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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!dpb
From: dpb@philabs.UUCP (Paul Benjamin)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: The Cards, etc.
Message-ID: <494@philabs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Nov-85 13:58:37 EST
Article-I.D.: philabs.494
Posted: Mon Nov  4 13:58:37 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 06:44:37 EST
References: <1201@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: Philips Labs, Briarcliff Manor, NY
Lines: 27

> The Cards are a good team, but what distinquishes them from being a great 
> team is the brittleness of their lineup.  Take away the speed or the power
> of Jack Clark, and they fold like a deck of cards (sorry).  The great Yankee
> teams (are you listening John B. LoCoco?) had people on the bench who could
> have started for any other ball club.  When Mantle was resting his knees, in
> came Tom Tresh or someone like him.

I don't go along with this recent trashing of the Cards based on the series 
result. I think this Series is a good example of the difference between the
season and a short series. The Cards had a good bullpen for the season -
their bullpen consisted of a number of decent relievers. What they lacked
in great quality they made up for in depth. This is fine for a long season,
but in the short series, great depth in any area is less important. After
all, the above point about Clark may be true, but they had Clark for the
whole series, so it is irrelevant. If the Cards had one great reliever
instead of a number of decent ones, as KC did, they might have fared better.
On the other hand, I don't think KC had good depth in many areas at all.
This could (and did) hinder them during the regular season, so that their
season stats were less impressive than any of the other playoff teams, but
in the series, they could rely much more heavily on their great frontliners
(Brett, Saberhagen, etc.).

The perfect example of a team that lacks depth and does poorly in the
regular season, but has the frontline quality to play with the best in a
short series, is the 1973 Mets. They had only four good pitchers, but they
were great, and pitched almost all the innings. They nearly beat the
A's in that series.