The Pride Of St. Louis

"I don't want to gross anybody out," Tony La Russa confessed, "but I stained my shorts there." His St. Louis Cardinals had just outlasted the Milwaukee Brewers 3--2 on a warm, cloudless late-September night at Miller Park for the 99th win of their remarkable season, clinching the best record in the National League, but La Russa, St. Louis's dour, superstitious manager, hadn't yet shaken the jitters. Catastrophe--insofar as catastrophe can befall the best team in baseball--had been narrowly averted in the bottom of the second inning when Brewers rightfielder Brady Clark cued a curveball off his shoe tops straight back at Cardinals starter Woody Williams, who was lucky to knock down the line drive with his glove, only inches from his face. � Immediately before the game La Russa had learned that his ace, righthander Chris Carpenter, was suffering from nerve irritation in his throwing arm, which along with a previously diagnosed strained right biceps had put his postseason availability in jeopardy. To lose Williams 11/2 hours later would have been not only a fluky stroke of bad luck but also another blemish on a starting rotation that represents the biggest obstacle to St. Louis's first World Series championship since 1982. No, despite their 103--52 record at week's end and a fearsome lineup, these Cardinals do not expect to stomp through the playoffs like the Budweiser Clydesdales.

"There's no reason why we can't lose three games and be out of the playoffs immediately," says rightfielder Larry Walker, whose only previous postseason trip was a four-and-out with the Colorado Rockies in 1995. "There are a lot of expectations on us, but we need to let that just be talk. We can't put ourselves in the World Series when there are two teams to go through [first]."

The Cardinals' offense alone makes them a most formidable foe, however. At week's end St. Louis led the league in batting (.278), slugging percentage (.462) and runs per game (5.3), and ranked second in home runs (210) and total bases (2,455) and third in on-base percentage (.345). Each of its 3-4-5 hitters--first baseman Albert Pujols, third baseman Scott Rolen, centerfielder Jim Edmonds--had at least a .311 average, 33 home runs and 111 RBIs. In a universe sans Barry Bonds, each would have a persuasive argument for MVP. "No doubt about it, they've got the strongest lineup in baseball," says San Diego Padres manager Bruce Bochy. "They're a very explosive team, power throughout the lineup, no weaknesses."

Former Seattle Mariners general manager Pat Gillick, the architect of championship clubs in Toronto in 1992 and '93, calls the Cardinals "the best team out there. They have all these hitters, Edmonds and Rolen and Pujols and [shortstop] Edgar Renteria, and they all play great defense too. And they've added Walker, he's another one in the same mold. It's something very rare."

Walker, who in 38 games with St. Louis through Sunday was slugging .568 and had hit 10 home runs, came from Colorado on Aug. 7 in a trade for Class A righthander Jason Burch and two players to be named; the Rockies, desperate to pare payroll, agreed to absorb roughly half of the $17.5 million owed Walker through the end of next season. The swap added the final ingredient to the meat of the Cardinals' order, a latter-day Murderers' Row that ranks with the 1927 New York Yankees model (chart, below). It also burnished G.M. Walt Jocketty's impeccable summertime trade record: Since '97 he has plucked Mark McGwire, Will Clark, Williams, Edmonds and Rolen for assorted warm bodies, the best of which was second baseman Adam Kennedy, a career .278 hitter.

Batting Walker second, as La Russa has done since the trade, has manifold advantages. It leaves the 3-4-5 hitters in place; it slides Renteria (.290, 10 homers, 71 RBIs) from the 2 hole to the 6, an RBI position he prefers; and it allows Walker to create top-of-the-order havoc behind speedy leadoff man Tony Womack. "Let's say Womack's on first," La Russa says. "Larry's a lefthanded pull hitter, and if they're holding Womack, a ground ball in the hole [means] first and third. And if [the pitcher gets] distracted with the speed on first, Larry can light [him] up." Hitting second also conforms to Walker's patient approach--in his first 157 plate appearances with the Cardinals he walked 21 times and had a .401 on-base percentage. "I'm very open to the base on balls, to getting hit by a pitch, whatever it takes to get on," he says. "That's the job of the number 2 hitter."

St. Louis, the most enthusiastic baseball town in the country, immediately swooned over Walker, who spent the prime of his career playing in front of thinning crowds in cavernous Coors Field. (Attendance has declined for eight seasons running.) "As a visitor you always appreciated coming to St. Louis, just for the fact that the fans know the game, and they all wear red," Walker says. "You get into a game here."

And Redbird Nation remains ever passionate: The Cardinals will draw more than three million fans for the sixth time in seven seasons, and 90,000 tickets for the Division and Championship Series sold out within hours on Sept. 22. But whether the Bud-gulping, red-clad masses will witness a coronation in October is far from a certainty. For all the titters it elicited, Oakland A's G.M. Billy Beane's offhand remark in last year's best seller Moneyball that baseball's postseason is a crapshoot struck at the heart of the matter. As the number of playoff teams has swelled, the chances of the strongest regular-season team's running the table have dwindled. Since the inaugural Division Series, in 1995, only one out of the nine teams with the best regular-season record--the '98 Yankees--has won the World Series, an 11% success rate, compared with seven out of 25 (28%) during the LCS-only playoff era, from '69 through '93, and 34 out of 65 (54%) before '69.

The Cardinals are mashers who get by with a serviceable but inexperienced rotation, much like the 2001 Mariners, who lost in the ALCS. "The rotation is their weak link," Brewers assistant G.M. Gord Ash says. "It's better than a lot of people thought it would be at the beginning of the year, but it doesn't figure to match up to some other staffs in a short series. Carpenter and Jason Marquis have never pitched in big games like that before."

Carpenter (15--5), Marquis (15--6), Williams (11--7), Matt Morris (15--9) and Jeff Suppan (16--8, who will be the odd man out of the playoff rotation, should Carpenter get healthy) are all righthanders without overwhelming fastballs or breaking balls. They subsist by locating their pitches precisely, by hammering the strike zone and minimizing walks, by keeping their pitch counts low and by relying on the five Gold Glove winners around them ( Edmonds, Renteria, Rolen, Walker and catcher Mike Matheny). Carpenter, who can graze 95 mph, and Marquis, whose four-seamer hits 93, throw the hardest, which is to say softer than a good dozen starters on other possible playoff teams. St. Louis's rotation allows an unusual amount of contact for a playoff staff; at week's end it ranked seventh in the NL in hits allowed per nine innings (8.98) and 10th in home runs (1.20). Nor do the Cardinals pitchers miss many bats (6.35 strikeouts per nine innings, 12th in the league).