut up. We can only read this tripe so many times.

"I think deep down he does care," his wife, Dee Dee, says. "He really cares…. He wants to be a hero to people."

If Albert wants to be a hero — a real hero, not just a rich guy who gives a lot of money and things to people, as generous as that is — he’ll do the heroic thing and step across the Union line and voluntarily subject himself to the most stringent battery of tests. There’s nothing stopping him except ostracization from Don Fehr’s parties. As we’ve written before, the truly heroic Jackie Robinson faced a lot harsher consequences for what he did.

"They tried to ruin my image," he says [on why he felt so betrayed when a local television station sent a crew to his St. Louis restaurant to follow up on the charge that Pujols was named in baseball's Mitchell Report].

Perhaps the media acted irresponsibly. But let’s be honest about it: Baseball, from the commissioner’s office to the Players Union to owners to the clubhouse attendants — and, of course, the players — has done and is doing plenty to ruin its own image without any help from the media. Speaking of the local media, we’ll give a sawbuck to the first St. Louis CAG (Clubhouse-Access Guy) who asks Pujols why he doesn’t voluntarily get tested (heck, we could probably afford to make it $100). For his part, Posnanski peppers his hagiography with uncritical biographical narratives and pop-culture references. So much for hard-hitting journalism and speaking truth to power.

"I fear God too much to do any stupid thing like that."

If Pujols fears God, then why worry about standing up to a little human institution called the Players Union, in which Donald Fehr only thinks he’s God?

He also knows that more or less every player has denied using steroids. "We are under a dark cloud," he says. "Nobody believes anything [players say]."

That’s exactly right. Posnanski might’ve rejoined, "Can you give us one reason why we should believe you guys?" No one believes anything players say, so perhaps they should try doing something. You know, instead of, well, talking more.

"I make fun of him all the time," Dee Dee says. "It’s like he’s as pure a guy as you could possibly get."

Wow, we’re convinced. It doesn’t get any more compelling than testimony from a player’s wife.

"You know how I want people to remember me?" Pujols asks. "I don’t want to be remembered as the best baseball player ever. I want to be remembered as a great guy who loved the Lord, loved to serve the community and who gave back. That’s the guy I want to be remembered as when I’m done wearing this uniform. That’s from the bottom of my heart."

This is starting to sound a little too much like The Mark McGwire Defense, minus the God talk, for our tastes. Notice that there’s no mention of playing the game with integrity or playing it "clean," but only the red herring of "giving back," plus the modest-sounding denial of courting greatness.

Pujols knows that he cannot make people believe him. It is like Dee Dee says: "People just have to make up their own minds."

Yep. We’re going to. We’d be happy to change it. But even God worked miracles in history to prove that he was trustworthy of people’s faith. Albert Pujols needs to give us something to work with before simply demanding blind faith.

"The guy can do anything," La Russa says.

Yes, he can. But will he?

I think the guys who voted, the baseball writers, know what they’re doing.

– Albert Pujols

Of course, it’s always nice to throw the electors a bone when you win. Which raises the inherent problem with the BBWAA, most of whom earn their living relying on access to players: Some voters are literally too close to the action in that their personal experience with players can color their vote. And it doesn’t always even matter whether or not someone is "a nice guy" or "a good interview." Sometimes it’s merely that the player draws the writer in on an emotional level that shapes the way the writer can carry out his professional duties (think Howard and his "story"). Furthermore, writers (bloggers included) feel a need to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, and with increasing competition from bloggers, many mainstream journalists are always looking for a way to provoke readership and earn names for themselves. Having both the right to vote and the right to write about it seems like a slight conflict of interest.

Another concern: A player’s financial gain is often tied to his MVP finish. Are clubhouse writers able to separate themselves from the reality that they have the power to help kick in a bonus that itself can dwarf their own salary? And that brings up another point: When something so important contractually — the vote was a $200,000 swing for Pujols — is left to the inconstant minds of the BBWAA, why would a player allow his agent to include such an incentive in his contract? By the same token, why would a ballclub consent to it? If Pujols had had the season that Howard had and had still won the award, the Cardinals would’ve been rightly upset that they had to shell out a couple hundred grand extra for someone who wasn’t even in the league’s top 10 players.

I see it this way: Someone who doesn’t take his team to the playoffs doesn’t deserve to win the MVP.

– Pujols, 2006

Thanks for opening the door that was already shut. I said it in 2006. That guy misunderstood my words. And what I said is the players who take their teams to the playoffs should have some consideration to win the MVP.

– Pujols, 2008

Pujols’s comments from two years ago were silly at the time, inasmuch as he didn’t even need to make that argument then (he was better than Howard in most every way). But they’re even sillier now that he has defeated Howard, though we’re still not sure why Howard was the runner-up. Apparently, being on a playoff team — even if you play only 53 games for them — is important to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writers who voted. Rick Hummel had Manny Ramirez #2 on his ballot, which is only slightly less ridiculous than Joe Strauss putting Howard second (Hummel had Howard third; why is it that poor Rich Campbell of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star has to apologize for leaving Howard off his ballot when far worse votes are being cast?)

The only serious metric we’ve found that Howard is best in is OBI% — Others Batted In rate — with 20.2%. That’s very good. But second was Bengie Molina with 19.3%; does anyone think that if Molina had knocked in four more runners that he would’ve been MVP-worthy? By the way, by comparison, Pujols was third in OBI% in 2006; Howard, who won the MVP that year, was 15th. After adjusting for intentional walks in 2008, Howard’s lone lead is even slimmer:

Seriously, can someone make or link to a strong case for Howard? (And please don’t bother citing raw RBIs or home runs in September.)

The most important statistic to me is batting average.

– Pujols

You’re killing us, Albert! As long as his batting average contributes to his On-Base Percentage, in which Pujols set a career-high in this season, it’s fine with us. Just don’t tell Albert that a big reason for his .357 BA was an uncanny — even for him — BABIP of .340. For his career:

A player’s BABIP is usually between .290-.300, and Pujols’s career mark before 2008 was .316. It’s safe to say that, even though he hit a lot of line drives (22.4%), his 2008 BA was a bit inflated by "luck."

I’m proud of the fact I’ve hit over .300 every year in my career. It’s a hard thing to do over a full season, and it gets tougher every year because of all the good young pitchers coming into the league who all seem to throw 95 mph gas. When you look at what [Braves third baseman] Chipper Jones hit this year and what I hit, I really think it’s a great accomplishment. It’s something I really appreciate, and I think a lot of hitters appreciate.

– Pujols

Taking pride in hitting .300 every year is akin to Gred Maddux taking pride in having a WHIP of 1.35 or less each of the last 20 years; It tells a little about what the player can do, but really misses the forest for the trees.

Every time you say that you run the risk of disrespecting guys. When you have really solid seasons from guys like Troy (Glaus), Ryan and Rick (Ankiel), you can’t overlook it. But this guy is so respected. It may appear disrespectful for other guys, but it’s the ultimate respect for Albert.

– Tony La Russa

When Pujols earns a career-high 34 intentional walks, and the Cardinals are second in the league in runs created, it’s hard to make the argument that a team priority should be another big hitter to protect Pujols. It’s not as much fun to watch Albert walk, but if the IBBs helped yield Pujols’s highest OBP season and in turn allowed others to generate runs, that’s a good situation.

You’ve got to take your walks, but it’s hard because you want to swing the bat when you’re up at the plate. I think I’ve gotten better every year when it comes to strike-zone judgment. I’m trusting my hands more to wait that extra little bit before committing to swing.

– Pujols

Pujols set a career high in walk rate (16.6 %), easily eclipsing his previous high of 14.9% set in 2007. That’s understandable, given that Pujols saw a four-year low (the timeframe for which Fangraphs publishes these things) in the percentage of pitches he sees inside the strike zone. That didn’t stop him from going outside the zone, though: He also had a four-year high in percentage of pitches outside the strike zone that he swung at. But he also had a high in contact rate for those pitches. These numbers problably confirm something we already suspected: With a four-year high in overall contact rate (90.1%), Pujols is simply becoming a better hitter.

I think I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career. The biggest I made was that night in Washington. We were so close to first place. I didn’t want to come out of the lineup. … The swing in Cincinnati pulled on me. I’m glad it was only 10 or 15 days.

– Pujols

If Pujols were ever to apply for a job in the real world, he certainly will know how to turn that "What’s your biggest weakness?" question into a positive.

We’ve got a couple weeks to show the team we really are and not the team that’s been around the last week or two. It’s unfortunate what has happened. Nobody has a good taste in their mouths. We’re sick of losing, pretty much. It’s almost a boiling point.

– Ron Villone

The Mientkiewicz kerfuffle Sunday afternoon serves as an apt microcosm for the "team that’s been around the last week or two." Rather than assertively and instantly insisting to the umpire that Doug "A-Rod" Mientkiewicz had obstructed him, Aaron Miles slunk around in dejection, while Tony La Russa made a pro forma visit to the infield and even tried to appeal to the enemy, Mientkiewicz, who stood sneering at him from second base. The bullpen and bench belatedly jogged onto the scene to defend Miles, who didn’t even stick around to defend himself. And sadly, it appeared that the most energy that the team expended was in restraining Villone from actually doing something. With 13 games left and four and a half games back in the wild-canard race, the Cardinals still technically have a life. But if Sunday’s "getaway" performance is any indication, the season is unofficially over.

With the crazed animal that Ronny is, that’s not exactly the guy you want to make mad. I went after the glove to try to knock the ball out. … We were up five, and I think we all know that a five-run lead for us is not exactly insurmountable.

– Mientkiewicz

He may have resembled Alex Rodriguez Sunday, but Minky is at least funny.

The guy swiped — he swiped it. He’s acting like he’s innocent. The tape doesn’t lie. A swipe like that — that’s a double play, that’s what it is.

– TLR

If you’ll excuse the political reference, La Russa fussing over Mientkiewicz is as pathetic as a presidential candidate fretting over his opponent’s VP pick.

That’s just terrible pitcher’s luck. But I’ve seen us have an inning like that and the other club hangs with it for nine, and if you don’t keep adding, they beat you. Clubs have beaten us [that way]. That was just tough pitcher’s luck. It didn’t describe Brad Thompson. He never gave in. That’s just the way it was.

– TLR

I just think it’s a string of bad luck — three starts in a row that have gone bad. I definitely don’t think it’s going to keep going. It’s just one of those things. We ran into a team, and they were hotter than us.

– Brad Thompson

Kudos to La Russa for recognizing the truth about Thompson’s outing: He was the victim of one of the team’s worst defense/luck games this season:

Indeed, the starting pitching this past weekend in Pittsburgh was snakebitten: the team’s DER (Defensive-Efficiency Ratio) for the starters was a bad-luck/bad-fielding .510 (the team’s season average behind all pitchers is .696; league average is .693). When only about half of the balls hit in play are turning into outs, it’s going to be a frustrating weekend.

If the season has no other positives, the silver lining is that at least some people have learned the lesson of "luck" when it comes to evaluating a pitcher’s performance. Of course, if it had been learned earlier, Anthony Reyes might still be wearing the birds on the bat.

It’s the same exact game. Believe me, I thought, ‘He’s pitching Friday, no, he’s pitching Sunday, no, he’s pitching Friday.’ I was kicking myself for that. Except I started thinking, ‘This has been his pattern.’ If that’s part of it, then I’ll take my part of the heat. But it’s happened enough to where he’s got to figure out something. We’ve got to figure it out. Because it’s not good enough.

– TLR on Joel Pineiro starting Friday

As with Thompson Sunday (55 FIGS) and Wainwright Saturday (60 FIGS), Pineiro actually didn’t pitch badly on Friday (55 FIGS) — that’s only slightly below-average for the team’s starts this season (57 FIGS). And the fact that Aaron Miles and Adam Kennedy are doing time in right field and Brian Barden playing first base isn’t going to improve matters (We did notice TLR opting to play Brendan Ryan at short and Izturis at third base in Saturday’s game).

We didn’t play good. If you want to say it was one of our worst three games of the year, if you’re looking at this series, yeah, it was pretty bad.

– Miles

It wasn’t the worst in terms of hitting, though it was pretty far down on the list of production: In the three-game Pittsburgh series, the Cardinals averaged 3.89 runs created. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the three-game series with the Brewers from July 22-24, in which they created just 1.95 runs. But then, they were facing two of the league’s best hurlers in CC Sabathia and Ben Sheets. Not to take too much away from Paul Maholm, Ian Snell and Jason Davis, but the Cardinal batters can probably take some of the weekend’s blame.

But the defensive play and "luck" are another matter. It was easily the worst three-game stretch in terms of DER for the club’s starters this year:

Notably, the bad play/luck started before the team arrived in Pittsburgh, with Kyle Lohse and Braden Looper being the victims of .579 and .500 DER in the Chicago series. The Cardinals may not be able to control the bad “luck” part of the equation, but to the extent that they do control their fate, they can start playing with some passion. It would be a shame to end such a surprising and rollicking season on such a feckless and dour note.

When you start pointing to the dugout and saying all the things that he was saying, a guy that respects the game like I myself, I didn’t appreciate it and I had to let him know. I guess he did us a favor. He woke up a sleeping giant.

– Albert Pujols

I was caught up in the heat of the moment, got excited a little bit and they took offense to it. A couple of words were said back and forth, but I’m not going to be intimidated by anybody. I may have looked over there, but I didn’t look at anybody in particular.

– Carlos Villaneuva

Could be real interesting to see what happens with Pujols due up first.

– broadcaster Dan McLaughlin, in the top of the 8th

Is it deja vu all over again for the Brewers? Last year, they imploded down the stretch with their impetuousness, most memorably when they lost to the Cardinals 7-3 on Sept. 26 and reliever Seth McClung and manager Ned Yost were ejected. Perhaps Villaneuva’s shenanigans last night less directly impacted the game on the field, but they had the same result of leading to his team’s demise. Here’s hoping that the trend continues and that the Brewers gradually spiral out of control as September approaches.

Huge. It’s a huge difference. Three and a half is like a series — a series away from leading it. We’ve still got 28 games left. That’s plenty of time.

– Ryan Franklin

It’s still very much anyone’s race. Indeed, here’s what recent history reveals about playoff teams as of Aug. 27:

• 2007: Eventual wild card Rockies were 4.5 games back of the wild card leader
• 2006: Eventual division winner Padres were 2.0 games back of the division leader
• 2005: Eventual wild card Astros were 1.0 game back of the wild card leader
• 2004: Eventual wild card Astros were 6.0 games back of the wild card leader

Being "second place" in the wild card race would actually seem to be a good position for the Cardinals to be in at this point, since in three of the last four years that team has come back to "win" the wild card.

There’s days we’re not good enough, but we really try. We have more talent than people think.

– TLR

It’s important for TLR and other observers not to confuse not being "good enough" with not being "lucky" enough. We’d contend that in Tuesday’s game, the Cardinals weren’t so much outplayed by a better team (perhaps they were in the ninth inning) as simply bitten by some bad fortune. Tuesday’s loss can be attributed to the teams’ respective BABIP rates (certainly not because they came out "flat," as one ridiculous postgame allegation had it): They had a way-below-expected BABIP (.290-.300) of only .250, whereas the Brewers had an above-normal BABIP of .389. Indeed, as "unlucky" as the Cardinals were Tuesday, their "luck" turned in Wednesday’s game as their balls in play fell at a .393 rate (Milwaukee’s offensive luck continued, with a .345 BABIP). Did the Cardinals suddenly become a better team? As Kramer once said, not bloody likely.

I have no comment. Adam pitched a great game.

— Yadier Molina on Villaneuva

Yadier is perhaps the bizarro Villaneuva: He’s, in an all-to-overused modifier, classy. He’s also honest: Adam Wainwright did pitch a great — as in a 63 FIGS — game.

I like going on contact. It’s a good, aggressive play. It’s a difficult play for an infielder because it’s not something we do very often. I’ve seen it work out a lot more times than it doesn’t. I like the play.

– Troy Glaus

Indeed, it worked out for the Cardinals (in Tuesday’s game, the "luck" might’ve broken the other way). They certainly put themselves in position for it to work, with brilliant maneuvering to have Aaron Miles in to face Shouse. Though JJ Hardy threw low, Kendall seemed to misplay it. Rather than stepping forward to block the plate and "come to" the ball, he hung back, which required him to play the ball on a short hop.

Kudos also to Glaus for improving his chances to score in the first place by advancing to second on his game-tying hit prior to Molina’s at-bat. And Glaus appreciated the good baseball from Yadier: He enthusiastically applauded Yadier for his unintentional-intentional groundout to second. Normally, that kind of "productive out" is overrated (such as early in a game), it in the eighth inning of a tie game, it was a useful play (it increased their WPE from 75.0% to 75.2%), given that the Cardinals needed to play only for one run at that point.