Who would have guessed sweep?

A sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Yet watching this game, you never would have guessed these two teams were competing for a division title.  The Cardinals are hot right now, playing like they can´t be stopped.  It´s the kind of play where good playing leads to luck and luck to good playing.  Bloop singles are landing in the right spot, balls hit by the other team are taking the right bounces and overall, things are just looking and feeling good right now for the St. Louis Cardinals.

You can´t say the same for the Brewers.  The are playing in a completely different zone right now.  And it´s not a good zone.  They´re missing balls and messing up plays.  Somebody like Fielder doesn´t just get up in the ump´s face all of the sudden.  Bad play leads to frustration which leads to more bad play.

Before this series I stated the best case scenario and the worst case scenario.  I was hoping to fall somewhere in between.  Instead we got the base case scenario with the sweep and now sit just 2 1/2 games behind the Brewers and first place.  The Cubs have helped us out by losing (thought they finally beat the Reds tonight) and we´re only 2 games behind them as well.

The good play has got to keep going through the rest of the weeknd, when we take on Chicago for a 4 game series at their place.  Something about those pesky Cubs is that even when they´re terrible, sometimes we have trouble beating them.  So, let´s hope we don´t have any trouble handling them tomorrow.  I´ve said since the beginning of the week that we need 5 of 7 on this road trip, which now can easily be accomplished by splitting with the Cubs.  That´s still the bare minimum of what we need to do.  Even better would be to take 3 of 4.  And if the Reds will handle the Brewers we could actually be in first by the end of the weekend.  I never thought I would have been saying that a couple of weeks ago when we were getting it handed to us by a couple of last place teams.

The best part of this continues to be the pitching.  Wainwright became the first Cardinal to 11 games tonight by mostly breezing through 7 frames.  He had one bases loaded jam, but managed to get out if it with a strikeout on the corner of plate to get Braun.  He gave up a mere 2 hits and walked 3, but most impressively had 8 K´s.

The offense wasn´t clicking quite the way it was a night ago, but it was certainly there enough.  Molina was the big star of the game, going 3 for 3, with a walk.  The game was actually too close for comfor most of the game, with it only being 3·0 going into the 9th.  Then the Cards really let loose.  Thanks to 3 walks by Derrick Turnbow and a couple of outfield miscues, the Cardinals kept putting runners on and pusshing them across.  Eckstein delivered the big hit, a bases clearing double (which should have been only 2 runs and an out) that eventually led to the 5·run 9th.

All in all, a really great game.

Tomorrow Looper tries to copy join Wainwright with an 11th win of his own.  The Cubs will sending Rich Hill to the mound 6·7 record.  Much like Gallardo from yesterday, Hill got roughed up the last time he faced off with the Rockies.  Hopefully, the Cardinals will have similiar success against him.

Until then, enjoy the sweep,

Tiffany