Who Cares About Week 8?

Arizona avoided being destroyed by the Ravens. They still lost, mind you, and blew a 4th quarter lead in the process, but I never expected them to lead at all, so I can hardly complain.

In other news, the St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series! That's nice, though I must confess to feeling a bit of distance from the team. Maybe because I didn't listen to any of the games, or see them. Part of it is there are some guys I wish could have been involved (Brendan Ryan, Adam Wainwright), and some guys I wish weren't (THERIOT!). I'd be concerned about how much leeway this would give LaRussa, but he's retired now, so it hardly matters.

I'm not sure what to think about TLR being gone. For all that he frustrated me, he was a pretty good manager. I think I can safely say that the next guy won't be a) here as long, b) as successful, but c) will be immenently frustrating in his own way. I do expect that way to be more mundane, like an inability to use his bullpen properly, or correctly perform a double-switch. With LaRussa, the frutsrations came from things like his insistence anyone can play second, using infielders in the outfield, feuding with useful young players while seemingly loving crap veterans like AAAron Miles. At the very least, LaRussa's decision gave me something to talk about.

I want to wrap up this post giving props to Chris Carpenter, who set a new career high for innings this year (if you include the postseason), at the age of 36, and was pretty much the only reliable starter the team had in the playoffs (Garcia's periodic bouts of excellence being far too infrequent). He struggled to start Game 7, but unlike Game 2 of the NLDS, he was able to right himself after the first, and give the team some quality innings.

Sometimes in probably the next week or so, I'll be doing my player recaps. Right now, I plan to focus on the regular season, but I might discuss the postseason performance as well.