Well,
the Cards
kept the deficit below double-digits
last night
behind Jason Marquis on the mound. I GUESS that's better than the all-out, embarassing drubbing they endured the
night before
.
There's no doubt that the ChiSox are a great team. However, it's not the end of the season yet and there's lots of room between then and now to heal, improve, trade, promote, and the like. Likewise, there's lots of room for other teams to hurt, worsen, dump salary, abuse, etc their team. I'm not worried yet just because we've lost two games to a phenominal team.
The thing is, while Albert Pujols wouldn't have made up the 13 and 8 run deficits, he WOULD have changed how the Cards lineup was pitched to. Period. That alone could have changed the outcome a bit. Not that the Sox wouldn't have scored 33 runs (yikes!) across the two game, and they probably would have kept most of their 40 (Yikes!) hits from the same period, but it's at least conceivable that we would have had more than 11 runs produced. Let me explain...
First, I believe that 11 runs with the lineup we have across 2 games is perfectly respectable. Pitching was the much larger problem against a team that had no trouble capitalizing on that problem. But, while I don't believe it's reasonable to think AP would have come out of the gates, fresh from the DL, jacking a bunch of homers out of the park, he is a force to be respected and he would have given the Sox pitchers cause to be slightly less agressive with the players that would have been around Albert. As it was, those players were pitched to agressively because there was less threat (although Rolen can hardly be considered NO threat these days) that something huge would break open.
On the other hand, the Cards still put up 27 hits across the games. The problem wasn't a lack of baserunners - it was power. It was getting more of those guys to cross the plate. THAT IS something AP provides and I'd expect him to provide almost immediately in his return from the DL.
Anyway you slice it, we lost those games and probaby would have anyway even with AP. The production was NEARLY there. AP would have closed some of the gap in runs scored, but he doesn't pitch.
...maybe he should?
Later