As evidenced by the recent diaries by firebell, gordonrules and grantfunk, while Cards-Royals may or may not be a two-sided "rivalry", theres certainly a fair amount of chippiness floating around. Now that the White Sox actually draw pretty well, the Royals are probably one of the poster-children for how great interleague play supposedly is, with the Cardinal series a rare guaranteed big crowd at the K. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case last night, as only 29,000 fans showed up for the game. Granted, it was a Tuesday night, and the Cardinals probably don't travel quite as well when they're a .400 ballclub, but a crowd of 29,000 hardly bespeaks a mindset, on anyone's part, that this is "The World Series for KC fans" or whatever softly condescending line you might want to apply. Of course, a real negative-nelly could also add that its nevertheless a fairly poor showing of support.
One final question about last night: I wonder how things would have turned out had two of TLR's boys been plunked in the early innings of an 8-0 game?
Andy Cavazos: Despondent or Trying to be a Tough Guy?
And for however elated last night's 8-1 victory may have left us, the Royals appear to face a distinctly tougher matchup tonight. Or maybe you don't assume meltdown when you see Odalis Perez (3-6, 5.68 ERA) on the lineup card. Actually, "meltdown" isn't quite the proper assumption however. After glancing at Odie's gamelog a more boring picture emerges: 5-6 innings pitched, 4-5 runs allowed, pretty much guaranteed. The proverbial "he gives you a shot to lose 6-4 everytime he takes the ball" kind of pitcher I suppose.
Odie squares off against Adam Wainwright (4-5, 5.19 ERA), a man slowly working his ERA down from a high of 6.34 on May 15th. While the numbers don't quite bear this out, I'm convinced Perez-Wainwright is a matchup favoring the Redbirds.
Bouncing Around the Internet:
-NHZ's epic post on the Royals horrible corner-production is worth reading. I know this will shock you, but the Royals compare incredibly un-favorably to just about every other AL team.
-Valatan at VEB wonders if the Cards can recover?
-Rick Hummel's game story in today's STL P-D.
-John Perrotto of BP tackles the Royals today in an entry called "Royal Rebound: A New Plan, A New Result". Just as BP now has a scouting guy (Goldstein), they apparently also have a beat-reporter type in Perrotto, who apparently is around to provide long player/coach quotes. Not horrible, but, I'm not really sure whats the point.