Bullpen Carries Cardinals To 3-2 Win In World Series Game 1

Hey, did you hear the one about the guy who came in with terrible statistics and hit three home runs?

Yeah, huh? That actually happened.

FOX Sports isn’t an outfit that’s scared to dicker around with televised sports. They’ve tested all sorts of technological advancements out on the public before, with varying success.

Some stick and now seem hard to live without, like the floating first-down marker of superimposed magic in football. Some are flops, like the glowing hockey puck, which seemed like it came from a focus group that didn’t watch hockey, and got approved all the way up the line by people who didn’t watch hockey.

It’s nobody’s fault, really. It’s nobody’s fault that Texas lost to St. Louis last night.

Today, our moment is lifted from just a few moments after Craig’s single that almost wasn’t, which gave the Cardinals a 3-2 lead.

“It was close,” Cruz said. “Baseball is like that. Inches.”

And from the probably useless, but perhaps interesting, stats department:

Missed chances, a missed sliding catch and a few inches here and there doomed the Texas Rangers on Wednesday night as they fell to the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the World Series, 3-2. Nelson Cruz’s attempt at a sliding catch in the sixth inning came up just short, and the Cardinals had the go-ahead, and game-winning, hit they needed.

Over at SB Nation Dallas, Robbie Griffin took a look at the game, lamenting the missed chances and inability of the offense to string together hits.

It’s cliché and boring to say that baseball is a game of inches. We’ve all heard it said a thousand times, and it’s usually the mark of someone who just doesn’t have anything insightful to say. But sometimes I think it’s really amazing how close a baseball game can come to being a completely different baseball game.

Wilson and Carpenter appeared to find their grooves in the third, and through three and a half, there was no score at all. But then in the bottom of the fourth, the Cardinals got to Wilson - and only barely.

FOX’s new fancy toy said something different:

The headline is misleading. Of course he knows. But when you’re thinking of things to say off the top of your head for a few hours, it’s easy to make this kind of mistake.

And McCarver reacted about the only way he could -- he laughed about it and moved on.

Eventually, Tony La Russa’s going to do something that doesn’t work.

Maybe later tonight, even.

I couldn’t have said this better myself, so ...

That brought Ron Washington out of the dugout to replace Wilson with Alexi Ogando. In other words, a walk of Nick Punto chased two starting pitchers from a game.

In came Ogando, and he overwhelmed Craig with a pair of fastballs. In a 1-2 count, though, Craig made contact and slashed a ball down the line in right, and...

The FOX team just showed an on-screen graphic with the following:

And I hate myself for thinking it. Fought against it, paced around for a bit, tried to forget it. But, but ...

Ron Washington’s apparently anticipating a different sort of game than we’ve become used to.

Because after Ian Kinsler led off the sixth inning with a bloop single, Washington (presumably) ordered Elvis Andrus to lay down a sacrificial bunt. Which Andrus did, Kinsler happily trotting to second base while Andrus was out at first by a country mile.

Holliday hit the first pitch he saw hard, too. Unfortunately...

It was the Cardinals’ second double play of the game, but it felt like the fourth. So we move on, with the score still 2-2. Wilson’s at 74 pitches, with a lousy 39 strikes.

Last week, we noted that FOX was going to try military grade thermal-imaging cameras in their broadcasts. From the original AP article:

The cameras spot the friction-heat generated when a ball hits a bat or players’ protective padding and gloves. Little nicks or glances that the naked eye may miss because the ball is traveling so fast and the contact is so slight often show up nicely, as a white mark, with the images generated by the Hot Spot system.Sounds great, but I had no idea what it meant. Sure, I’ve played Call of Duty 4 and everything, but I have a hard time telling my military grade thermal-imaging cameras from my standard civilian grade thermal-imaging cameras that I don’t use to see what my neighbor’s up to. What does it look like in a baseball context?

Which brought up Napoli, who smacked Carpenter’s second pitch, a 93-mile-an-hour fastball that grazed the top of the strike zone, well over the fence in right field.

Maybe, as Joe Buck suggested, there’s something about the No. 7 spot in the Rangers’ lineup.

And suddenly, Chris Carpenter is looking sharp.

I don’t necessarily think all baseball fans are annoyed by Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, but it seems like all the baseball fans on the internet are. And one of the neat things about Twitter is that we can find out when players feel the same way. They’re just like us! In some respects.

Or not. See, all pitchers who don’t get the chance to hit think they can hit. They haven’t been beat down by the reality of facing their MLB peers. So while it’s nice that Wilson’s .292/.398/.435 line at Loyola Marymount allows him to get a little confident, he has no idea. If and when he gets to face a lot of major-league pitching, he’ll learn quickly.

Carpenter: 14 strikes, 15 balls

Wilson: 15 strikes, 15 balls

Four combined half-innings, and one more ball than strike. The weather is nasty in St. Louis, by which I mean it’s cold and windy, so maybe that’s having an effect, but unless these aces get things turned around in short order, we could be in line for more of the same extended bullpen work with which we grew familiar during the previous round.

Well, not necessarily.

Which isn’t to suggest that either of them’s been perfect. Carpenter’s given up two hits and a walk; Wilson’s issued a couple of free passes.

David Freese has never had a great defensive reputation. Pretty sure he’s never had a defensive reputation. He’s just always been there, minding his own business, not bothering anybody, and not doing a lot to attract attention. Like Canada. He was the Canada of third basemen. His career UZR at third, per FanGraphs: 1.1.

But that’s how quickly they can happen, those things. One minute, you’re not paying attention to an aspect of a player’s game, and the next, it’s a thing. Not for Freese this time, though. He was fortunate.

Everybody tells me I missed Tim McCarver’s prime, back in the 1980s with the Mets.

But I was around in the late ‘90s, and at that point I found McCarver insufferable.