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Post-season Gameday Thread, #26: Cardinals on verge of extinction

My fellow SnakePitters. I come to you with a serious message. In just a few short hours, the 2013 major-league baseball season may be over, and sporting darkness will descend on the face of the Earth.

Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports

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Michael Wacha, RHP
2013 Reg: 4-1, 2.78
2013 Post: 4-0, 1.00
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John Lackey, RHP
2013 Reg: 10-13, 3.52
2013 Post: 2-1, 3.26

5:07pm Arizona time, Fox. Red Sox lead 3-2.
It's back to Boston, with St. Louis now facing elimination, needing to take both games at Fenway if they are to snatch victory in the 2013 World Series. It's a tough situation, but if there's anyone they would want on the mound, based on their performances this post-season, it would have to be Wacha. Four starts, four victories and in 27 innings of work, he has allowed a total of 11 hits and three runs, with a K:BB ratio of 28:8 over that time. As in the NLCS, if the Cardinals come through, he'd have a very good argument for being named MVP. It's a rarity to have a pitcher win that: since Randy and Curt were co-MVPs in 2001, the only pitcher to win it was the Phillies' Cole Hamels in 2008.

If the Red Sox clinch, there's little doubt that the MVP would be David Ortiz, who is 11-for-15, with more than twice as many knocks as anyone else on the team and a full one-third of all the Boston hits in the first five games. One more for Ortiz, and he'll have the most by any player in the World Series since Marquis Grissom also had a dozen for the Braves in the 1996 post-season - though perhaps it's an omen that Atlanta lost that series to New York. Boston fans will be hoping they can avoid that, and instead enjoy the first World Series clinched at Fenway for almost a century: 2004 and 2007 were both won on the road, so you have to go back to 1918 for that.

Otherwise, we'll be back on Halloween Night for a winner-take-all game, which would be certain to be a horror show for the loser. I'd not mind that in the slightest, or staving off the prospect of no more baseball, for at least one more day. So, go Cardinals!