The St. Louis Cardinals enter the 2007 baseball betting season as the reigning world champions. This is a huge honor but also a huge target. Baseball bet teams will be gunning to knock off the champs and will generally play with extra motivation when the Cards come to town.
The Red Birds will every team’s ‘A game’ and will have to mentally prepared as the challenges they face as defending champs will be much greater than those faces as challengers. But no matter how hard this tries, it’s unlikely that they will be able to repeat as the baseball betting World Series champions.
First, to repeat as baseball betting champions is tremendously difficult and, secondly, requires an enormous amount of talent and great depth in the roster. These are two things that the Cards don’t have great quantities of. In 2006 baseball betting season this team snuck into the playoffs with the worst record of any team and surprised the baseball bet world by going all the way and knocking off the might New York Mets in the process.
This baseball betting year don’t expect any such fairy tale. While the Cards are still a very good baseball bet team and could repeat as division champs that have more to do with the weakness of the division rather than any major talent possessed by the Cardinals. And even within their own baseball betting division the Cardinals will face some very tough competitions.
The Astros are a much healthier and much better team this baseball betting year with a much more potent batting lineup and run support for their pitching staff. And the Cincinnati Reds, at least on paper, look like the best baseball bet team in this division; with great pitching and plenty of power at the plate the Reds seem to be the team to beat.
But that’s exactly what critics were telling the Cardinals before the 2006 baseball betting season and that turned out pretty well for St Louis. This baseball bet team is not over talented on paper, although it does have some marquee talent. But what make this team special is its drive and the feisty and scrappy nature of its players.
The heart of this baseball bet team in recent years has been its pitching and the top of this rotation was quite good last baseball betting year. However, in the off season the Cardinals lost 60% of their starting rotation. However, the returning part of the starting staff is awfully good and the pieces that left were in decline or easily replaceable.
Chris Carpenter, a perennial Cy Young candidate should be in the mix again this year for the award and will no doubt post at least 15 wins. There is nothing extraordinary about his stuff; he simply knows how to win. And when you throw in number two pitcher Mark Muldor, who now 100% healthy this is as good as the one-two pitching rotation gets.
Anthony Reyes is also a sleeper at the three spot and many analysts expect him to have a huge baseball betting year. The Cards will need everything they can get from this trio as the four and five pitching spots in the 2007 baseball betting campaign are filled with highly unproven entities.
The bull pen’s success this baseball betting year will depend almost completely on the health of Jason Isringhausen. As his health goes, so goes the success of this group. But despite what many analysts are saying there seems to be little to worry about as the middle inning relievers are all experienced now and should be able to perform well no matter what the circumstance.
Albert Pujols. Enough said. The best player in baseball betting again anchors an attack that should be very productive. On paper Pujols would seem to have very little here, but some how the scrappy bats of his cast mates always seem to produce timely runs. David Eckstein is the mascot for this lineup, a tough semi-talented player that gets the most out of his game every time he steps on the field.
Adam Kennedy was added in the off season to try and some stability at second base and should be average or above, but most of all dependable. Jim Edmunds will have to be healthy for this team to get into the baseball betting playoffs. He’s old but his bat is still as lively as ever and he adds some cover for Pujols.
The Cards can repeat as baseball betting division champs because of their pitching staff. However, for the team to repeat as baseball betting World Series champs again, would take a huge amount of luck and timing, but it wouldn’t be impossible.