As the 2011 season winds down, the St. Louis Cardinals’ hopes for postseason play dwindle with every passing day.

Photo Courtesy of Erika Lynn

To put it in perspective, the Cardinals were 10.5 games back of the Brewers going into the three game series at Milwaukee at the end of August. It was the beginning of a stretch where the Cards were playing the Brew Crew in six of their upcoming nine games. The Cardinals won five of those six games. Can’t ask for much more than that, especially considering the Cards swept the series at Miller Park. But the series in the middle was won by the Reds, and the Brewers didn’t miss a beat in sweeping the Astros in Houston. Going into action Friday, Milwaukee’s lead in the NL Central was still eight games.

It seems even when the Cardinals win, they can’t win.

But it was a real treat to be in attendance Wednesday night at Busch Stadium. Chris Carpenter hurled a masterpiece, tempers heated up when Nyjer Morgan offered up another dose of crazy, and the Cards won to end the season series with the Brewers at .500 (9-9). That’s something, I guess.

A bit of a side conversation about the Cardinals’ chances at the Wild Card has been going on for a few weeks, and the Atlanta Braves come to Busch Stadium with the lead in that category, too. But for the Cards to have even a chance at catching the Braves, they have to sweep them this weekend. It also helps that the Brewers are hosting the Philadelphia Phillies this weekend. If the Phils take care of business in Milwaukee and the Cards take care of business at home, the race could still be borderline interesting. Is it possible? Sure. But if winning five of six head-to-head against the Brewers barely made a dent, can we even expect a miracle at this point?

Maybe this weekend is the Cards’ one last shot at postseason play. Maybe they have one big run in them still, like the Colorado Rockies and Houston Astros of years past. But even if they don’t, the team can still be fun to watch. They still have guys named Carpenter and Pujols and Holliday and Molina taking the field every day. They’re not a bad team; they never were. They just played bad baseball too many times this season. The Cardinals will still finish above .500 on the year, which I suppose is an accomplishment considering they got a total of zero innings pitched from Adam Wainwright this year and blew 23 saves as a team to this point.

Still, making excuses helps no one. Every team faces adversity; some rise above it and others fall short. And every year is different. Sometimes an 83-win team wins the World Series, and sometimes a 90-win team doesn’t even make the playoffs. The Cardinals are likely to fall somewhere in between and have a real good chance of watching October baseball from their couches at home.

But it ain’t over ’til it’s over. If you need me, I’ll be on my couch watching the game.

Chris Reed also writes for InsideSTL Mondays and Bird Brained whenever he feels like it. Follow him on Twitter @birdbrained.

The Cardinals travel to the north side of Chicago to rekindle a rivalry that fans everywhere support. Cardinal fans hate the Cubs. Cubs fans hate the Cardinals. The teams always find a way to be competitive and to challenge each other despite the standings or the individual records.

The series will start Tuesday night and take on a intense side almost immediately as Chris Carpenter and Carlos Zambrano take to the mound. The two hurlers are some of the most hot-headed pitchers in recent memory. From hit batters to fights with water coolers, these two pitchers are listed in the dictionary under “intense”.

The problem here is not that Chris Carpenter is intense, it is that it has become the only thing that he is. Carpenter is still a solid pitcher and a guy that can carry a team through some rough patches, but most of his games have turned into a debate over two questions: Who is going to get hit by a Carpenter fastball and What will piss off Carp this time.

In his last outing against the Florida Marlins, tempers flared as the game was played, to be honest, the way it should be played. A potential double play was broken up with a hard slide that caused Yadier Molina to throw a ball into right field. Hanley Ramirez stayed near the plate after the play to check on the Cardinal backstop and Carpenter took exception. After words were exchanged, it appeared that our first question would be muttered and the second one had been answered.

Later in the game, on a play at first, Carpenter took exception to the umpire’s call of safe and turned to argue. This produced Tony LaRussa from the dugout, presumably to take up the argument for his starter. I am not sure I have ever seen a manager come to the field of play and simply say one or two sentences to his pitcher and turn and go back. I cannot tell you what was said, but it seemed to be along the lines of “the call was right, go pitch”.

Carpenter is a veteran pitcher that has brought home championships and Cy Young awards to St. Louis. He has always been a tough competitor and always been a pitcher that would stand up for his team. Recently, however, it seems that he is more focused on the unwritten rules of the game than he is on keeping the ball low in the strike zone and getting the ground ball outs that makes him successful.

The downside to all of this is showing up in his record and his consistently high pitches this season. A pitcher that has made a solid career in pitching low in the zone and inducing ground balls, Carpenter is surrendering more fly ball outs and struggling to keep his pitches low in the zone to get the ground balls that make him successful. His counterpart in Tuesday’s game is a glaring example of what can become of a pitcher that allows his emotions to run his game. The emotion can capture a player and become the focus of every moment of the game.

There becomes a real problem when fans, writers, opponents, and teammates start focusing on something other than the athletic ability of the player in front of them. Carpenter is still a talented player on a winning ball club. He is dangerously close to becoming a distraction for a team that is playing well above anyone’s expectations at this point, despite some needed adversity.

What does it take to get Chris Carpenter his first win and what advice should be given to the Cardinals starter? I think it’s simple:

Shut up and pitch.

Bill Ivie is the editor here at I-70 Baseball as well as the Assignment Editor for BaseballDigest.com.
He is the host of I-70 Radio, hosted every week on BlogTalkRadio.com.
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