Okay, let’s just start with the hat-tipping, because frankly, I think it’s due in this case. Chris Carpenter was simply amazing. He led the Cards to a 5-0 victory for a 2-1 series lead. The Tigers didn’t get very deep in the counts, but he didn’t really give them any chance to work a count even WHEN they tried. (Which wasn’t always, let’s be fair here).

Carpenter aside, St. Louis pitchers couldn’t hold the Tigers to the paltry number they have without some help. The batters just haven’t been patient. They’re not known for being patient, but they’ve been even worse than normal, as Bilfer points out. Today, the first six batters reached base approximately zero times, give or take zero. Curtis Granderson, Placido Polanco and Pudge Rodriguez are 0-for-the-World-Series. I just don’t mean hitless. They haven’t touched first base safely. Granderson and Pudge have both grounded into a double play, too. Magglio Ordonez at least has a number on the board: .200. Basically, if you’re looking for any good news at all, if you looked at those numbers and knew the Tigers played three games, you’d assume they were down, 0-3. But it’s only 1-2. Not the ideal position, But certainly not the end of the world.

This doesn’t necessarily mean the batters have to break out of the slump. There’s no guarantees of that. You hope the batters get back into it, but just because they haven’t been hitting doesn’t mean they have to start hitting. If pressed, I’d say this is probably the low point for the team. It certainly feels like a low point. But can we say for sure it will be a low point and not a low plateau? Certainly not. It’s pretty awful. It’s got Jim Leyland talking about lineup changes.

The defense has been awful, too. Okay, that’s probably an overstatement. The defense by pitchers not named Kenny Rogers has been awful. Today, it didn’t seem like the team defense was all that bad. Certainly, it didn’t feel like typical Tigers defense, but you can’t really point and say it stunk. Joel Zumaya’s errant throw when attempting to get the lead runner at third? That was awful. Certainly, St. Louis has played better. There were a few times the Tigers got nice contact, but the Cards’ stepped up and made the plays. They are continuing that run of extremely good defense — way over their regular season heads. But again, there’s no rule that says that has to end. Maybe it ends. Maybe it doesn’t.

Finally, I’ll say Tigers pitching has been decent. Not perfect. But I thought Nate Robertson did a nice job and came pretty close to getting out of the game unscathed after loading the bases with no outs. He allowed two runs in five innings. Zumaya caused his own two unearned runs. He did seem to be rusty. Fernando Rodney just seemed to be Fernando Rodney. Usually good, but not always.

The problem isn’t that they lost. With Carpenter on the mound, it’s going to be a tough game to win. But like Saturday, the depressing factor was how they lost. After falling behind in a close game, the Tigers just seem to have a mental lapse here, a physical lapse there, and suddenly, there’s no way they can get back in the game.

But I’m not throwing in the towel. At this point, it could be a 3-0 Cardinals lead. St. Louis has been the better team in the Series. Detroit has had underperforming defense, awful offense, and pitching that could be better. But the Tigrer are only down 2-1 in the Series? That doesn’t sound like it’s time to worry yet. It sounds like if they play Tigers baseball, they claw right back into things. And if they don’t, we’ll just be stuck congratulating St. Louis on a job well done before the weekend.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 2:23 am and is filed under St. Louis Cardinals, World Series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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