The defending World Champion St. Louis Cardinals roll into Cincinnati having taken two of three from the division rival Milwaukee Brewers.

The Milwaukee series gave fans a glimpse of the 2012 team.  David Freese, Rafael Furcal and Carlos Beltran proved that they can hit.  Adam Wainwright showed he was healthy, even if he did not have his best stuff.  Jason Motte showed that he is ready to be the team’s closer, at least as the season starts.

As they pull into the ballpark known as Great American, what do the Cardinals hope to see out of this series?

Jake Westbrook builds on his Spring
Let’s face it, most fans were perfectly okay with the thought of Jake Westbrook being relegated to the bullpen for the remainder of his Cardinal career, which most still hope is simply the end of this year.  However, Westbrook put together a fine Spring Training.

Spring stats are hard to judge.  It’s like the line from Major League 2 -

Rube Baker: Wow, Willie’s really got some power.
Lou Brown: Off a guy who’ll be bagging groceries in a couple of weeks!

So, who is the real Jake Westbrook?  The Cardinals could use some stability in the rotation and if Westbrook can be a fraction of the pitcher we watched as the flowers were beginning to bloom, it will go a long way towards that stability.

Sending a message early
I am not bold enough to say that a three game series in April will make or break this season.  There is a whole lot of baseball to be played.  But these two teams are coming together as the favorites to win this division.  A message can be sent here in the early going to let the other team know that they mean business.

As defending World Champs, the Birds need to send these messages quickly.  They are being counted against pretty regularly by most of the “experts” and a series win, or even a sweep, could silence some of their critics very early on.

The $200 Million man
The offseason and early part of 2012 has shown the world that teams are willing to dig deep and pay big for the big men at first base that can hold their lineup together.

Albert Pujols has admitted recently that the contract was on his mind last season.  Prince Fielder has started showing Detroit fans just what they paid for.  Now the focus fall on young Joey Votto and what he can continue to bring to the Reds.  The pressure is on his shoulders and, in my opinion, he will respond just as well as they need him to.  That being said, the Cardinals are going to see this young man facing off against them for a long time to come, someone will put a big step forward in establishing dominance in this series.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.
Follow him on Twitter here.

No one in the Cardinal organization was willing to call Thursday’s series finale a ‘must-win’ game. It sure felt that way. Although they have 6 games remaining with Milwaukee, potentially having to make up 6 games with only 43 to go presented a daunting task. Basically if the team played even with the Brewers for the other 37 games, then won all six head to head, they’d finish tied. A hard road to walk. St Louis absolutely had to have last night’s game. Thankfully their two biggest stars of the last decade rose to the challenge and delivered.

In retrospective, what did we learn from these recent games with Milwaukee?

It’s hard to win when you’re behind. Self-evident, I know, but still true. St Louis did not have a lead in this series until Berkman knocked in Jay with one out in the third inning last night. Here’s an interesting tidbit – the Cardinals led after 7 of the 28 innings played in this three game series. The previous series in Milwaukee? They led after 7 of the 29 innings played. At least in Milwaukee they led in every game (albeit it early in both the 1 and 2 August tilts), something they were not able to do at home. However, leading for less than 1/3 of the total innings played makes it tough to win more than one game.

Milwaukee starting pitching is better. Most folks suspected that would be true after the Brewers acquired Grienke and Marcum, and Wainwright went down for the season. Through 119 games, both clubs sport an identical team ERA with St Louis’ starters slightly better (3.88 to 3.90). Remove Milwaukee’s slipshod fielding and their starters rise well above (3.61 xFIP to 3.76 for St Louis). Even with the addition of Edwin Jackson the Brewer 5 are better top to bottom than the Cardinal hurlers. This became painfully clear during the series.

Milwaukee relief pitching is also better. A somewhat surprising result to this correspondent, because Milwaukee has self-detonated so often late in games in recent years. Before the addition of Francisco Rodriguez the Brewers bullpen had posted better fielding independent numbers than St Louis (3.53 to 3.94). K-Rod, despite his high pitch numbers, makes them that much better. In this series the Brewer bullpen threw 8 scoreless innings; Cardinal relievers allowed 4 runs in 6 innings. Bullpen performance decided Tuesday’s game.

Albert Pujols will not decide the NL Central. The cries are becoming increasingly more shrill – Pujols has to step up and produce! Four-hundred-sixty plate appearnaces of .284/.348/.539 and one broken arm later, it is unrealistic to think he’ll hit .400 over the next 2 months. Albert’s best month (by average) was June; he’s hit under .300 the rest of the season. Besides, it’s not as if Pujols morphed into Jason Bartlett for the 2011 season. His SLG places him in the NL top 10 – it’s tenth, but still. By comparison, Berkman is first and Holliday third. The Cardinal offense remains lethal.

After being out-played over six games by the hottest team in the NL, St Louis lost only 2 games in the standings. They are also the only team to beat Milwaukee during their current hot streak. Both of those facts are encouraging; if the Cardinals can beat them while their white-hot, they can beat them when they cool off. Milwaukee is not going to win 13 out of every 15 from now until the end of September. Overcoming a 4-game deficit in mid-August is entirely doable. Not easy, but doable.