Before the season started, if you told a Cardinals fan that in mid-June, the World Series champion Cubs would be defending their title by sitting just shy of a .500 record, they would have felt pretty good. With St. Louis seeming like the only other competitive team in the NL Central, surely the division must have looked like theirs for the taking if the Cubs stumbled.
It’s not that easy. While the Cubs surely have stumbled, so have the Cardinals, and the Cardinals have fallen even harder. After losing their last three games in a row heading into this series, St.