by Tom

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As you all surely know, Albert Pujols hit his 700th home run in Los Angeles…and not in Angels Stadium. Maybe there is a god after all. He accomplished said feat over the course of a 22-year career that saw him win 3 NL MVPs, 2 Gold Gloves, 6 Silver Sluggers, a Batting Title, Rookie of the Year, and 2 World Series. An absolute all-timer folks. 

I got to thinking about the 700 home runs, though. How many things have I done 700 times? It’s usually the boring, mundane, gross things: jerking off, taking a shower, brushing my teeth, driving to work, etc etc. It’s kind of an interesting testament to the 700 milestone, that the extraordinary is only superseded by the ordinary. Think of the shit that you’re really passionate about and wonder if you’ve put 700 of anything into it. I’ve had the same job the last 7 years selling smartphones, I’ve estimated I’ve put on at least 7,000 screen protectors, maybe it’s a miracle I haven’t killed myself. 

Albert Pujols’s ascent to the top of Baseball Olympus is a microcosm of living under 21st century capitalism. Doing the thing you love that many times, or something that is fulfilling to a certain effect, is a rarity for most people, but doing the monotonous and repetitive tasks–tasks that drain you of your physical and emotional labor–are done and completed like an app program. Have you had sex 700 times? Have you written 700 songs? Have you jogged 700 miles? Have you drunk 700 beers? Have you even said “I love you” 700 times to this point in your life?

I would like to say that I’m over-analyzing this a bit, or that I’m having post-nut clarity after jerking off for the ump-thousandth time, but Albert’s achievement has come across decades and, at least, ten thousand hours of playing baseball. And within that ten thousand hours lies 600,000 minutes, and within all that is 36,000,000 seconds, and if we zoom in just a bit we’ll find that 26 of those seconds are spent rounding the bases after a round-tripper, and that he spent that small and tiny fraction of his life immortal and above all at least 700 times.

Albert’s our Second Half MVP

I touched on some of this yesterday, and I’m writing this section Saturday afternoon, but Albert has been this team’s MVP since the All-Star Break. Since the start of July, Albert leads the team in wOBA, home runs, and wRC+. He is second in the MLB in wRC+ and OPS in that span as well. 

The .310 average he’s sported since then is second on the team behind Corey Dickerson’s also magical half. His 15.2 Offensive Runs are fourth on the team behind Nootbaar, Arenado, and Goldschmidt, however he’s done all of this in 40 fewer plate appearances than Noot, nearly 100 for Nolan, and over 100 for Goldschmidt. If we take his 15.2 OFF, divide by his PAs, and multiply by the same number of PAs as the guys ahead of him, he’d be ahead of everyone but Goldschmidt, and just barely.

Whether this resurgence is all a matter of good vibes, steroids, or physical instrument, who is to say. The only player who has matched Albert’s offensive explosion is Aaron Judge, whom days prior made history of his own by whacking his 60th bomb for the season. Among players with at least 300 PAs, Pujols’s 6.4 HR% ranks 6th in all of baseball, and that’s for the entire season. In the 17 games he’s homered in, the Cardinals have won all but one. They’ve won all 14 games he’s homered in since July. For comparison, the Cardinals are 23-9 when Goldschmidt homers, and 20-8 when Nolan goes yard. And just because we can, his 94.1 winning percentage when he goes yard is better than Aaron Judge’s 77.6% mark of 38-11. 

He has mattered so much to this team when they needed it most. He is slashing .367/.472/.900 in 36 PAs with 2 outs and runners in scoring position. He is carrying an .854 OPS in tie-game appearances, an .859 OPS in appearances when his team is behind, and an .895 OPS in high leverage appearances. He has been nothing but clutch and needed during a season that felt aimless at some point.

Ugh, Football

We’re gonna have to write about football when baseball season is over, aren’t we? That or hockey. I like to believe that there’s no shortage of interesting things out there. The other day I found a guy named Bill Wakefield, he pitched one season his whole career for the 1964 New York Mets. He was fairly pedestrian, posting a 3.61 ERA in 119 ⅔ innings. The Mets were only two years removed from formation and were still awful. They’d go on to lose 109 games that season, but Wakefield was their best pitcher for guys with at least 100 innings. 

I found out about him after feeding my autistic sandworm-brain some boxscores. On July 18th, 1964 the Cardinals played the lowly Mets, fell behind by 5 runs, were down 6-4 entering the bottom of the 8th, scored 11 runs, and won 15-7.

Sorry, probably should go over the part where they scored 11 fucking runs. The Mets entered the bottom of the 8th with a win probability of 84%, with Cardinals power-hitter and NL MVP Ken Boyer stepping to the dish. It’s a tall order to fill, but Bill Wakefield isn’t necessarily some schlub being thrown on the mound; he pitched a clean 7th against the top of the order. 

In 1963 the Cardinals packaged him with George Altman for Roger Craig, a pitcher who lost 46 games the previous two seasons. Bill was primarily used as a spot starter and middle innings guy. He had a couple appearances in the 8th or later with some good and some bad results, but really he was just a normal pitcher on a really bad team. He probably would have had a serviceable career anywhere else but these Metropolitans, but you play the hand you’re dealt.

Okay, so what happened was as followed: single, walk, sac bunt E5 throwing error, another E5 fielding along with an E6 throwing, double, flyout, fielder’s choice but also E2 on a catch, walk, single, home run, home run, until mercifully Casey Stengel stumbles out of the dugout down 13-6 and pulls Wakefield. Only 2 of those 10 runs surrendered by Bill were counted as earned.

But God isn’t quite done with the Mets for this season. This 53 win team could blow the doors off some teams on the right day. They hung a 10 spot on teams 8 times that season, which placed them right in the middle of the pack for the rest of the league. Their crowning achievement came on May 26th when Jack Fisher threw a 1-run complete game and the Metros hung a 19 spot on the Chicago Cubs. That 19-1 clubbing was the most runs and biggest beatdown for the whole season. These same Mets would even get a little revenge on the Cardinals at the end of the season, when the ‘Birds were fighting Gene Mauch’s Phillies for the NL pennant when they dished out their own 15 run beatdown.

But this section is about Bill Wakefield, and football I think? Anyway, Wakefield’s appearance isn’t the worst by runs allowed, there were three other pitchers to surrender 10 or more runs in 1964. But Wakefield’s disastrous outing was maybe the most efficient in how quickly and terrible things got out of hand. Billy O’Dell took 7 innings to give up his 12 runs, Orlando Pena needed 4 ⅔ to surrender 11, and Tony Cloninger was winning his start when he entered the 7th. But Bill Wakefield needed only an inning and two-thirds to conduct his masterpiece.

One last bit, there were 164 instances where a team scored 10 runs or more in 1964. Some of these games had big innings where a team strung together 6 or more, but only twice in the entire season did a team score 10 of those runs in one inning. The first instance occurred early in the season when the Chicago Cubs hung a 10 spot in the top of the first against the Houston Colt .45s, they cruised the rest of the way to an 11-3 win. The second and last instance is this one, where the New York Mets held a 6-4 lead and squandered it all in one inning against the future pennant and World Series winner that year. Baseball is so mean. 

He rebounded in 1966 in AA where he mainly worked out of the bullpen posting a 1.91 ERA in 80 innings. He was done after that though, he was served his walking papers and for the next couple seasons he pitched in some semi-pro and even a men’s softball league. He even took on managing 15 year rec baseball. Life is what you make of it, I guess.

Anyway, it’s gonna suck so hard when the season ends and we’re not gonna have goofy baseball stories to tell. Ugh, I hate talking about football.

So the Offense Stopped Working

So the Cards had a weird spell where they scored only 1 run in their last 63 innings. Following a 1-0 win against the Reds, the ‘Birds were shutout their next three games against the Reds and Padres. The record for offensive futility in this league is 48 innings set by the 2017 Kansas City Royals and the Cardinals stopped their streak at 47 thanks to a Nootbaar bomb. The Royals streak began in the 3rd inning of a 3-2 loss to the Rockies, they were then shutout in 4 consecutive games before finally cracking the boxscore in the 3rd inning against the Rays. You might think this Royals team was awful and, well, yeah they kinda were. By the end of July they were 6 games over .500 and 2 games back from the AL Central leading Cleveland Guardians. They then went 25-33 the rest of the way, including that 48 inning clunker to finish the season 80-82. They scored 702 runs against 791 allowed, and if luck could somehow be erased off the face of the earth this team would have posted the 72-90 record they rightfully deserved. 

They were a pretty weird team. That season Mike Moustakas broke Steve Balboni’s club record for home runs, Eric Hosmer posted his only other good season, Whit Merrifield went ham, and Jason Vargas won 18 games. They also had Brandon Moss being Brandon Moss, a barely hitting .600 OPS Alex Gordon, and Jason Hammel leading their rotation. The Royals were top 10 in the MLB in batting average, but second to last in BB% and bottom 10 in slugging and OPS. Again, weird-ass team.

The 2022 Cardinals are not the 2017 Royals thank God, which makes this streak of ineptitude all the more intriguing. For the season the Cardinals are a top 5 offense in terms of wRC+ and OPS, they currently have 2 NL MVP front-runners, and they just had a legend hit his 700th home run. Despite all this, in the 3 games they were shutout they mustered only 9 hits, 1 XBH–a double–and an OPS of .299. Ian Kennedy has a career OPS of .394 in 399 plate appearances. 

While the Cardinals have been strikeout heavy the last couple weeks, they weren’t in those three games as they only punched out 20 times. Amongst their peers with similar offensive woes, only 5 teams struck out less in a similar span of toothless hitting, with only the 1985 Atlanta Braves and the 2021 Texas Rangers doing so in the last 40 years. 

Luckily the Devil Magic bearer came early this season, and the Cardinals red-hot August gave them a divisional cushion that would require both an historical collapse and comeback to relinquish. September, while brutal, hasn’t been that bad. The Cardinals are still 13-9 this month and in a season where they haven’t been below .500 once. If you go by winning percentage, September is their 2nd best month of the season.

Time for Some Unnecessary Cruelty

The Cardinals wrap up their season series against the Dodgers with a rubber matchup today. The Dodgers won 6-2 last night behind 6 innings of Kershaw-ball. I love Clayton Kershaw, it sucks he’s still so good despite the fact he can only make 20 starts nowadays. He’s 9-5 with a 2.97 ERA against the Cardinals for his regular season career, but nobody remembers him for his those games they remember him for these games JOSH ROLL THE FUCKING TAPE!

FUCKING MORE!!!

DEEPER, HARDER, COME ON DADDY!!!

That’s right, Clayton Kershaw and his Cooperstown curveball can dominate, win MVPs and Cy Youngs until he shits silver the rest of his life, but the only thing he and this franchise are good for is barely doing anything with all that they have. People give the Braves a lot of shit–and rightfully so–for winning one World Series during the 90s, but they went against a legitimate dynasty and what the fuck have the Dodgers gone against?

Oh yeah, a gang of bumblefucks and their trashcans and the fucking Red Sox. You guys had one job and that was to beat either the most unlikeable World Series winner or the most unlikeable franchise and you came up short in dramatic, humiliating fashion. This team would choke to a 12 pack of Sam Adams. 

Fuck the Dodgers and fuck Clayton Kershaw with Matt Adams’s bat. You let a guy nicknamed Big City ruin your 2014 season by taking a shit on your NL MVP. You made Joe Torre’s legacy worse, and convinced Don Mattingly that Miami was a better place than gold painted dog turd. Fuck Dave Roberts and every pitcher he pulls when they have a perfect game. You troglodytes have won 647 games under his tutelage and HAVE NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT, except for that fake piece of shit you won in 2020. Kevin Cash has done more for you in the postseason than both of Kershaw’s nuts. Cody Bellinger had the right idea to stop trying once he realized this organization will pay anything for continued disappointment. You don’t even have a real owner, you’re owned by a consortium of rich morons and Magic Johnson, you can’t even have the common decency to make us hate just one executive. Fuck Max Muncy with a copy The Silmarillion and fuck Freddie Freeman and his fake MVP. Your city is so unbearable that Freeman cried when he returned to Atlanta. Fuck Justin Turner and his arm, this toxic vat of mediocrity needs a beta blocker whenever something cool happens in this sport. I hope Masyn Winn kills him with a pitch to the chest. Better yet, I hope Masyn Winn throws all of Los Angeles into the fucking Pacific so this entire shitty fanbase drowns and finally gives Giants fans something to be happy about this season. 

Matt Carpenter and Buster Posey own you.

First pitch is at 3:10 with Adam Wainwright and Michael Grove toeing the rubber. Enjoy the game everyone!