October 9, 2013
Painters refresh the Cardinals logo on the Busch Stadium field, during a team workout session in St. Louis on October 8, 2013. St. Louis will take on the Pittsburgh Pirates in Game 5 of the National League Division Series on October 9. UPi/Bill Greenblatt
After four games, this National League division series couldn’t be closer.
The St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates have played to a 2-2 standoff. Each team hammered the other in a blowout victory. Each team won a tense and dramatic game that wasn’t settled until the final two innings.
The Cardinals have 15 runs and 24 hits.
The Pirates have 14 runs and 23 hits.
The Cardinals are batting .192; the Pirates .189.
The Cards have a 3.09 ERA — just a tad lower than the Pirates’ 3.34 ERA.
The Bucs and Cards have played each other 23 times this season, with Pittsburgh winning 12 times to the Cardinals’ 11 wins.
So here they are, two proud NL Central rivals, about to compete for the 24th and final time during the 2013 season, in Game 5 tonight at Busch Stadium.
“We’ve seen a lot of each other,” Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said.
Sold-out Busch Stadium will be filled with red — and filled with dread.
The winner sprays champagne and advances to the NL championship series to play the Los Angeles Dodgers. There’s no bubbly for a losing team that will soak in sadness as their season ends.
This is a drama without a script, but I think it’s reasonable to expect a well-pitched game tonight when Adam Wainwright faces Pirates’ rookie starter Gerrit Cole.
On the Pittsburgh side, they're probably looking at Wainwright's poor start in last year's NLDS Game 5 at Washington and hoping that it signals a vulnerability in big games. But the bad night was indicative of Wainwright's inconsistency and arm-fatigue issues in his first year back after missing all of 2011 with elbow surgery.
Wainwright pitched masterfully to beat the Pirates in Game 1. The Pirates have dropped hints that they'll try to lay off Waino's famous curve this time around. "Easier said than done," Pirates second baseman Neil Walker suggested.
Cole was outstanding in suppressing the Cardinals in Game 2. But as good as he is, Cole has gone beyond six innings in only six of 20 starts this season. The Cardinals will probably have to deal with the Pirates' impressive gauntlet of relievers once Game 5 rolls into the seventh inning.
Including the division series, Wainwright has 20 wins and a 2.90 ERA this season. After correcting a delivery flaw that made it easy for opponents to detect he’d be throwing a curveball, Wainwright is 5-0 with a 1.71 ERA in six starts. That includes a 1.31 ERA in five Busch starts.
But it would be a big mistake for anyone on the St. Louis side of the aisle to underestimate Cole. The Cardinals scratched him for only two hits and one run in his muscular six-inning performance in Game 2. That was Cole’s ninth consecutive quality start, and he’s pitched to a 2.20 ERA over that stretch. It's going to be fun to watch Cole and the Cardinals' Michael Wacha go at it over the next decade or so.
Cole is for real, advanced beyond his years. He's unlikely to be shaken by the magnitude of tonight's sweepstakes game.
Wainwright is a talented pitcher and tremendous competitor, and I’d be surprised to see him fail to deliver a money start tonight.
Looking at this game from a St. Louis perspective, here’s my concern: the Cardinals’ dragging offense.
After attacking Pirates starter A.J. Burnett in a 9-1 romp in Game 1, the Cardinals scored six runs and batted .151 over the next three games and went one for 11 with runners in scoring position. And four of their six runs were generated by homers, a sign that the lineup isn’t stringing together hits and walks.
The Cardinals beat up Burnett for seven earned runs in two innings, and here’s what they’ve done against the other Pirates pitchers: 18 hits in 114 at-bats (.158).
Pittsburgh pitchers other than Burnett have a 1.63 ERA in this series.
With a solo homer and two-run single, Carlos Beltran pretty much was the Cardinals’ offense in the 5-3 Game 3 loss. In Game 4, Matt Holliday walloped a two-run homer for the only burst of offense in support of Wacha’s exceptional pitching in the 2-1 victory.
I know the Cardinals are missing the injured Allen Craig, who had 97 RBIs when he went down on Sept. 4. But with Craig out the Cardinals averaged 5.3 runs over their final 23 regular-season games. They’re obviously capable of breaking out.
Maybe the STL hitters will reawaken in Game 5 with a second look at Cole. The Cardinals never had faced him before Game 2, and at least they have a limited working knowledge of what to expect this time.
“I think it’s going to help,” Cardinals first baseman Matt Adams said. “We’ll have the video on him facing us, and we can go in there and see what he did against us the first time, and try and develop a game plan off that.
"We're going to know how the ball is coming out of his hand, and we're going to see what his tendencies are, and we'll go from there."
In Game 2, Cole commanded the strike zone with five different pitches: four-seam fastball, sinker, changeup, slider and curve. He had a strike percentage of at least 60 percent on each variety of pitch.
“He didn’t miss,” Adams said. “He was locating everything.”
If Cole does that again, Wainwright won’t be able to give up more than a run or two. And if Game 5 game comes down to a bullpen battle, consider this: The Cardinals have scored one run in 15 1/3 innings of at-bats against the Pittburgh ’pen.
The offense has bogged down since leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter began to spiral on Sept. 25. He’s reached base seven times in his last 34 plate appearances since then.
The Cards' offense is suffering from Carpenter's downturn. Including the division series, the Cardinals are 66-24 when Carpenter scores a run this season. And they’re 29-42 when he doesn’t.
Matheny believes his hitters are taking the right approach, and he expects their fortunes to soon change.
That includes Carpenter.
“I’m seeing us grinding out at-bats,” Matheny said. “And in key situations, (I see) guys putting together good at-bats and just not finding the spots for the ball to land.
“But I like the way they’re going about it. Still not swinging at a lot of balls out of the zone. That’s important for our club. And then those fighting at-bats. Which carries over to the question about Carpenter.
“We’re seeing some of those from him, too. He’s working some of the deeper counts, it looks like he’s seeing the ball better. What he’s guilty of is caring too much and feeling like he’s got to do something extra special.
“And that’s a trap that many young players can fall into ... he’s such a catalyst for our offense. But it doesn’t all rest on his shoulders. He’s getting back to that point of just realizing he needs to do what he’s done all season long, which is plenty good enough.”
Matheny added, “He’s close. It would be a good time (in Game 5) for him to start trusting himself.”
That’s the question going into Game 5.
In Wainwright we trust.
I just don’t know how much we can trust the Cardinals’ offense.
We’re about to find out.
I expect the Pirates to be a tough out; they will make the Cardinals earn this. Road teams have done well in the fifth game of division-series play over the past two seasons, with the home team losing five of seven Game 5 showdowns.
By late Wednesday night, the Cards will be turning their attention to the Dodgers and the NLCS, or they’ll be turning off the lights at Busch Stadium until 2014.
Watch "Breakfast with Bernie," each weekday, sponsored by Papa John's, where you get 40 percent off regular price menu items the day after a Cardinals victory. Use promo code "CARDSWIN" at checkout. 10% of purchase price benefits Siteman Cancer Center.
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