6/16 GDT: Padres(King) vs Cardinals(Pallante) 6:45 PM CT

[CardsofSTL]

Cardinals clinch the season series and the three game series win with a chance to sweep tomorrow. Pallante goes 7 innings on 92 pitches and improves to 8-4 while King takes the loss for the Padres and is 4-6. 40 wins for St. Louis on the season and they are 6-3 against the West. The Padres drop to 7-9 vs Central Division teams and are 37-35 overall. O'Brien picks up his 18th save.

[obucard]

Chance at a sweep and 10 over tomorrow.

[Donnie Ebert]

Real nice win, Redbirds. Real nice.

[Fan_In_NY]

I just can't understand why Herrera gets HBP so much when looking at his stance, he doesn't crowd the plate at all, like Rizzo for example.

I think its the fact that he is moving towards the plate as the pitch is coming and that makes it harder for him to get out of the way of inside pitches. He does have a decently high (for him) swinging strike rate on inside low pitches as well.

[phins]

Chance to get 10 over for at least the fifth time this season. My brain likes round numbers. Come on Cardinals, do it for the Phins.

[jagtrader]

Crazy [expletive] happens when the bottom of the order can hit.

[heyzeus]

I know the smart ball thing to do is trade May at the deadline, but man. As Cards fans we know 1) you make the playoffs, and the odds may be against you but it's a short enough time frame that things can happen (see: 2006, 2011), and 2) You may have hopes and expectation to be better in future years and make the playoffs many more times, but things can easily break wrong and you don't see the postseason again for a long time.

Don't leverage the future for a fairly long shot this year. But if you are a playoff team, you have to try.

[st.lewis11]

I know the smart ball thing to do is trade May at the deadline, but man. As Cards fans we know 1) you make the playoffs, and the odds may be against you but it's a short enough time frame that things can happen (see: 2006, 2011), and 2) You may have hopes and expectation to be better in future years and make the playoffs many more times, but things can easily break wrong and you don't see the postseason again for a long time.

Don't leverage the future for a fairly long shot this year. But if you are a playoff team, you have to try.

I'd like to keep May. Can't really expect a good return for a rental with injury history, anyway.

[ghostrunner]

Yeah we should keep him. The way this offense has come together has changed a lot. The reason not to spend now would be you don’t where you need to spend. At the start of the season, on top of the pitching you had presumed holes or questions everywhere but 1B and Herrera. 2B and Catcher were unknown and undefined. Then CF became another hole. Plus you’re still paying 3 players to play elsewhere, so I think reluctance to splurge is understandable. You can’t pay for all that even at the level the Cardinals used to pay.

Now those all feel reasonably settled. Blaze and Crooks may not post their AAA numbers, but also they’re probably at least as good as Pages and Gorman and we were winning with those guys. And we’ve got more lineup reinforcements and options on the way.

The pitching isn’t close. Maybe Mathews as of now. So I hope they focus on getting some help there for the next couple years while they develop more in the minors.