Beating Scherzer twice does mean something, lol. Sorry you can't do "small samples!!!" to things like that. That guy wrecked almost every one he faced. Since Jeff Albert (came over from Houston) became the primary hitting coach, the Cardinals have had the 4th best offense in baseball. Nationals, like the Braves, have a crap bullpen. You need that to win in the playoffs. Cardinals will just hack fouls and take take take until the 5th-6th when starters are lifted and feast on their pen. Just like we did Atlanta. I don't put a lot of stock into WAR for pitchers when the stat doesn't consider weak contact/ground balls. And that's the moneyball market efficiency that Cardinals were all-in on. Mikolas, Waino, and Hudson are all groundball specialists. The whole staff is. With Edman and Wong and DeJong in the infield... it'll be smooth sailing barring crazy BABIP luck. Cardinals are the best postseason team remaining with HR/FB rates too. We keep the ball in the park in a homer-crazy league. That's how you win. That's how we'll beat the Nationals. But would you trade Yadi for Mike Trout? Yadi will finish his career as a Cardinal, and that has been the plan since Pujols left. He's this generation's franchise player for St. Louis. And yes, I absolutely understand why fans from other teams hate him. I was trying to come up with a comparable player in recent (2 decades) of a Cubs player and how fans regarded them. I'm having trouble finding a 15 year player with multiple all-star appearances and arguably a HOF career. I think Rizzo is probably the closest as far as fans adoring a player. Am I missing somebody? Do we have to go back to the 60s/70s teams to do that?