Look At The Numbers

It is now Thursday, May 5th @ 9:15 pm CST.
I did not blog about yesterday's game/telecast because the game took 3:35 to play and I arrived home @ 12:40 am. Today's game was at 12:45 with the pre-game show starting at noon. Because of the day game, I went to bed when I got home last night because my alarm was set for 7:00 am.
Why am I telling you this you ask?
I had originally planned to write a separate blog for each game/telecast tonight but the two games were so incredibly different that I decided to write on blog concerning both games.
Yesterday's game took three hours and thirty five minutes to play.
There were 15 runs, 21 hits, 5 errors (4 by the Cardinals), and 10 walks.
The Marlins threw 24 first pitch strikes to the 40 batters they faced.
The Cardinals threw 25 first pitch strikes to the 44 batters they faced.
This means there were 49 first pitch strikes and 35 first pitch balls.
Add these numbers up and it is easy to see that this was a poorly played, poorly pitched, and therefore, poorly paced game.
Today's contest was 59 minutes faster than last night's with a game speed of 2:36.
In today's game there were 9 runs, 16 hits, 0 errors, and 8 walks.
The Marlins had a poor first pitch strike ratio with only 16 first pitch strikes out of 35 Cardinals batters.
The Cardinals on the other hand threw 26 first pitch strikes to the 34 Marlins batters
The pace of the game was set by the Cardinals starter Jake Westbrook. Westbrook threw 23 first pitch strikes to the 26 batters he faced including the first 14 batters he faced.
As last night's game went on the temperature dropped by 15 degrees and Busch Stadium became colder and colder thus affecting the energy of the crowd.
Today's game was played in beautiful 60 degree weather and the crowd was into it.
2 different games in 2 days.
One game was a blast to cut and one game was torturous to cut.
The numbers don't lie.