As they square off in key series, Cardinals and Cubs are closer than standings say
St. Louis Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas went into pure sales mode on Sunday afternoon, following the team’s soporific loss to the Cincinnati Reds in the finale of their weekend series.
“These are the fun games,” he exhorted when asked about the upcoming visit by the Chicago Cubs. “Those rivalry games, though I’m sure there will be a lot of blue up there in the seats, hopefully there’s more red. I know it’s a midweek series, so, you know, hope the turnout is good. Hope people are here.
“Come to the game, boo the Cubs, get in their head. Give us the home field advantage. Let us take our shot here.”
Entering the series trailing the first-place Cubs by four and a half games, the Cardinals will not be able to fully make up the ground between the teams over the coming week. What they can do, however, is demonstrate that the month’s early swoon – including a loss of three of four games to the second-place Brewers in Milwaukee – was a bump in the road rather than a realistic reflection of the way the season is bound to resolve itself.
The Cubs have, largely, climbed to 15 games above .500 on the backs of teams who are barely trying to compete. The Baby Bears are a combined 18-4 against five of the six teams (Miami, the White Sox, Pittsburgh, Colorado and the Athletics) who enter the week in last place in their respective divisions, having not yet played the Baltimore Orioles.
They’re not responsible for either their schedule or the futility of a large chunk of the league, and one thing consistently good teams do is beat up on bad teams. Indeed, those results can be read as an indication that they truly are good as they appear to be, rather than some demonstration that they’ve been lucky to be where they are.
The Cardinals are 9-3 against last place teams, having not yet played Colorado, Miami or the Athletics. They also enter the week at precisely six games above .500, suggesting they have gotten just as fat, relatively speaking, against their schedule as the Cubs have against theirs, but with fewer bites at the apple.
There is no shortage of available numbers which can be sliced and diced in a way that flatters either or both of the two teams, but that comes with its own ray of hope for the Cardinals – despite the ground they would in theory need to make up to win the division, there is not a great deal that separates the clubs on paper.
“You’re not going to get it done over the course of the season with 22 or 23 guys,” Cardinals starter Sonny Gray said when asked about his team’s success in receiving contributions from multiple places on the roster. “You need 26 plus some, and everyone shows up when their number’s called.
“I think we have people on this team, whether you start that day or not, ready when their number’s called, and that’s the makings of the teams that can hold their weight.”
The Cubs slug at a mark that’s more than 50 points higher than the Cardinals, good for fourth in MLB. They measure as superior baserunners, but do trail St. Louis in both batting average and on base percentage, albeit by fractional margins. They also hold a superior ERA, though the Cardinals are nearly half a run better by fielding independent pitching – which suggests, among other things, a Cubs staff which is susceptible to surrendering more home runs (they are) and a Cardinals staff which has had a degree of poor batted ball luck (they have).
This series between the two teams, the first of the season, comes at the latest point in the calendar since 1997, when they also met for the first time on June 23. With a preposterous six doubleheaders and just as many trips bouncing back and forth to the east coast, the Cardinals have had a strangely scheduled start to the season which they have largely weathered, but which has manifested in strain as they slog through the impenetrable heat bubble that has descended upon their (and everyone else’s) march through the end of a long month.
Coming at this inflection point, nearly dead on the halfway mark of the season and after they’ve seen most of the league’s behemoths, the Cubs will represent a test for the Cardinals, whose leadership has long remained pointedly, publicly agnostic about the individual importance of select games throughout the season.
The players do feel it, however. Whatever calmness or placidity or nonchalance they might prefer to display, their temperature will turn up this week as surely as the mercury at the stadium climbs.
“We’re not built on a few guys,” third baseman Nolan Arenado said. “We’re built on, everyone has to contribute…We’re not getting rattled by anything, you know? Win or lose, we’re the same as a group. I think that’s really important at times like this where we have a long stretch and a lot of tough games against division rivals.”
Whether these games are tough or not will go a long way toward determining what the coming weeks and months look and feel like around the Cardinals. No pressure – except that there is.
