bookends

azruavatar's elimination game and stl3bagger's diary about hall of famers on the cardinal roster got me thinking about edmonds and pujols. where do those two rate among the great tandems in franchise history?

when his current contract expires, edmonds will have been with the cardinals for 9 seasons, 8 of which he will have spent playing alongside albert. that alone --- longevity --- distinguishes them as a duo. as far as i can tell, these are the longest-running position-player pairs in franchise history:

i'm only counting years in which both halves of the couple can reasonably be regarded as everyday players; ozzie and willie shared a locker room for a 10th season (1996), but since both were bench players that year i'm not counting it. on the same grounds, i'm discounting the mellifluous firm of ozzie & pagnozzi, which lasted 9 years (1988-1996); pags spent many of those years as a bench or platoon player. one might also disqualify the nonconsecutive twosomes involving enos slaughter, but since the interruptions were caused by slaughter's military service, it would actually be more accurate to extend those runs --- if not for the war, slaughter and musial would have played together from 1942 through 1953, or 12 years.

by whatever accounting method, the edmonds-pujols partnership (assuming that both stay reasonably healthy the next couple of years --- knock on wood) will rate among the half dozen or so most enduring in the history of the team. let's consider it now in terms of team results:

the edmonds-pujols tandem leads musial-slaughter by mere percentage points, .57981 to .57966; they'll need to average 94 wins over the next two years to hang on to 3d place. to climb past slaughter-marion into 2d, they'd have to power the cards to 207 wins over the next two years, ie outplay the 2004-05 team; that's not gonna happen.

out of curiosity, i decided the line up edmonds-pujols against other potent duos of this era; i'm probably leaving somebody out, but these are the best i can think of:

and finally, our boys vs their contemporaries as measured on their individual stats; thanks to the day-by-day database for the figures.

i'm at a seminar all day; Val's in tomorrow, i'll see you thursday.