To be fair, Maddon managed the entire World Series like he was trying to bring it home for the Indians, and Theo, while being almost totally incapable of drafting and developing his own pitching staff, has always had the benefit of large payrolls or bigger idiots to absorb/deflect his blunders.

Every team in the NL is giddy he got taken to the cleaners by Darvish. Gives the Cards newfound life. Their rotation (even Lester) is rickety now. Their offense is quite good and still young so that'll keep them in the hunt for a few more years, but they won't win in October with that staff.

Theo is a master at finding $22M undervalued assets like 0.2 Darvish.

(That's his fWAR)

Certainly seemed to be the case with Darvish after he came back from Tommy John. I had him only my fantasy team last year and luckily my first pitcher taken this year was someone much more solid in Quintana.

Ive got some cubs friends fans from northern Illinois.. they are ready to can maddon.

Yep - flipsides of the same coin.

And every generation has 1 or 2 of them. It's just that in previous generations guys like that were called losers who couldn't make the big pitch and castigated accordingly.

Nowadays we just call wins a stupid stat, bestow them with 'ace' status anyway and continue to insist that Archer's actually way better than a 5 year track record of mediocrity say he is...

{**** I got old quickly....if you need me, I'll be outside yelling at clouds}

I'll take it! Obviously a 69% winning percentage isn't sustainable but this team is showing signs of life. Carp is just out of his mind right now. I'll admit before this happened, I was ready to trade him just to shake things up because I didn't think Mo would ever fire Matheny. What do I know.

Winning 7/10 for the rest of the season isn't sustainable, no. But winning 6/10 is and if they manage that for the rest of the year that gets them to 88 wins.

Now that probably isn't enough to get them either WC given the number of teams that will crater down the stretch to boost the records of the 4-5 potential WC teams right now.

But IF those wins are against the right teams, they can make it damn interesting. Can they play .640 baseball from here out to get to 90? Seems like a long-shot given the tattered remains of their starting pitching right now and the fact that Wacha doesn't appear close to returning (and Martinez really should be shut down).

But they have life. The 16 game stretch after the Royals series will decide a LOT. That's a long, tough stretch of ballgames against teams that are all battling for the playoffs. Get through that at 9-7 and they're back in the thick of things (presuming they take care of business against KC; never a given with this squad's ability to play down to their opponent).

And at some point it sure would be nice to see them complete one of these sweeps. They keep fumbling 1 gm/series that they could have easily won. Finish off one of those sweeps and things start to build momentum quickly.

They're gonna have to have a 7 or 8 game winstreak here sometime if they wanna get over the edge.

They're two clutch hits away from being in the middle of a 8 gamer right now.

At the end of the year, games like the first games of the Pirates and Marlins series will loom large. As will the half dozen games that array of shitty relievers Matheny insisted on trotting out there cost us.

Holland, Gregerson, Lyons and Bowman are the reason we're not sitting at WC1 right now. Those guys were just absolute disasters.

Pretty much.

I said in here when Matheny was fired that they can get to 5-6 games over. Holland and Cecil blew 5 games. We could get to 90 wins and a wild card next year. Like everyone else has said they need a sweep and maintain that 60% win % and they may make it this year.

I think we will get waxed but it will be good experience for our young players. A one game can go any way. We got a chance. Series? Don’t think so. Not this year.

I don't think they can next year or the year after without a MAJOR addition. And by the time someone like Gorman or Montero comes along, Carpenter will be gone or fading badly (you hope Knizner can at least replicate Yadi's offense but Yadi will slide in the interim).

The future is still murky at best. The Brewers still won't have any starting pitching next season but the Braves and Phillies are coming HARD. The D-Backs are probably going to take a step back but I like the Rockies ability to step into that void.

The NL is still going to have 5-6 teams that are as well or better situated than the Cardinals in the coming years, IMO.

I don’t know what “major” means to you. I just don’t see the Cardinals making the same safe incremental moves this off season. They know the fan base is still upset. They need changes beyond what they have already done.

as the resident homer, I must point out that no one thought, or at least the ones who post in here, we’d do shit going into the 2006/2011 playoffs.

We need more and better talent. We need a #3 hole hitter. We can make the playoffs next year. IMO.

Quintana stinks like poop this year. Same fWAR as Jason hammel (0.8)