mulder oswalt
16-8, 3.64 20-12, 2.94
1) STL Edge thinks tony should have walker hitting 2d and edmonds 4th, and there's a case to be made for it. since coming off the dl on august 20, larry has had 99 at-bats (reg'r and postseason combined) and only 8 extra-base hits -- four doubles, four homers. in the playoffs he hasn't had a single extra-base hit. but his walk rate remains good: his postseason obp is .303 despite an .083 batting avg. if he has any offensive value left at this point, it would seem to be on-base ability. batting ahead of pujols, he should see some pitches to hit.
edmonds on the other hand has a postseason isolated power of .223. he's hitting .308 in this series with three walks. perhaps batting cleanup he'd pick up some of those baserunners the cards have been stranding in games 1-5.
an academic question; edmonds is hitting 2d tonight, walker 4th. but i'm with the edge; i would flip-flop those two.
2) though la russa is famous for tinkering w lineups, using his bench, playing the matchups, blah blah blah, in this series phil garner has been far more adventuresome in lineup construction. he hasn't used the same lineup two games in a row since the series began, shuttling lamb burke and taveras in and out per each game's starting pitcher and venue. by contrast, la russa's only changes have been due to injury (sanders and nunez) and an egregious slump (grud'k dropped to 8th for game 4). if not for the two injuries i doubt we'd have seen any changes at all, other than the walker-sanders flip-flop v pettitte.
that's not a criticism of tony, just an observation.
the cards turned only 1 double play down in houston while committing 3 errors. look for that to change tonight -- or maybe look for this series to end.
| HOU | STL |
|---|---|
| biggio 2b | eckstein ss |
| taveras cf | edmonds cf |
| berkman 1b | pujols 1b |
| ensberg 3b | walker rf |
| lane rf | sanders lf |
| burke lf | grud'k 2b |
| ausmus c | molina c |
| everett ss | nunez 3b |
| oswalt p | mulder p |