It took all 162 games, every last drop the season had to offer, but the Cardinals finally got the job done. They beat the Cubs yesterday on the back of yet another brilliant Jack Flaherty performance and clinched the NL Central crown.
The Central Division title is obviously not the banner the club really wants to hang, but it’s a banner all the same. Maybe the one that should really matter the most. The postseason is subject to the vagaries of small samples, of course, in a way that baseball tends not to be, and the regular season is really the greatest measuring stick we have for how good a team really is.