Life Over Coffee

As anyone that knows me can attest, I am a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan, so when they clinched their 3rd spot in the Fall Classic since 2004 I was, shall we say, ecstatic. But now what? Tonight the Texas Rangers will be in St. Louis for Game 1 and what should we expect to see?

Let’s start with the Rangers. Their line up is deep and has power to burn, their starters are good (if inconsistent) and their bullpen has been fantastic. In many ways the Rangers and Cardinals look very similar on paper. If these teams have a weak spot I believe it is the starting pitching. In both the NLCS and the ALCS the starting pitching for these two regularly failed to get past the 5th inning. It is thanks to both bullpens being brilliant that either of these two are where they are! The Cardinals have a former Cy Young award winner in Chris Carpenter. While the Rangers don’t have an ace of this caliber on their staff, Carpenter has struggled at times throughout this postseason.

Their isn’t much to say about the relievers. Both teams have relied on their bullpens to get more outs overall throughout the Championship Series than their starters. This is generally not the way to find yourself in the World Series. They key to this series is going to be which team’s starters keep their team in the game the longest, and with these two powerhouse offenses at play this could be more difficult than it sounds.

The Cardinals lineup is anchored by Albert Pujols, and followed up by Lance Berkman and Matt Holliday, all of whom can easily turn any inning into a rout. The bottom of the Cards lineup features less power than the Rangers, but still consistently good hitters who can put together good at bats and make a pitcher work. The Rangers lineup features very similar three, four, and five guys, but the bottom of their order has more power than their counterparts in the Cardinals lineup. With the power available for these two teams it is going to be the job of the pitchers to stop the big inning from happening.

My belief is that whichever team is able to do this more successfully will come out the winner. It has always been a widely accepted fact that pitching and defense beat hitting when it comes to the postseason. This is why, while the Rangers lineup is daunting, I predict the Cards to win this one.

It is going to be a high scoring series, with pitchers being changed out like clockwork. I predict Cardinals in 7.