The World Champion... Cardinals?

Frick. This is probably some kind of karma biting me in the ass for getting to see the Steelers win a Super Bowl. It's no secret how much I dislike the Cardinals so we won't even get into that. Let's look at the fantastically prescient things I've said about the Cards this year.

June 13th-
I know I'm upsetting the baseball gods just by posting this, but these are not your typical St. Louis Cardinals that are limping into PNC Park for an early week series.

October 4th-
St. Louis is lucky to even be here with the way they finished the season and I don't think they'll stick around for long.

I'm an idiot.

Oh holy hell, David freaking Eckstein just won the MVP trophy. I'm gonna go barf. FJM is all over this revolting development.

Back to the task at hand, this team is better than people gave them credit for. They won 205 games in '04 and '05 and after their defeat of the Pirates on September 1st, they were 72-61 which is an 88 win pace. If they'd won 88 games, no one would be making a huge deal about their regular season. Down the stretch they rested Edmonds a ton to get him in shape for the playoffs. It almost cost them the playoffs, but it might've won them the World Series. In the World Series, they looked like they'd been there before (which many of them had, either with the '04 Cards teams, other teams, or both). I know that's a terrible cliche that I would usually roast a writer for using, but the Tigers made 8 errors in five games. They were nervous errors that good teams don't make and they didn't lose any of these games by a lot. They swung at everything at the plate and by the end of the series, Sean Casey was their best hitter. Casey was ripping the cover off the ball, but he was the only player that was doing it. Maybe it's surprising that the Cards won this year given their September, but the Pujols/Edmonds/Rolen/Carpenter Cardinal teams have been among the best in baseball the last three years, NL or otherwise, and it shouldn't be surprising that they eventually won a World Series. I know this is all a lot easier to say in hindsight, but it is true.