![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Albert-Pujols-cardinals-71-300x168.jpg\")
<\/strong>Saint Louis State of Affairs:<\/strong><\/p>\n
There really isn’t a case of a team that has done so much with so little (payroll & market size) than the St. Louis Cardinals.\u00a0 Since 2001, they have won 904 games, more than all teams other than the Yankees & Red Sox and they have made 7 playoff appearances, two World Series, and a championship in 2006.<\/p>\n
Their payroll is roughly one half as big as the Red Sox’ and but a fraction of the colossal spending employed by baseball’s most hated team in the Yankees.\u00a0 The only teams to pay less in payroll have been the Minnesota Twins (who are now spending more money) and the Oakland Athletics (who are desperate for a new stadium and aren’t bringing in the necessary revenue to pay big salaries).\u00a0 The result of this success has been very obvious.\u00a0 The Cardinals drew 32 million fans in the last decade, the third highest total in baseball.<\/p>\n
Despite the continued success, there is reason for pessimism among Cardinal fans.\u00a0 The team faded horribly toward the end of last season, propelled by a 2-8 road trip against the Pirates, Nats, and Astros, and allowed the Reds to squeak by with a 5 game lead at the end of the season, leading up to the ultimate disappointment of being swept by the Reds in the NLDS.<\/p>\n
San Francisco State of Affairs:<\/strong><\/p>\n July 4th:\u00a0 The Nation celebrates its Independence day — and the Giants look up at the standings, finding themselves 7.5 games behind the Padres and with a record just one game over .500 at 41-40.\u00a0 Certainly at this point no one was thinking “World Series bound,” much less “World Series Champs.”\u00a0 However, a serious reversal in fortunes was to come from unlikely sources that would propel the Giants into relevance, before they eventually took the NL West by a mere two games, the second smallest margin of division win in the league (the Tampa Bay Rays finished just one game ahead of the Yankees).<\/p>\n What brought about the change?\u00a0 Minor league vet Andres Torres’ uncanny improvement proved to be a serious boon.\u00a0 The 33 year old non-prospect came into the majors not expected to do much, but low and behold, he posted the second highest VORP of the Giants’ batters and also proved to be a defensive demon in the field.\u00a0 Pat Burrell was waived by Tampa and the Giants immediately tendered him a contract, causing him to switch from the AL to the NL, and the result was remarkable.\u00a0 Burrell went on to hit .266, his highest since 2006, the year he hit his career high 33 homers.\u00a0 Also, his slugging percentage was .509, nearly a full .7 higher than his career average.\u00a0 Buster Posey also was called up the same day as Burrell’s signing and he went on to replace the disappointing Bengie Molina, who was dealt to the Rangers.\u00a0 Their top prospect Madison Bumgarner rediscovered his fast ball at just the right point and was called back up to the majors.\u00a0 Juan Uribe stepped up to fill the hole left by the perpetually injured Edgar Renteria and did a solid job.\u00a0 Cody Ross got very hot, another waiver wire claim.<\/p>\n This perfect storm of events would culminate in the Giants’ win percentage over the period of July 5th until the end of the season being .630, 0.66 higher than their win percentage for the season.\u00a0 Truly, the Giants could not have experienced a better stroke of good old fashioned luck than they did.\u00a0 They had replaced 5 of their 8 starters with minor leaguers and stop-gap former scrubs and managed to CLIMB in the standings, to the surprise of themselves and everyone else in the MLB.<\/p>\n It’s hard not to favor the Giants in this matchup.\u00a0 The defending champs are off to a good start hitting and once their pitching catches up, it could mean another crown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Saint Louis Cardinals (2-5) AT San Francisco Giants (3-4) April 9, 2011 at 9:05 PM EST Opening Runline:\u00a0 STL +1.5 -155; SFG -1.5 +135 Current Runline:\u00a0 STL +1.5\u00a0 -175; SFG -1.5 +155 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 SFG -165, STL +145 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 SFG -143 \/ STL +133 Opening Total: 7 Current Total: 6.5 SP:\u00a0 SFG- M. Cain […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":5042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[4834,736],"class_list":["post-14788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-saint-louis-cardinals","tag-san-francisco-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14788"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14790,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14788\/revisions\/14790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}