Reds the Better Team

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The title says it all. What a weekend to be a Reds fan. Today they finished off the sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals. The game ended up being a little closer than I had hoped due to the Chapman fiasco, but it doesn't matter if you win by an inch or a mile. This was the sweetest sweep the Reds have had since the 1990 World Series.

I think there's really no question that the Reds are the better overall team, but for some reason they haven't been able to win a series against this team much less sweep them. This sweep is huge because now the Reds know that they can beat the Cardinals and I think you'll see more of the same against them the rest of this season. Comparing the two teams, the only aspect of the game the Cardinals might have the edge is hitting. Even that is very close though. The Reds are better defensively, better starting pitching, and have a better bullpen. Every year in baseball things seem to average or even out. McClellan is not a dominant starting pitcher, he's an average pitcher that got out to a hot start and now you'll start to see him trend back towards that plus 4 ERA that he's had for his career. Holliday and Berkman aren't career .350 plus hitters. They started out hot and now they'll trend back down. The only thing is Pujols will start to trend back up.

On the Reds side, the starting pitching got off to an atrocious start, but now they're trending back to where they should be. Most of them are too young to really have a career average you can look at and say this is where they'll end up. Jay Bruce is better than how he started and now you're seeing him trend upward. The point being is the Reds got off to a start that isn't as good as they really are and the Cardinals got off to a start that's better than what they really are. With that happening the Reds still stayed right there with St. Louis and now they have passed them and really I don't expect them to look back again.

I think the Cardinals are on the decline and the Reds are on their way up. The players of the teams and the fans of the respective teams are realizing this as well. On the MLB message boards Cards fans are bitter and are starting to realize that their run of owning the NL Central is over and the Reds are young, up and coming, and will be running things in this division for a while now.