May 13, 2014
A little more than 650 miles away from their home town of St. Louis, two clearly perplexed life-long Cardinals fans take their seat at the local sports bar cautiously optimistic at their team’s chance of walking away with the win over a division rival who is below them in the standings. Forget that the lowly Pirates haven’t hosted a Sunday night game since 1996, they have snatched two games in a row over their beloved Cardinals and pose a viable threat for an early season sweep. Before you try to convince the red bird faithful that all has not been lost in 2014 one would have to unpack the unparalleled success with which this organization has been run over the past three years.
Aside from their current lineup which is stacked top to bottom, no team in the majors has developed their farm system quite like the Cardinals. Combine this system with acquisitions like Carlos Beltran and Matt Holliday and the Cardinals have had no reason to rush their top prospects into the majors. This has equated to them bringing in major league ready players like Michael Wacha, Allen Craig, Matt Carpenter and Matt Adams while further developing guys like Kolten Wong, and top prospect Oscar Taveras. This has allowed St. Louis to manage roster depth effectively while having the luxury to pick and choose which players they re-sign and which players they allow to enter into free agency. A common problem amongst the majority of the teams in the majors not called the Yankees or Dodgers and who have historically passed out lucrative contracts like people pass out candy on Halloween.
The shrewdness of Cardinal management and their exit strategy with Albert Pujols demands recognition. Rarely has a mutual break-up of this magnitude found a landing spot that everyone involved has happily accepted. The opportunity cost was far too great to keep Pujols, and what’s remarkable – a fan base that recognizes this. A fan base that lead the league in both overall attendance and average attendance per game in 2013. From the outside looking in its easy to attribute the Cardinals recent success to the perfect storm mentioned above… but history is clearly on the Cardinals side and has been for over 100 years with 19 World Series appearances -only the Yankees have more.
Even as their stars struggle the Cards find themselves only five games back of an overachieving Brewers team. Amanda Knox has a better chance of returning to Italy than Jhonny Peralta does of leading the team in home runs. And the Cardinals avoid the sweep despite a lack luster outing by Shelby Miller and doing everything in the ninth inning to give the game away. The perplexed fans leave the sports bar no less concerned then when they entered… if only someone could convince them that their Cardinals are going to be just fine.
