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Looking out for no. 1: the playoff picture is fuzzy, but this is clear: Chris Carpenter will be the most important player in the postseason and the reason the Cardinals win it all

Sporting News, The, Oct 7, 2005 by Stan McNeal

This postseason is shaping up to have more questions than a Joe Torre press conference after a Yankees loss to the Devil Rays:

* Can the Braves silence critics who contend--ridiculously--that the club's 14 consecutive division titles are overrated because Atlanta has only one ring to go with them?

* Can anyone beat the Indians? (By the way, who plays for the Indians?)

* Can Tony La Russa push the buttons in October the way he did throughout another sensational regular season? (Well, let's just say that it very well may be your year when you order a suicide squeeze 16 times and are successful on 13 of them.)

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* Can the $200 million Yankees find success with a rotation put together from the discard pile?

* Can you really last three hours in those creaky, cramped seats at Fenway Park without suffering long-term knee damage?

* Is the Tim McCarver button--aka the mute--working on your remote?

* Of course, there's this one: Who the heck is even going to be in the playoffs? With season's end only seven days away, all four spots in the A.L., plus the N.L. wild card, remain up for grabs.

And, finally: With all the wonderful uncertainty that has surrounded September, and with nightly drama awaiting in October, wouldn't it be nice if there were at least one prediction to bank on? Well, here goes: The key to the whole month is a Cardinals righthander who never has thrown a postseason pitch. If Chris Carpenter deals as he did from mid-May through early September, when he went 17-2 and didn't allow more than three earned runs in any of his 22 consecutive starts, the Cardinals will hang a 10th World Series championship in their new ballpark next spring.

Two reasons to favor the Cardinals:

Everyone else has larger issues. The Red Sox's bullpen is the worst in the American League. The Yankees' rotation has Randy Johnson and not much else, and Johnson has been pitching with a balky back. The Braves have too many rookies. The Indians will be so happy just to get there they'll be primed for a letdown. The White Sox peaked in July. The Marlins might not even get there. And the rest of the field, no matter who is in it, simply isn't good enough.

Remember last season. The Cardinals do. Without a legitimate top-of-the-rotation starter--an unusual injury ended Carpenter's season in September--they still ground their way to the World Series. But once there, the Cardinals were overmatched in four games partly because they could not throw a fastball past the Red Sox's hitters.

La Russa chooses not to rate Carpenter's potential impact on October more important than that of MVP candidate Albert Pujo]s--"Tied for first," La Russa says--but Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan doesn't hesitate.

"It doesn't matter how much offense you have in the postseason," Duncan says, "because it won't be enough if you don't have quality starting pitching."

After Carpenter largely was forgotten last October--the PA announcer didn't introduce him before Game 3 of the N.L. Division Series in L.A. even though he lined up with his teammates--he welcomes the challenge of taking the ball for the biggest games of the season. Told he was being interviewed for a story about the most important player in the playoffs, Carpenter nodded confidently and said, "All right. Let's go."

And why not? Carpenter, a nine-year veteran, has overcome more than most to reach this point. He broke in with the Blue Jays as part of a rotation that included Roger Clemens, and it took a while to figure out he wasn't going to be the second coming of the Rocket. "I was trying to please people instead of being the pitcher I can be," Carpenter says. 'I wasn't going to strike out 15 batters a night like Roger Clemens." By the time Carpenter thought he had that figured out four years later, his shoulder went bad. He experienced discomfort in 2002 spring training but kept pitching. After serving up four home runs in 2 1/3 innings on opening day at Fenway Park, he kept pitching. Between two trips to the disabled list, he kept pitching. Finally, in August he succumbed to surgery during which his labrum had to be tacked back onto his shoulder. The Blue Jays didn't wait to see how he would recover and designated him for assignment. When Carpenter refused a trip to the minors, the Cardinals signed him.

Then he lost 2003 to injury. During a late spring training bullpen session for the Cardinals' brass, he felt "awesome." But he couldn't throw the next day. As soreness persisted through the summer, doctors eventually determined that one of the three tacks holding down his labrum was not working. He says his shoulder bone actually was decaying. A second surgery was needed to remove scar tissue and rub down the bone in order to get the blood flowing properly.

The two pain-filled years were not wasted, though. Carpenter actually became a better pitcher by not pitching. When he reported to spring training last season, he had learned the lesson of focusing on one pitch at a time. "Watching gave him an opportunity to learn how to slow the game down," Duncan says.

Looking out for no. 1: the playoff picture is fuzzy, but this is clear: Chris Carpenter will be the most important player in the postseason and the reason the Cardinals win it all

Sporting News, The, Oct 7, 2005 by Stan McNeal

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