Apologies for one more delayed thread--I'm on vacation, and my time has been a little more spoken-for than I anticipated--but having only caught individual at-bats in the Cardinals' apparently wonderful Friday game against the Royals I don't think I have anything to say that you didn't already yell at your TV while clapping. (Nevertheless I will pretend I do sometime after noon.)

At 36-35 the Cardinals have had a lot of capricious bad news to work through, but Carlos Beltran's health--I'm speaking relatively, of course--and effectiveness have made up for so much of it... well, that the Cardinals are 36-35. The part of me that reads the tweets people send to the P-D writers makes me a little sad that Beltran's outstanding start means Matt Holliday still isn't seen as the anchor of the offense, but I'm willing to put up with his continued underrating in exchange for an OPS around 1.000.