Down the Stretch They Come

Cards just pulled off a pretty nice sweep of the Brewers up in Milwaukee. Carp and Wainwright do their things on the mound and on the other game the bats battle back for a late game winner. Not bad. So how does that position the Cards for NL home field advantage as we have about 3-4 weeks of ball left? Currently the Cards have the best record in the NL by .5 games.

The Cards have 7 more 3-game series remaining. Three of those series are against teams with sub-.500 winning percentages (HOU, CIN, MIL). Two of the three of those are on the road. Other opponents include ATL (4 games over .500), FLA (8 games over), CHC (4 games over) and COL (19 games over). The combined record of our future opponents is 490-478 (.506).

Now look at the Dodgers. Their opponents have a combined record of 448-543, almost 100 games under .500 (.452 winning %). At first glance you would think that they have the easy road. But there is more to it than that. Yes, there are some easy series coming up for LA. They play PIT twice, WAS and SD. None of those teams have won 45% of their games. But the other three series are not going to be easy. A home and home against SF (76-63) and finish the season against COL (79-60). LA had better take care of business against the bottom feeders because the other teams are still fighting for some more October baseball.

On to the Phillies. Their future opponents' winning percentage is .475. There is still some competition in the NL East and they still play them all. FLA for two series, ATL for a series, and the Mets for a series. The Mets are not much on paper this year, but PHI has ruined the Mets playoff hopes a few times as of late. Will they inflict some revenge this year? PHI also plays a series against WAS, MIL and HOU.

All three of these teams should win their divisions. But with the pair of 2 series between LA/SF and PHI/FLA there is plenty of room to shake things up.

So while the Redbirds may have the toughest compiled opponents' winning percentage, they may have the easiest road to the best record. Not to mention, the Cards have less games to play (more off days remaining) than either the Phillies or the Dodgers.

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