St. Louis Cardinals run at a record season-ending streak
By Bill Felber
The St. Louis Cardinals may be in the midst of the greatest late-season streak in MLB history.
The Cardinals rallied with three late runs to beat the Chicago Cubs 4-2 Sunday at Wrigley Field, giving St. Louis a franchise-record 16-game winning streak.
St. Louis Cardinals on impressive run to end season
When the streak started Sept. 11 with a 6-4 victory over the Cincinnati Reds, the Cardinals were fourth in the running for the second wild card spot. They now have a six-game advantage over the Reds and Philadelphia Phillies for that second wild card spot, and have all but wrapped up a post-season berth.
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Sixteen-game win streaks are nothing to sneeze at any time. But when they come in September, they can often drive teams right into the World Series.
The Cardinals finish the regular season with six games at home, three each against the Brewers and Cubs. They are coming off a string of eight consecutive victories last week against those same two teams, so it is no idle speculation that they could finish the season on as much as a 22-game winning streak.
If they do, that would set an all-time record for longest winning streak to end a season.
The most recent close comp to what the Cardinals are attempting to do took place in 2017. That year the Cleveland Indians ran off 22 consecutive victories between Aug. 24 and Sept. 14.
The difference between the Cleveland and St. Louis streaks is that the Indians held a five and one-half game lead in the AL Central on the day the streak began; in fact they had been out of first place for only one day since mid-June.
The other difference is that a good part of the Indians’ streak took place in August. The Indians lost a five-game post-season series to the New York Yankees.
The other parallel some fans may recall occurred in 2007, when the Colorado Rockies caught fire in late September.
Fourth in the NL West following a 10-2 defeat at the hands of the Florida Marlins Sept. 15, the Rockies ran off 13 wins in their final 14 games – 11 of those wins coming in a row — to tie the San Diego Padres for what at the time was the only available wild card spot.
The Rockies then beat the Padres 9-8 in a wild card playoff, swept the Philadelphia Phillies in a three-game division series, and swept the Arizona Diamondbacks 4-0 to claim the National League pennant.
That gave Colorado 21 wins in 22 starts entering the World Series, where they ran out of gas. The Boston Red Sox swept the Rockies four straight.
In 2002 the Oakland Athletics famously won 21 straight on their way to the AL West title before falling to the Minnesota Twins in the division series. But almost all of that win streak, dramatized in Moneyball, actually occurred in August.
To find the closest parallel to what the St. Louis Cardinals are doing, it is necessary to reach back the better part of a full century. On Sept. 2, 1935, the Chicago Cubs sat 79-52 and in third place in the National League race, two and one-half games behind the Cardinals and a half game behind the Giants.
Then the Cubs went on a 21-game streak that included four victories over the Giants and a final three against the Cardinals. They passed the Cardinals with a 6-3 victory over Brooklyn at Wrigley Field Sept. 15 – their 12th straight – and wrapped up the pennant with a doubleheader sweep of the Cardinals Sept. 27 at Sportsmans Park.
The victories were Chicago’s 20th and 21st straight. One day later the Cardinals beat the Cubs 7-5 in 11 innings, and two weeks later the Cubs lost a six-game World Series to the Detroit Tigers.
The New York Giants won a record 24 straight in September of 1916. But despite that run, the Giants never rose above fourth place in the NL standings.
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And way back in September of 1891, the Boston Beaneaters reeled off an 18-game winning streak between Sept. 9 and Oct. 2 to win the NL pennant. The Beaneaters trailed the Chicago Colts by six games when the streak began, and passed them thanks to a double-header sweep of the New York Giants Sept. 30. Those were Boston’s 15th and 16th straight wins.