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.

Joe Posnanski interviewed Albert Pujols for the cover article in the upcoming March 16, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated. Today we entered the time machine known as pre-dated internet posting and read the article. Here are our reactions to a few selected passages.

"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.