Yahoo’s Steve Henson seems to think the Cardinals merit only a B+ so far. He rightly lauds the performance of several unheralded Cardinals, but provides no real explanation of why the team deserves a grade worse than five other teams (the Rays, Angels, Cubs, White Sox, and Red Sox). Let’s look at those:
Rays: Yeah, amazing stuff.
Angels: Expected to win their division in a walkover and have outperformed their Pythagorean record by seven games, all in the same season that the projected also-ran Athletics have underperformed their Pythagorean record by four. Someone should be leading the AL West by 5 1/2, but it’s Oakland, and not Los Angeles of Anaheim of Buena Park. C at best.
Cubs – Nothing to fault, but they’ve just done as expected. Nothing shocking here, but an A grade is probably fair.
White Sox – Again, great work.
Red Sox – They’ve done as expected, except that they’re losing their division to Tampa. Whatever, they’ll be fine and all that. But how is Boston doing exactly as well as expected worthy of a better grade than the Cardinals putting together the same record with two thirds of the payroll and one third of the talent? Ridiculous.
So, my question is basically this: What on earth do the Cards have to do? I’m not saying they “get no respect” or whatever: that crap doesn’t matter. What does matter is an unwillingness to establish any internal standards for your own columns and a lack of motivation to write anything other than “look at this laundry list of division leaders and Boston”. Poor work.
