Last night Albert Pujols went 5-for-6 with 6 RBIs. 'El Hombre' hit a 3 run home run in the 6th, a 2 run home run in the 7th and a solo home run in the 9th. On October 22, Albert Pujols cemented his place in baseball and Cardinal lore.

Superlatives seem inadequate at the moment. In last night's game, Albert transcended words like "great" and "excellent". People trying to describe the historic element of it miss the purely visceral joy of watching the game. People trying to describe the visceral aspect will miss the historic one.

Imagine yourself limited to pre-WWII vocabulary. Now describe the internet to me. Imagine how difficult it would be to describe something that's never been seen before in your lifetime with modern parlance. It requires you to develop a new set of descriptors and to illustrate those descriptors to develop the meaning behind them. Albert Pujols was simply too good to capture in written word last night. Let's try though.

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If you blinked, you missed the Pittsburgh Pirates pretty epic slide over the last few weeks. Since July 21st, their last off day, the Pirates have lost 13 of 16 games including a 9 game losing streak.  They've put themselves 9 games back of first place joining the Reds on the second tier of NL Central teams and probably beyond reach of the division.

More lamentable for their fanbase is that their winning percentage now stands at .482 and they're 4 games below .500. Anyone who was popping corks around the All Star break may want put the champagne back on ice.

The Cardinals meanwhile are missing some opportunities to make up their three game deficit to the Brewers. Dropping 2 of 3 to the lowly Mets, 2 of 4 to the cellar dwelling Astros and losing 2 of 3 to the Brewers all after the All Star break does not a championship team make.  The club is on a nice three game win streak courtesy of the Marlins before an offday tomorrow. (Aside: Does it seem like we've had an inordinate number of offdays this year? It does to me.)

On Tuesday, the Brewers will come to Busch Stadium for a three game set followed by the Rockies. It would be an opportune time for the Birds to sweep the Brewers but you can probably get by with a 4-2 showing over those six games. With just 47 games left after today, the Cardinals can't afford to fall further back than their current three games in the quest for the NL Central Championship. They need to stand up as tall as their dwarfy legs can hold them and be the tallest midget in this crowd.

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When Lance Lynn was called up, I spent some time going back through the Future Redbirds archives trying to find the back story on him. I'd seen Lynn in the minors several times, charted pitches for two other starts from video during his time in Memphis and there was a lot of general prospect ink spilled about him at places like Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus.  As Daniel Descalso's role on the St. Louis Cardinals grows, I wanted to view him with the same historical lens. One problem: No one wrote about Daniel Descalso.

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Prior to this season, he was worth over 5 WAR in the major leagues. Heralded as one of the best prospects ever produced by the farm system, he was seen as a fixture in the outfield for seasons to come.  The raw athletic ability displayed made him a favorite of scouts and the advanced approach at the plate combined including solid secondary skills made him a favorite of statheads. That is until this season.

His production dropped off.  Fielding metrics are less impressed by his defense. While he's been saved in part by the overall offensive decline in the league that still leaves him a slightly above average offensive player, the expectations surrounding the player far surpass the production in 2011. All this despite the impression that bad luck seems to have played a role, possibly significant, in his decline and current slump.

So when are the Braves going to trade Jason Heyward?

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I find myself stuck on Friday night's game. The first game back from the break. The Cardinals have a fully rested bullpen and a capable Jake Westbrook on the mound. The game ends disastrously with a antagonist particularly malicious for Cardinals fans in Brandon Phillips. This game certainly heightens the cries for pitching help be it in the rotation or the bullpen. Should it though?

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The Cardinals have been stretched thin in the bullpen this year. With the utter meltdowns of both Ryan Franklin and Miguel Batista plus injuries to Bryan Augenstein and Eduardo Sanchez, pre-season depth on the right side of the bullpen quickly turned into a thin spot. The Cardinals recently augmented their pen with Lance Lynn who has appeared in 5 games but has been rather impressive.  While Lynn was and likely will be in the future targeted as a starting rotation prospect, he's been an interesting arm out of the pen.

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As the mid-point of the season approaches, the Cardinals are working their way through another losing streak dropping both of their games against the Blue Jays thus far. With Jaime Garcia on the mound, a single inning, the 3rd, was the undoing of the Cardinals. Walks to two rather unimposing hitters (Carlos Villanueva, Yunel Escobar) would be followed by an error that would have ended the inning and a homerun that accounted for much of the damage.

Oddly enough, the error wasn't off of one of the normal culprits but rather Daniel Descalso who plays almost explicitly because of his defense.  Descalso, who at one point was portrayed in the metrics as an elite defender, is now a neutral defender per UZR and a negative with the glove per the +/- system. I'm not here to debate the value or sample size of defensive statistics. I could have just as easily written that Descalso hasn't looked as impressive with the glove for the last month. Regardless, the Cardinals, as injuries and poor roster management have currently constructed them, are not built to suffer errors. The team needs to be sound fundamentally to compete. That means making defensive plays, executing whatever (possibly foolish) offensive action - bunt, hit and run - that Tony wants, not getting picked off on the bases, etc.

The Cardinals will get David Freese back soon.  One can hope that Eduardo Sanchez won't be out for too long. Same for Albert Pujols whose time on the DL could be a blessing in disguise if he returns as the Albert of yesteryear.  Nick Punto is currently on rehab assignment in the minors. Allen Craig's knee may hold him out a bit longer but he should be back before Albert.  The team has cavalry on the way and it's important that they tread water until their back to full strength. There's some questionable roster management that continues (3 infielders - Descalso, Schumaker, Kozma - who essentially can't hit, Ryan Franklin) but the team is depleted right now and they simply need to weather it.

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St. Louis is 16-11 on the season. We're winning 59.3% of our games. That translates to a 96-66 record on the season. The Reds are currently two games back. Prior to looking that up, I would not have guessed the season was going that well. My liver certainly doesn't think the season is going that well. Given the bullpen meltdowns and injuries to key players the Cardinals have suffered to start the season, it felt like we were closer to . . . say Seattle's record than the Rangers' or Yankees' record.

When a team is performing this well there's usually a lot of reasons that play into it. The starting pitching has been mostly quite good. Kyle Lohse is pitching as well as he ever has. Kyle McClellan seems better equipped to handle 6 innings than I would have wagered. Chris Carpenter, at 36, remains an elite pitcher. Jaime Garcia has increased his strikeout rate and decreased his walk rate building off of a legitimate ROY campaign. Jake Westbrook has scuffled early but turned in an impressive outing last time. Suffice to say the rotation is better than average.

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