After 17 days in quarantine and 11 double-headers, St. Louis Cardinals reach playoffs
After 58 games, 11 doubleheaders, 22 positive tests for COVID-19, and 17 resultant days of team-wide mandatory quarantine, the St. Louis Cardinals qualified for baseball’s postseason on Sunday afternoon with a 5-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers.
“The right way (to celebrate) is to wear your mask, to social distance as best you can and just be grateful for what everybody has done,” Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak said. “It was a real simple message to the players, staff, and really just our overall gratitude for keeping this together.
“You think back to eight days quarantined in Milwaukee, start, stops, rental cars to Chicago, multiple doubleheaders, I think 10 or 11. No one ever complained. I’ve been a part of amazing clubs in my career. This is my 25th year with the Cardinals. But I couldn’t be more proud of a group of people than this. This was by far the most daunting and difficult year any of us have ever been through.”
Perhaps the most unthinkable season in Cardinals history yielded the most easily conceivable result, as St. Louis emerged from the year’s crucible to secure their 15th MLB playoff berth since the current ownership assumed full control for the 1996 season, and the second in two full years under manager Mike Shildt.
Harrison Bader’s fourth inning home run smashed through a prop painting belonging to Fredbird, perched in Big Mac Land. It was the emphatically unlikely exclamation point on a season that was impossible to predict, appropriately shattering the design in progress.
“Let me put it like this,” Bader laughed. “Last year Paul (DeJong) took out the (Big Mac Land) sign and he got the M, so I better get something out of it.”
The Cardinals had an opportunity Saturday to dispatch with Sunday’s drama, but as it has done for the better part of two years, the offense sputtered with only two hits in a shutout loss to the desperate Brewers. That loss ripped what could have been the last page from the storybook of Adam Wainwright’s career with the St. Louis Cardinals and instead placed the weight of the season on the shoulders of spot starter Austin Gomber.
Gomber lasted only four innings but had several key moments. He forced Ryan Braun to ground into a double play after a nine-pitch battle in the first inning, which brought the Cardinals dugout to its feet and the top of its collective voice.
In the fourth, after walking Christian Yelich and Braun to start the inning and throwing a wild pitch to Jedd Gyorko, he settled down and allowed only one run, which Bader’s moon shot in the bottom of the inning regained. It would be the last offensive highlight for the Cardinals, save for Yadier Molina grounding into a 5-4-3 triple play in the eighth inning in what may have been his last at bat at Busch Stadium for the Cardinals.
Molina joked that the two events were related in acknowledging the significance of the day. “Yeah, that’s why I hit into a triple play,” he said with a dry smile.
Rookie Dylan Carlson, surging in his second stint in the big leagues, also became a featured part of Sunday’s aggressive grasp at the postseason. He was moved from the last spot in the order to its middle, hitting cleanup for the first time in his Major League career, but it was Bader, from Carlson’s familiar eighth spot, who brought the hammer.
His third inning triple represented the first St. Louis base runner to reach second base — let alone third — since Friday night. Tyler O’Neill followed with a walk and a stolen base, and a hard ground ball from Kolten Wong back to the mound became a two-run throwing error. That drip became a steady flow, and the Cardinals surfed from there to San Diego.
They’ll face a Padres team which saw its top two starting pitchers, Mike Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet, each leave starts prematurely in the season’s last week with arm injuries. Though the San Diego offense boasts superstar talents Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis, Jr., questions on the mound will allow the Cardinals to play a style of game which suits them best.
Namely, lean on the pitching, scratch across a near-handful of runs, and catch anything that comes close to a glove.
Despite announcing early on Sunday that starter Dakota Hudson faces Tommy John surgery on Monday, the Cardinals line up with Jack Flaherty, Adam Wainwright and Kwang Hyun Kim available to start the three potential games of the Wild Card series in southern California.
The winner of that series will move into MLB’s bubble environment in Arlington, Tx. where they will take on the winner of the matchup between the Dodgers and, likely, these Brewers. It will be a fittingly odd end to a season which never quite fit at all.
“I just want to appreciate and pause what just happened and what these guys just accomplished,” Shildt said. “Getting through it could’ve been enough. But then making the playoffs and sticking to their goals of making the playoffs and figuring out a way to do it and find a solution is, for me, beyond impressive on a lot of levels.
“That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen or experienced with a group. I love this group.”
This story was originally published September 27, 2020 at 6:12 PM.
