A one-sided victory gives the 2014 NLCS the feeling of being over, but with six games to go and a postseason full of uncertainty, we're uncertain if that's the correct feeling to have.
In the run-up to Game 1, there was quite a bit of focus on Adam Wainwright's elbow. We don't need to recap the whole drama here given the thing was covered more comprehensively than Iran-Contra, but the message that the Cardinals wanted the world to receive was that, in Mike Matheny's words, the 20-game winner is "just fine." Added Wainwright, "The elbow-fearing world can know it's not my ligament," he said, rising to Kennedyesque levels of oratory. You half-expected the next words to be, "Let the word go forth." And yet, he also said...
"Yeah, it was a factor in Game 1," admitted Wainwright, who allowed 11 hits and 6 runs in 4.1 innings of that start in the NLDS.
...The "it" being the "aggravated... backside" of his elbow. Thus we have a Wainwright who is simultaneously "fine," dealing with an injury that has nothing to do with Tommy John surgery but was still a "factor" in his getting pounded. And that makes total sense. Well, not the "fine" part, but the rest -- there are problems well short of a shredded ligament that can influence a pitcher's performance. The logic here is akin to saying, "Yeah, I got run over by a car, but I don't have lung cancer." You can also have "no doubts," as Wainwright said, and be totally wrong.
It's equally possible for a pitcher with no physical problems and a clean conscience to pitch as badly as Wainwright has in his two postseason starts, so the cause-and-effect here will remain speculative. All we can say for certain is that in the first game of the NLCS against the Giants, Wainwright allowed nine baserunners in 4.2 innings and, despite some shaky defense behind him, allowed only three runs. Things could have been a lot worse. If his elbow was again "a factor" then it's tough to see how they will get better in his next performance, if there is a next performance.
That said, everything was moot after the first run scored given how well Madison Bumgarner pitched, and the Giants don't have another Bumgarner. Sure, Tim Hudson, Jake Peavy, and Ryan Vogelsong came up big for the Giants against the Nationals, but there is no guarantee that they do so again. Each in his own way is so decrepit, at ages 38, 33, and 36, respectively, that there is no guarantee they do so ever again.
Adam Wainwright has allowed nine runs on 17 hits in nine inings this postseason (Photo: Dilip Vishwanat | Getty Images)
Cardinals' bats make an encore that much more unlikely. The Cardinals launched seven home runs against the Dodgers in the four-game span of the NLDS, in the process making an argument for a team that hadn't hit up to the offensive levels of earlier years and that saw players go through streaks so cold they nearly vanished altogether (Matt Adams' series-winning home run in Game 4 was more or less the first interesting thing he'd done since the All-Star break). Sure, the Nationals could hit too and those Giants arms shut them down, but it seems more likely that Cardinals bats gave a lesser accounting of their capabilities in their regular-season than the Giants' pitchers did in theirs. It's not impossible for pitchers to have three days of lucky bounces, of balls directed at gloves. The same is true of hitters, but we've seen the Cardinals hit better before. The trajectory for the three older arms was equally well established.
This is all speculative, of course. There are six games left in which anything can happen. What will definitely happen is another Bumgarner start, and that should be troubling given that he has pitched 23.2 innings this postseason and allowed but 14 hits and just three runs, two earned. Sure, one of those games ended in a loss, but it seems unlikely that the big lefty will attempt another 50-yard pass down the left-field line. Even if we pencil that in as another Cardinals' loss, though, that still leaves a lot of room for the Cardinals to get back into the series.
That's not to say there shouldn't be a feeling of slight desperation in Game 2. As we noted after ALCS Game 2, only three teams of the 24 who have dropped the first two games of a best-of-seven LCS have come back to win. Blowing the home-field advantage would also seem to be the equivalent of a death sentence.
This has been one of the hardest postseasons of recent years to predict, given that every club that arrived at the big dance came with some significant weaknesses. It's not that cliché thing, parity, that we're seeing, it's not sameness, it's the unpredictability of ill-fitting parts colliding together and rebounding in unpredictable ways. Some might prefer to see dominant super-teams slugging it out like armored dinosaurs in a Roman arena, but that's not what we have this year. We have the defective great and the wounded conquerors. It's not the 1998 Yankees, but we've been there. Embrace the uncertainty of broken toys.