Under the Arch: Battered Red Birds

Greg Maddox, Alestle Reporter

by Greg Maddox, Alestle Reporter

Flowers are blooming, rain is pouring, and here at SIUE the geese area attacking. It’s springtime, and you know what that means: baseball season is right around the corner.

St Louis Cardinal fans have a lot to look forward to this season. A fairly active off-season has bolstered the batting order and smoothed out the pitching rotation. The talent level on this team is high, and the players are poised for a run at the central.

Additions such as Matt Holliday, Felipe Lopez and Brad Penne are solid moves for a Cardinals team that has a knack for being conservative in the off-season. These acquisitions aren’t guaranteeing a contention with the Yankees quite yet, but the Cardinals are easily the most improved team in the NL Central.

The recurring theme for the Cardinals during spring training has been injuries. Pujols’ back is out of whack, Molina’s oblique is strained, and many other players are missing time with ticky-tack injuries.

Fans may be concerned with the fairly lengthy injury report, but before you get panicky, you must realize it is March 26.  These guys have had a long off-season after playing 166 games last season. I don’t know about you, but if I had to play 166 games of baseball in a seven-month span, I would want a lot of rest, too. Naturally if these players have been sitting on their couches since October, they may be a little out of shape.

Pujols has played more games than anybody the past nine seasons. The anti-inflammatory shot he is taking is just to keep him healthy enough to work through the injury during the spring. Come opening day, Pujols will be back to being the best player in the bigs. The man played with a horrible elbow injury during the same season he hit a career high 49 home runs.

Even with the solid offseason additions, the Cardinals are far from a perfect team. It is going to be difficult for any team to take out the growing powerhouse that is the Philadelphia Phillies. However, after them, I think it is a very competitive race at the top of the National League, a race I think the Cardinals could win.

The division is weak as ever. For the first time in awhile I foresee the Pirates being a bigger threat to the Cardinals than I do the Cubs (even if cutting Milton Bradley was addition via subtraction for them). And this is coming from one very pessimistic Cardinals fan.

If Cardinals fans want to worry about anything, it should be the hole at third base or the fact that Jaime Garcia is coming back from Tommy John surgery to be our fifth starter.