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Originally Published: September 15, 2004

Cards one among many

Clearly, the Cardinals are the NL's best team, but this year any team that reaches the playoffs can win the World Series.

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By Joe Morgan
Special to ESPN.com
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Editor's Note -- ESPN baseball analyst Joe Morgan is slated for an ESPN.com chat Friday at 11 a.m ET.

The St. Louis Cardinals have the best record in the majors, and I don't believe it's a fluke. To me, the Cardinals are clearly the best team in the National League, because they can beat you in more ways than other NL teams can.

St. Louis has a comfortable 15½-game lead in the NL Central. But are the Cards built for a long postseason run?

	Edmonds

	Pujols

	Rolen

The answer is a qualified yes. The Cardinals play great defense and boast a potent and complete offense featuring power, speed and high-average hitters. They have three of the NL's top four RBI-producers -- Scott Rolen (league-leading 121), Albert Pujols (110) and Jim Edmonds (107).

As a team, the Cardinals lead the NL in runs (770) and batting average (.277) and are tied for second in home runs (195). St. Louis has everything you could ask for from an offensive standpoint.

Defensively, I believe the Cardinals are the best fielding team in the NL (the Dodgers are also extremely strong defensively).

In the pitching department, St. Louis leads the majors with a 3.72 ERA. The Cardinals don't have a dominant pitcher in the Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson mold. But starters Matt Morris, Jason Marquis, Chris Carpenter and Woody Williams are capable of shutting opponents down. Closer Jason Isringhausen is tied for most saves in the NL (41).

The Boston Red Sox are the only potential playoff team with two dominant starters -- Pedro Martinez and Curt Schilling, of course -- which means that the Cardinals are not alone in lacking truly dominant pitching.

So, given their excellent defense and offense and their solid pitching, the Cardinals have a better chance than most to reach the World Series and to win it.

But as October approaches, it appears that the postseason will be more wide open than in a long time. This year, any team that gets into the playoffs can win the World Series. Even with the Cardinals' dominance in the NL Central, no playoff team will be dominant. There will be eight good teams with weaknesses, but no great teams.

Go down the list of the other division leaders: New York Yankees, Minnesota Twins, Oakland Athletics, Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers ... any team that gets to the playoffs can win it all, but each team has flaws.

For instance, as good the Red Sox are offensively -- they lead the majors in runs scored (827) -- they have liabilities defensively in some areas. The Yankees are second in the majors in runs scored (812), but their starting pitching is a liability.

The wide-open nature of the this year's postseason is different than in recent years, even though the Florida Marlins (in 2003) and Anaheim Angels (in 2002) were unlikely World Series winners.

Last year, I thought that the Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox were better than the other five playoff teams. But once the Marlins got to the Series, I wasn't surprised they won -- because they had pitching, speed and defense, and you can always win with those three components. The Yankees were not built that way. So when we knew the World Series matchup would be Yankees-Marlins, I felt that the Marlins had a good chance to win.

This year, once we know what the postseason matchups will be, I'll be able to evaluate who has the better opportunity to advance. Right now, that's too tough to predict.

The lack of a dominant team heading into October is both good and bad for baseball. It's good because more fans have hope for their team's chances, but I would rather see a clear-cut favorite that every other team is shooting for. Yes, this is a debatable point, but I think that's a better scenario for baseball. A dominant team gives fans a team to pull for or against.

The Chicago Cubs are still my favorite for the NL wild card, but they've been so inconsistent (the Red Sox still have the inside track in the AL). The Cubs had dominant pitching last year, but not this year. Their staff has been inconsistent. This year -- despite the presence of Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Greg Maddux -- we can't say the Cubs have one of baseball's best rotations.

Meanwhile, only two teams in this postseason race handle good pitching well -- the Cardinals and Red Sox. As I see it, the others can handle mediocre pitching but not good pitching. That could bode well for these two teams in the playoffs.

Bullpen incident fallout
I was watching Monday night's Texas Rangers-Oakland Athletics game on TV and saw some of the bullpen altercation with fans that led to Rangers reliever Frank Francisco being arrested (he later posted bail). The AL West-leading A's won the wild contest 7-6 in 10 innings.

Fans react as a chair, thrown by Rangers reliever Frank Francisco (obscured), flies into the crowd at Oakland's Network Coliseum.

Remember, the Dodgers in the visiting bullpen at Wrigley Field got into a fight with Chicago fans in May 2000. I'm sure that Major League Baseball will work off that incident as punishments are considered. And since Francisco was arrested, the law takes precedence over whatever the commissioner will do.

There's no excuse ever for a ballplayer throwing an object into the stands or going into the stands. Likewise, there's no excuse for fans to throw anything on the field.

In the 2000 incident, there was physical contact from fans. I didn't see any of that in this situation. Instead, it was a verbal confrontation, followed by Francisco throwing a white chair into the stands and hitting two fans (breaking the nose of one).

According to Dave Rinetti, the A's vice president of stadium operations, something was said when Rangers slugger Alfonso Soriano hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning, the fans and the bullpen got in a shouting match, and the situation escalated from there.

Rinetti said that the A's have complete video of the confrontation. To my knowledge, all stadiums have video-surveillance cameras trained on the bullpen areas. So whatever instigated the incident will be sorted out.

I was watching the game when the altercation occurred, but I can't speculate about what started it because the TV cameras never showed what preceded the chair-throwing. No matter what happened, Francisco was way out of line -- I could see that his teammates were trying to hold him back, and then he threw the chair into the stands.

One of the problems with the older stadiums is that the bullpens are exposed. Most of the bullpens at newer stadiums are not as close to the fans, so confrontations between fans and visiting players are less likely. At Oakland's Network Coliseum, the stands are right on top of the bullpen.

Monday night, the players and fans were far too close.

An analyst for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan won back-to-back MVP awards with the Reds in 1975 and '76 (the Reds won the World Series both years).