St Louis Cardinals

After a week or so of below-average baseball, the Cardinals still find themselves in second place in the NL Central.

It seems like a simple concept, bordering on cliche: as Albert Pujols goes, so go the St. Louis Cardinals.

The past week has made this as clear as it has ever been. 

Entering the week, Pujols was riding a slump, at one point going 15 straight at-bats without a base hit. After breaking the hitless streak with an opposite way single in Florida against the Marlins, Cardinals' color commentator Al Hrabosky made a prediction that Pujols would get into a hot streak.

ST. LOUIS—Struggles. That’s been the single word of choice from St. Louis Cardinals’ manager Tony La Russa the past week or so. After a three-game slide to one of the worst teams in the National League, there isn’t much else you can say.

That doesn’t mean that there were some positives to come out of Sunday’s affair, albeit few and far between. Skip Schumaker and Colby Rasmus led the game off with back-to-back hits, and Albert Pujols drove them both in on a rare two-RBI sacrifice fly. 

ST. LOUIS: When St. Louis Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa walked into the room for his postgame press conference Monday night, he had a look of frustration, exhaustion, and disgust.

After a poor homestand against the Cincinnati Reds, in which the Cardinals split the four-game set, they have started off a four-game series with the Colorado Rockies by getting blasted 11-4 and 10-1, respectively.

ST. LOUIS—LeBron James might be “The King”, but in St. Louis, locals will tell you there’s a more important person in town, “El Hombre”.  Albert Pujols has offered the sport of baseball one of its most amazing spectacles of talent ever.

I was watching the Giants vs. Nationals earlier today in the press box to see if Randy Johnson would complete a historic feat, 300 wins.  The mammoth lefty did, indeed, do so by pitching six innings of unearned ball. 

It’s no secret that the St. Louis Cardinals’ bats have been ice-cold lately.

Stellar pitching has kept them on the heels of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central standings, but with recent injuries to both the pitching staff and lineup, they will most certainly need to find a more balanced attack to win on a consistent basis.

They may be getting the timing right, though, with an eight-game homestand starting tonight. 2008 All-Star outfielder Ryan Ludwick will be taking the night off after testing out his body in the San Francisco series.

The St. Louis Cardinals are not scuffling, but they aren't red hot either.

The Cardinals have two big holes to fill sooner rather than later, and by "later" I mean the July 31st trade deadline.

The first hole that needs to be filled is a third head to the mighty pitching dragon.

Chris Carpenter is an ace—he bleeds dominance. Adam Wainwright is in that same class as well, when he is right. The only downside is that both have their problems—more so Carpenter than Wainwright.

Continuing his steamroll to the overall lead in votes received for the All-Star Game, St. Louis Cardinals Albert Pujols is one of two players to have received more than 1 million votes so far, according to the latest poll results released by Major League Baseball on Monday afternoon.

Pujols has received 1,240,395 votes, more than twice as many as the second-place first baseman in the NL.

The story of the past week for St. Louis Cardinals fans was twofold: the continued success of the starting pitching and the return of Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick.

The week began with a Sunday finale against the in-state rival Kansas City Royals. Joel Pineiro was solid in his seven innings, giving up just three runs. The Cardinal offense could not produce, however, as the Royals' three runs proved to be enough for the victory.

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The Mariners started off the 2009 red-hot and gave us all a glimmer of false playoff hope when they were a top the AL West at one point with a 15-10 record. We seemed to forget this was a team that was supposed to be in a full-blown rebuilding mode.