Losing Cardinals A Bit Over-Sensitive

Baseball players are a sensitive lot.  The Dodgers just won an emotional game and there were some on field celebrations on the way to their 3-0 victory.  The team had just completed 22 innings of scoreless baseball and were on the verge of setting infamous 
records for offensive futility in post season play.  So with that backdrop, they were bound to get excited at the mere hint of a change in their luck.  This was a team left for dead that suddenly had life.

The Dodgers took a 2-0 lead in the fourth inning tonight in a series where two runs might as well be five.  The pitching is that good with these teams.

Yasiel Puig celebrates after tripling in a run in the 4th inning. (AP Photo)

So when Cardinals players express protestations over the brief celebrations of Adrian Gonzalez and Yasiel Puig, it makes one wonder if these guys are may be a little oversensitve.  Can’t a player show some emotion?

“I saw Adrian (Gonzalez) doing some Mickey Mouse stuff at second,” said Adam Wainwright while talking about the first RBI a Dodger player had tallied since the second inning on Friday.  

“When you do those things, you get attention,  You don’t want to wake up anybody,” said Carlos Beltran regarding Puig’s mild celebration when he tripled after A Gon’s double.

For being major league veterans with many years standing, you’d think that Beltran and Wainwright could keep their comments to themselves.  Maybe they should follow the example of their manager Mike Matheny who when asked about Puig’s celebration, he refused to take the bait.  

“He’s a good player.” he said about Puig.  Nothing derogatory came from his lips regarding a perception that he believed that he overdid it.  Maybe he thinks his team got showed up, but that’s for something in-house with his team.

I guess we'll see tomorrow if they seriously took umbrage to the celebrations.  Who knows?  Maybe some high and tight pitches will be the result.  Considering the celebratory antics Cardinal pitchers were doing in St. Louis after some key strikeouts (by Kelly and Wacha), perhaps the Cards should back off a bit.  Or even better, Wainwright might want to concentrate on getting players like Gonzalez out if he doesn't want to see him celebrate after getting a key hit.

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Some facts about this series:

The Cardinals are now hitting .134, (13 for 93) in the series.  They have three extra-base hits in the series and no home runs.  The Dodger pitching has completely shut down the team with the best offensive numbers in the league.  With the possibility of Greinke and Kershaw pitching the next two games, the Cardinals really have their hands full of they expect to turn their offense around.  This game three Dodger victory could turn out to  truly be a turning point in this series.

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