A tale of two cities

Monday, October 25 2004 @ 11:42 AM EDT

Contributed by: Mike Green

It's been a rough start to the Series for the Cardinals, with 17 runs allowed in 2 games in Fenway. What is likely to happen when the Series moves to Busch Stadium, and the teams play without the DH?

Boston's offence seems to be tailor made for Fenway. Here are the team's home and away splits for the last 2 years:

2004 Home     Sox               .304/.378/.504
              Opponents         .255/.314/.406

2003 Home     Sox               .316/.392/.527
              Opponents         .261/.318/.407

2004 Away     Sox               .260/.342/.441
              Opponents         .256/.319/.410

2003 Away     Sox               .263/.328/.456
              Opponents         .265/.333/.412

Busch Stadium is tough on home run hitters. There were 170 homers hit there in 2004 by the Cardinals and their opponents, as compared with 213 on the road.

Bearing in mind that Busch is a difficult home-run park, the absence of one of their hitters from the lineup (Millar or Mueller) and the quality of St. Louis' defence, Boston will do very well to hit .250/.320/.400 over these 3 games. That translates to about 4 runs per game. St. Louis has been able to score over 5 per game (home and away), and the Boston starting pitching that they will be facing in these 3 games with the poor defence behind them should be no better than average.

Winning 5-4 with a homer, and a couple of runs manufactured National League style has always been the Cardinal way. With Walker, Pujols, Rolen and Edmunds at the heart of this Cardinal lineup, this team does not easily fit the image, reminding me of a great Yankee club instead. But, as Jared Diamond showed to us in Guns, Germs and Steel, geography plays a big part in history, and now that the Series moves to St. Louis, we may be about to see why.

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