A positive sign for Game 7

To this point, the Cardinals have reversed a troubling regular season trend, and have yet to lose consecutive games in the  playoffs. I think that bodes well for Thursday night.

This re-born (re-hatched?) Cardinal team has, in the playoffs so far, knuckled down after a loss and brought their best effort. It's a pattern we did not see enough of in the regular season, and is the primary reason we have a 78-loss team.

Of the 78 losses we suffered in the regular season, 51 followed another loss. This was not a team that played .500 baseball all year, it played well and then suffered massive crises of confidence, or of performance, that led to a shitload of losing streaks, large and small. This graphic representation of the season (courtesy of THT) shows it well enough:

Lines above the mean are wins, lines below are losses, starting from April 2 at the left, and ending with Oct 1 on the right.

Essentially, we had 38 losing streaks this season (16 of two games or more), which I can show in a modified "sparkline" that condenses the winning and losing streaks into single graph entries:

This is actually fewer losing streaks than we suffered in 2005, but as you can see, last year we only suffered 10 skids of two  games or more.

In short, it's a very pleasant surprise to see the resiliency come back to this team. It's been said many times in different ways this year, whether "the margin for error is smaller" or "there's simply less talent," but I think the diagnosis that "losing is a disease" is most apt, and this Cardinal team may have suddenly discovered an immunity.