It’s almost like an inherent advantage when the Kansas City Royals are your interleague rivals. I know a lot of people point to this scheduling fluke and say it’s unfair, but when you have series like Cubs/White Sox and Yankees/Mets, it’s hard to say it’s a bad thing.
Regardless, the Cardinals have now won their fifth straight game and they’re only a half game back of the Tigers (huh?) for the best record in baseball. Oddly, the one game I thought we’d have the least troubles with was Friday’s game with Chris Carpenter on the mound, but this was the game where we had to comeback. The Royals jumped out to a 5-0 lead, but the Cardinals broke out and scored four in the fourth and five in the fifth to take the lead for good. Carpenter picked up the win despite giving up six runs and Adam Wainwright picked up his first career save. Albert Pujols hit his 20th homerun of the season and both he and Scot Rolen drove in two runs in the 9-6 win.
On Saturday, Anthon Reyes started his first game of the season (only his second major league start) and he got the job done. He threw 5 2/3 shutout innings and gave up only four hits in the 4-2 win. Five relievers then finished the game out with Isringhausen picking up the save. Albert Pujols 21st homerun of the season was a three run shot and it was the difference in the game.
Today, the Cards continued the beat down. Pujols homered again to bring his season total up to 22 and the Cardinals broke the game open with five runs in the seventh inning. The final was 10-3. Pujols now has a league leading 54 RBIs and he’s scored 46 runs. This is truly going to be a historic season for the Prince Albert.
The Cardinals travel to San Francisco to take on a streaking San Francisco Giants. They’ve won four of their last five games and they’re up 6-0 in their game this afternoon. Regardless, we now have the largest lead (four games) of any other first place team in baseball, so hopefully we’ll be able to extend that cushion with some more wins.
