MVN - Most Valuable Network

Let’s Talk About Something Besides Last Night’s Game

Cardinals drubbed by the Colt 45’s 18-1.  I can’t muster the strength to talk about it.

Other items of interest from Cardinal Land:

-  AP is suffering from a strained calf and is only available to pinch hit “in the ideal situation,” according to the Post-Dispatch.  Note to the Cardinals staff:  if you still dream about playing in the post-season, send me the name of your doctor; I want a prescription for whatever you’re taking.  Magic number to be eliminated:  2.  Based on that, and after all AP has done for the team in his brilliant career, why play him?  Why risk making the strain any worse and potentially create a chronic nagging injury affecting his future play?  Shut him down.

- Mulder is still broken; more surgery to repair his torn rotator cuff is in the offing.  Good news:  his labrum is completely healed.  Bad news:  his rotator cuff is only 80% healed, perhaps explaining why his velocity drops every inning during his starts.  Mulder stated he’ll be ready for spring training, which is great, but that’s no guarantee he’ll be the 2004 Mulder vice the 2006/07 Mulder.  Viva El Birdos lays it out in this post analyzing the performance of guys trying to come back from this type of surgery.  I just don’t see 2004 Mulder returning.  I won’t ever again question Mulder’s desire, the guy pitched for almost 2 years without knowing if he’d achieve the proper arm angle from pitch-to-pitch, but his days of being the staff ace are over.

As I foreshadowed in my last post, I took a look at the records for teams the year after they won the World Series.  All told, there have been 15 teams who finished under .500 the year after winning the title; this was more than I expected, at just slightly under 15% of the Defending Champs.  Interestingly, with the Cardinals falling into this category this season, there have been more teams finishing with a sub-500 record since the start of divisional play (8) than the days of the one division league (7).  This may have something to do with the talent dilution, however, it probably has more to do with the dissolution of the reserve clause and the onset of free agency.  It’s very hard (well nigh impossible) to keep the same nucleus year to year like in the old days. 

Some specifics (I won’t bore you with all the numbers):

• Worst post-Series record belongs to the 1998 Marlins, who finished 54-108 as a result of their ‘EVERYTHING MUST GO!’ fire sale (which, I believe, included owner Wayne Huizenga and all Blockbuster franchises in the greater Miami area).
• Worst non-fire sale record belongs to the 1991 Cincinnati Reds at 74-88.
• Only the Dodgers and Cardinals grace the list more than once:  Dodgers following their 1963 and 1988 championships, and our Cardinals 4 times:  1932 , 1965, 1983, and this year.

So this year’s futility isn’t all that odd from a franchise perspective.  And as long as the Cardinals don’t lose 8 of their remaining 10 games, they won’t be #2 overall on this list.  There, don’t you feel better?

Yeah, me neither.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Useless Trivia, 2007 Cardinals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.