MY FAMILY AND I ALL LOVE MUSIC. LIVE IF WE CAN GET IT, RECORDED if we can’t. In fact, as I sit here reviewing this material on another searing hot day in Northern California, I’ve taken my break from working a couple of times to talk to the manager of the band Nickelback. Elaine loves rock, and she’s hoping I can get some tickets for her. My efforts got my mind on music, and I started to think about the 2011 World Series in its entirety. In a way, it was like an album. For those of us old enough to remember, you used to buy songs all packaged onto a piece of vinyl, a cassette tape, or a CD. You could actually put your hands on it, look at the artwork on the cover, read the liner notes, and put the thing on display someplace that told people you were a music lover.
Just as albums are constructed carefully, the Series turned out to be well crafted for its audience, though we weren’t aware of trying to do that. We had those first two games decided by a single run. They were swift and precise and focused encounters, with great hooks that grabbed your attention and made you want to stay tuned. The middle three games, like in any album, were a bit more scattered—they made you look at them a little while longer to see their appeal. Finally, the last two games really put on display the kind of virtuosity, the emotional wallop, and the big finish that would have you replaying them over and over again for years to come.
Obviously, I don’t want to dismiss either the quality or importance of those three games in Texas. With the two-three-two home and away game arrangement of the Series, we now faced the possibility that, even though we’d been three outs away from a huge 2-0 lead, we could be swept on the road and the Series would be over.
Of more immediate concern was Game 3. In thirteen of the last eighteen World Series, the winner of Game 3 went on to win. That translates into 72 percent of the time. As I’ve said before, numbers and percentages aren’t certainties, but you still have to acknowledge the trend. It’s not that we needed any kind of extra incentive, but just as we did with pressure, acknowledging the presence of the crucial nature of Game 3 was important to our approach. We’d been a good road club during the regular season, and to that point in the playoffs we were 4-2 in away games. That is the mark of a resilient, focused, and well-balanced team. Unlike in the regular season when you go in with the mind-set of winning a three-game series, the truism of “take them one at a time” really applied here.
Still, before we could turn our attention fully to Game 3, I had some thinking to do about that ninth inning of Game 2 and how we’d defended the run. That night, when things had settled down and I was alone in my office, I started replaying that inning. I kept returning to this thought: if we had defended that potential stolen base attempt better, they wouldn’t have stolen that base. What naturally followed that thought was this: If they hadn’t stolen a base, they wouldn’t have scored. If they hadn’t scored, we’d have won and we’d now be up two games to none. That “if” was a tough one to digest. Even so, I still believed that how we’d handled it had been the correct way. I didn’t regret the choice I’d made and still thought it was the right call.
Just to be thorough and do my due diligence to find out if maybe I was missing something, I turned to a good friend and managing peer, Jim Leyland. I always count on him to give me an honest answer. I ran the situation by him. Jim agreed: we had played it right. If Motte had tried to be quicker to the plate, it would have been hard for him to get the ball down in the strike zone. And if he’d walked Andrus, Jim said, “you know they’re going to score.” I appreciated hearing Jim’s confirmation. With that one put away, I turned to the next phase. What could we do better in our defending-the-run game?
The running game often doesn’t get a lot of attention, but, like I’d seen that first time in ’79, everything in the World Series gets scrutinized to a far greater degree. When you hear someone talking about how things are magnified, I’m not sure they understand that term in the same way that I do. In any case, to prove my point about the World Series microscope, both the Rangers’ manager, Ron Washington, and Kinsler were asked about that stolen base. In so many words, they both said the same thing: “We believe we can run on Motte.” Kinsler also stated that the play was just that close, that microsecond I talked about. That was encouraging news. And in our message to our pitchers, the solution to the “problem” was obvious.
The next day at our press conference on the off day in Texas, I said that with Motte in the game, we could prevent the stolen base. I said what I did as a reminder to our pitching staff. We were going to defend the run with our best move on possible pickoffs and by being quicker getting the ball to the plate. They all knew that with Yadi’s release and his arm, we could get valuable outs that way. Anytime a team gets a runner out without the ball being put in play by the hitter—on a pickoff play, an outfield assist, a caught stealing—the pitcher is grateful to his teammates for picking him up.
We had talked to the guys before the Series about the potential distraction of the media, and that became real after Game 2. There were a number of reports and critical judgments about our players that had nothing to do with what was going on between the lines. If you believed all that was being written and said, you would have thought that another kind of running game was going on. Albert was one of the many guys on the team who didn’t talk to the media after Game 2. All kinds of speculation flew about what was going on, and Albert took a lot of heat for it. What was troubling was that Albert was accused of ducking the media. If you had all the facts, you wouldn’t have made that accusation.
Given how Game 2 had gone, with all the pitching changes and other things, it had been a long night. Because of how the fortunes in that game ebbed and flowed, and also because the outcome wasn’t clear until the ninth, the writers’ story lines probably changed a bit. They had to do some work to finalize their pieces. That took more time. A half hour after the game ended, a large group of guys went home. The media wanted to speak to them, but that was after they’d already left.
Some writers got on Albert’s case, saying that he was a veteran, the face of the franchise, and he should have understood the circumstances and why there was a delay in them coming to talk to him. Albert’s point—and my point—was that it should cut both ways. This was Game 2 of two at home. We were flying out early the next morning to get to Arlington. We had to be at the ballpark to take the buses to the airport at 9:30. We’d scheduled an earlier than normal, and longer than normal, workout at their place so the guys could adjust to the unfamiliar ballpark. We wanted them to check all the angles to see how balls came off the fences, see how hard the infield dirt was, see how quick the grass was.
So the players needed to get home, finish packing, get their families squared away—since this was the World Series, the guys wanted to have wife, kids, moms, dads, and whoever else with them in Texas—get some sleep, get up early, and haul everyone and their luggage to Busch. These writers and other media people should have known and respected that. No one was ducking anyone. The guys were just trying to do their jobs, keep their focus, and win the Series. Like most disagreements, this was a case of “he said, she said” and crossed wires that blew something all out of proportion. That’s what the intensity of the media produces.
Albert’s a proud guy and generally one of the most in-demand players for interviews. He believed he was being unfairly singled out and that an unfair representation of what had happened was being presented as the truth.
Again, the slow news day phenomenon may have contributed to this. We had the off-day workout, and Albert made himself available to the media. Several media people asked him about his “absence” the night before, and he responded, “To try to rip somebody’s reputation for something like this I don’t think is fair.”
Some people might think that this was another case of Albert finding something to motivate himself, but I doubt it. He doesn’t need to take on the media to get fired up to win a ball game. It’s true that Albert had some things go against him in Game 2, and to that point in the Series, by Albert’s standards, he was not performing up to par. He was 0-for-6 in the first two games. Albert unfairly caught hell for what amounted to nothing but a story line. What nobody could know then was that Albert was about to be an even bigger part of everyone’s story the next day with his hitting display.
Before the Series began, most people felt that both teams had potentially explosive offenses and that the games might be high-scoring. So far, that hadn’t been the case. I sensed, based on how the hitters reacted to being in the warmer, dryer fall air in Texas and out of the damp and humid air in St. Louis, that those initial predictions might come true. Guys came out of the cage after taking their cuts in BP remarking on how well the ball carried. Some parks get referred to as “launching pads.” Another Texas ballpark, the one in Houston, has that reputation.
I can’t take credit for this line, but it’s become a part of baseball lore. In 2005, when we lost to the Astros and they went off to the World Series, Albert rocketed one out of Minute Maid Park off Brad Lidge. Berkman, who was playing for the Astros then, and the rest of their club were flying out that night to St. Louis. Berkman got a few guys’ attention and said, pointing out his window, “Hey, look, there’s Albert’s home run ball.” Berkman made a very quiet flight to St. Louis into a fun ride that helped the team turn the page. They wound up beating us the next game.
I sensed our guys needed a similar approach to help us get over the Game 2 loss. We’d been told before the Series started that our workout time would have to end anytime before 4:00 P.M. That’s when the Rangers had the field. We made our arrangements to leave St. Louis with enough time to get a good workout in to acclimate to a foreign ballpark. After we arrived, Katy Feeney of the Major League Baseball offices let us know that the Rangers had changed their minds and moved up their workout to 3:30. I was in the clubhouse when that call came in, so a few guys were milling around and could overhear me. I said to Katie, “That’s unacceptable. We already moved our flight up to earlier this morning because of what we’d been told. Tell them no way.”
I then paused to consider my next comment. “And tell Nolan Ryan that I’m not Robin Ventura either.” I was, of course, making reference to the White Sox player (and now manager of the club) who had charged Nolan after being hit by a pitch, slipped while going after him, and found himself in a headlock and punched on the top of the skull a few times.
I heard a few guys laughing, and before I knew it the story had spread among them. They added on by saying either to me or within earshot of me, “Hey, let’s go watch Nolan kick Tony’s ass.” A few of them even suggested they’d form a circle around me schoolyard style and shove me back into the center to let Nolan keep whaling on me.
Never underestimate the power of humor, especially when you offer yourself up as a target for a joke, or a punch for that matter.
The guys were the ones who really came out swinging; Allen Craig’s solo home run in the first inning eventually got lost in the postgame hullabaloo, but not in my mind. With two pinch-hits to drive in big runs already under his belt, he stepped up as our right-fielder against Matt Harrison and hit a home run to left. Three at-bats in the World Series, three hits, three RBIs, and now a home run. Even though to this point in the Series he wasn’t playing full-time, he was having a big impact. To win, you need those kinds of contributions from guys other than your middle-of-the-lineup offensive threats. Getting that first run was key.
Kyle Lohse struck out the first two men he faced and held them scoreless through three.
Albert got his first hit of the Series to start off the fourth inning. I wasn’t surprised. Mac had come to me after batting practice and said that Albert had felt locked in, and Mac had seen it himself. He said this was just like what he’d seen that day in Milwaukee. Albert liked his stroke, and Mac had seen how he was centering the ball really nicely. As much as you need contributions from Craig and others up and down the lineup, the club feels more comfortable when the big guns are active. They feed off that, and the fourth inning was a good example of Albert setting the tone. After Holliday hit into a fielder’s choice (as evidence of how well the Series was being pitched, to that point he was 1-for-6), Lance Berkman, who coming into the game was 3-for-8, got another hit. David Freese doubled to drive in the first run. We stayed aggressive, and on a Jon Jay fielder’s choice both Berkman and Freese scored on a throwing error by their catcher-turned-first-baseman Mike Napoli.
We caught a break there, and Theriot capitalized on it when he singled to drive home Yadi. We put pressure on the defense, and anytime you can score a run without a hit you take that chance. We’d added on four to go up 5–0.
The first time through the order, Kyle Lohse had his usual arm action that produced good velocity and movement as well as deception on his off-speed stuff, but in the span of six pitches in the bottom of the fourth he gave up three runs. We could see that he wasn’t the same pitcher we’d seen those first three innings, and when he gave up another hit, this time to Napoli, it was time for Salas. This was an unorthodox way to try to get a win, but this was the World Series and our evaluation was based on who had the most quality pitches to give. I didn’t worry about what would be said about it, or if I hadn’t made the move. That’s the immunity I talked about—just do what you think is best—if it doesn’t work out you’re going to get hammered either way. We’d used our former closer early in games before to good effect, and with the help of a great throw by Matt Holliday on a potential sacrifice fly that nailed Mike Napoli at the plate, an unconventional inning-ending double play bailed us out of trouble. After we each scored three times in the fifth, given how productive both offenses were being, this was shaping up to be one of those games about which people say that the last team to bat was going to win. I don’t give in to that kind of thinking. We were still thinking about how we could score and how we could stop them inning by inning. That said, in a ballpark that rewards hard contact, and with two talented offenses getting hot, it would have been difficult for any pitcher to hold them down.
In the top of the sixth, after singling in his last two plate appearances, Albert stepped in with one out and runners on first and second. His home run to left off Ogando was one of those shots that you know was hit just about as well as a ball could be struck—not perfectly, but close. In that at-bat, Albert demonstrated that point about velocity not being enough. Ogando was trying to go low and away, but the ball tailed back over the plate above the belt. Barely keeping it fair, Albert had incredible bat speed on that shot. Yadi added a sacrifice fly to make it 12–6. After that, our bullpen settled in, with Lance Lynn allowing the Rangers’ last run in the seventh.
Albert added a two-run shot in the seventh and another homer to left in the ninth, having himself a pretty decent day at the plate. Actually, it was a historic day at the plate. For the night, he was 5-for-6, scored four runs, drove in six, and had fourteen total bases. The first three of those feats tied major league records, and the last set one. With those three home runs, Albert joined Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson at the top of the heap. Damn good company.
I thought that on each of those home runs his swing went from near-perfect to perfect. Mac looked at me after the last one and confirmed what I was thinking: That’s exactly what is taught. I’d add today that those swings were videotaped from the first-base side, and anyone would benefit from the hitting clinic that tape provides—going back to go forward, hitting off the firm front side, the head still, the swing coming through from top to bottom, the full extension, the top hand coming off the bat.
That 16–7 score looked like a blowout, but it certainly wasn’t. We worked our tails off throughout the game. Scoring in every inning after the third was something, but I was never able to fully relax.
In thinking about what had happened to Lohse, how he could have experienced such a drastic turnaround, I considered another possibility. The other club just put really good swings on decent pitches. That happens. Equally inexplicable to some people is how a team can score sixteen runs on fifteen hits one night and score no runs on just two hits the next. That’s what happened to us in Game 4. There is an answer to how that marked a difference in offensive production in consecutive games could exist.
Derek Holland pitched a helluva game against us. The home-plate umpire established a consistent and aggressive strike zone, and Holland exploited it well. We didn’t have a hitters’ hangover, we hadn’t used up all the hits in our bats, the guys weren’t overconfident. A good professional pitcher threw what may have been the game of his life on the biggest stage against our potent offense. It happens.
Edwin didn’t have the same command as Holland, so he didn’t take advantage of the home-plate umpire’s aggressive strike zone. He wound up walking seven in five and a third innings but gave up only three hits and three runs, which told us something. He struggled with his command, but he was working his ass off out there, making quality pitches in situations when the game might have gotten completely out of hand. The fact that Edwin threw four shutout innings after giving up a lone run in the first was a positive. Relieving Edwin in the sixth, Mitchell Boggs overthrew a sinker in a double-play situation and surrendered that three-run bomb to Napoli on a ball up in the zone, making Jackson’s pitching line look worse than it actually was.
The Series was tied at 2–2, and visions of that Kinsler steal of second base in Game 2 still popped into my head at odd moments. If I was Yadi, I would have snagged those thoughts and with a rifle arm delivery thrown them out. But I’m not, and I kept thinking and thinking about how we might have been up three games to one except for that one play.
As I pointed out before, I was okay with my decision involving Motte and our defense of the running game that second night in St. Louis. Anytime you lose it’s disappointing. Manage as many games as I have, lose as many as I have, and you start to figure out some trends in how those disappointments break down. Let’s start with the premise above. All losses are disappointing. You go into every game expecting to win. When you don’t, you’re, well, disappointed.
Sometimes you lose and feel less disappointed than at other times. For example, if your team plays hard and loses, that stings. If your team doesn’t show up and compete the way you know they can, that hurts.
What I’ve always done is assess not just the team but myself. That’s why I devised this three-point scheme for categorizing losses. Remember that opening premise: losses = disappointment.
Loss number one is the least disappointing on the managerial scale of self-assessment. None of the moves you made, none of the strategic decisions, had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the game. Some nights, what you do is ineffectual in the strictest sense. They have no direct effect on the outcome of the game. I can’t say those kinds of losses are rare, mostly because, as my self-assessment scale works, I really analyze my actions with precision. Game 4, when Holland shut us down, is a case in point here. I made moves, but in the end they didn’t matter in terms of outcome.
Loss number two is different from loss number one in this regard: I experience the same level of disappointment, but my decisions did matter, and after analyzing them, I can conclude that the key decisions that directly affected the outcome were the right ones to make. That was Game 2 as it pertains to what we’ve already gone over—run defense with Motte.
Loss number three differs from the others both in degree and in kind. These losses are monumentally disappointing to me. Why? Because the outcome-producing decisions I made were the wrong ones. In this case, I beat myself up. I feel like I would if I had struck out with the bases loaded, or given up the walk-off hit.
If you think that you screwed up something and contributed to a loss, you’re ticked off and you can’t sleep. Those times, you’re better off hitting the streets to try to walk it off. If you are really ticked off, then you just hope somebody tries to mug you. That sounds very dramatic, but it’s the truth. If you’re in your room on the road or at home and you’re that angry with yourself, you’ve got to do something. It didn’t happen very often, but it did happen, like Game 2 of the NLDS when I didn’t pinch-hit Holliday.
The reason it didn’t happen more often is that I knew how anguished or ticked off I was going to be if I messed up, so I worked my butt off not to be put in that position.
That is one helluva motivator.
More than just being a motivator, examining losses like I do is a way to hold myself accountable all the time and in every way. Doing that, of course I’m going to take losses personally. That’s why they always disappointed me and sometimes hurt like hell.
One type-three loss that always comes to mind is when the White Sox were playing the Tigers in Detroit in 1981. With a one-run lead, I pitched to Rusty Staub with runners at second and third and two out instead of walking him. Ed Farmer left a ball up in the zone, and Rusty, a great pinch hitter, hit one up the middle for a two-run single, and we lost the game. I should have never pitched to him. The left-right percentage was in his favor, and he was a great hitter. Bad decision. Bad outcome. Bad Tony. I pummeled myself over that one.
I’VE ALREADY MENTIONED THE CRUCIAL NATURE OF GAME 3 IN A seven-game series. The percentage of teams that win Game 5 and go on to win the series is 55 percent, a considerable drop from 72 percent for Game 3. Obviously, lots of variables play into this. The one variable that we focused on in Game 5 in Arlington was the rematch of Carp and Wilson. Both sides were getting their second opportunity to see the starting pitcher. We thought that would prove interesting. “Interesting” didn’t begin to describe some of the strange things, such as our bullpen confusion with Lynn, that took place.
In the thirteen postseason games Carp had pitched in his Cardinal career, we’d won eleven of them. This time, we fell short of getting that twelfth win, and it seemed to me that a dozen oddities, quirks, and missed opportunities in the game got in the way of achieving it. As I’ve said many times, baseball is endlessly fascinating and those seemingly inexplicable turns of fortune I talked about before are just one part of what makes this almost daily game so amazing. You never know what you might find lying in the middle of the road to World Series Championship.
As much as the game involved odd turns, it began the way so many of our postseason games had—we scored first. Game 4 had been the lone exception to that trend, and we quickly reversed it in the second inning in this one. After a leadoff walk to Holliday and a wild pitch advancing him, Berkman also walked. One out later, Yadi singled to drive in Holliday. Berk got all the way around to third when Murphy couldn’t field it cleanly. We took advantage of the miscue and got another run on Schumaker’s groundout.
The top of the third saw something new emerge. With a runner on third and one out, the Rangers chose to intentionally walk Albert to get to Matt Holliday. He couldn’t make them pay for that, and his double-play grounder ended the inning. A Moreland home run and then a pair of two-out hits put the tying run on second, but Carp got out of it. The number of times our staff limited the damage contributed so much to our wins.
This was an opportunity denied.
There are a few ways to make note of what Carp did. Our pitchers’ success in limiting the damage isn’t an official statistic, but in keeping track of runners in scoring position, two-out RBIs, and other metrics, we’re basically providing numbers for that effort. The opposite of opportunity denied is opportunity missed. Much was made after the game about the odd nature of the events with the bullpen, but that emphasis masked what we saw as the essential truth of the game: who took advantage of opportunities and who didn’t.
Carp got the first two outs of the sixth, then Beltre homered to tie it. I knew Carp was upset with himself. He threw a big breaking curveball. It was down in the zone, but Beltre went down on one knee to get it and golfed it out of the yard. Tie game at two apiece.
During the top of the seventh, another play that people would later label “odd” occurred. With one out, Craig walked. Albert has earned the right to put the hit-and-run on, based on his demonstrated insight into the game, and he chose to do it. He signaled to Craig, but when the pitch came in high, he didn’t swing. Craig was thrown out easily. All I thought at that point was, Damn. That didn’t work.
A bit of context is needed here. Albert doesn’t play the game to the beat of his own drummer. Any accusations to that effect, any suggestions that Albert was being selfish or doing anything but trying to do what he thought would best increase our chances of winning, are way off base. Any local observer who follows our club closely, views the game objectively, and isn’t interested in knocking Albert off a pedestal that they falsely perceive to be there would see the truth of that statement demonstrated time and time again. Any national observer who makes the same assumption just doesn’t have enough facts to go on.
Why did I let Albert make that call? Because that’s what you do with a few select players whose level of understanding of the game allows you to trust their judgment—you let them exercise it. Carlton Fisk, Mike Matheny, and Yadier Molina were all catchers who had the green light to call for pitchouts independent of the bench. Same with guys who not only can run but know how to pick their spots. If, over time, you demonstrate that you can steal bases at a high rate of success, we give you the freedom to run.
Another point: Albert is a great hit-and-run man. With really productive hitters, you sometimes hesitate to pull the trigger to call this play because you are, in effect, taking the bat out of their hands. You’re forcing them to swing. And sometimes it’s a really close call. You decide on the side of trusting a productive hitter to do something special. But when you have one of those hairy times when one of your top guys is willing to do it on his own, sacrifice his at-bat for the team, it’s a winning gesture by that teammate.
Like I said, from his first years in the club, we’d hit-and-run with Albert a lot, mostly when he was the second hitter in the inning. We won a number of games, and he got a lot of hits, with the hit-and-run play. A lot of times he would come up to me before the start of an inning and say, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing the hit-and-run here. What do you think?”
I’d generally say of his thinking process, “That’s really good.” Or a few times, “That’s not a good time.”
One of those times I would have said no to the idea was in the situation that arose in the seventh inning of Game 5. If he had come to me before the inning and said he was thinking about the hit-and-run, I would have said, “I wouldn’t do it. This guy’s wild, and they’re not pitching to you. You’re not going to get anything you can handle.”
In the ninth inning we were down 4–2 with one out. Neftali Feliz hit Craig with a pitch. Albert then went to a 3-2 count. Now, Albert’s a good contact hitter, but he also hits a lot of hard ground balls, and he helped us set the National League record for double plays grounded into last year. So we started Craig off first.
Feliz made a great pitch and struck out Albert, and Craig was gunned down at second base. Two outs. No one on. We lose 4–2. One of the worst situations to be in is having to explain failed strategy because quite often you come off sounding defensive. I don’t like being defensive, and I don’t like losing when that tough loss/tough call thing comes into play. That’s probably when people see me get surly or prickly.
A LOT WAS MADE OF THAT PHONE MIX-UP AND LYNN’S INTENTIONAL walk. Motte came in immediately after that and struck out Andrus to end the inning. But hey, I understand that baseball’s an entertainment as well as a competition. We took our lumps, but our undoing came from Murphy’s infield single and Napoli’s double, not from any drowned-out, noisy communications. We’ll never know what might have happened if Motte had faced Napoli. I did know that this club had shown it was special by its response to adversity all year, through the comeback and the playoff run. Although they were bummed after this loss, they took my idea of “special” to another level. Everyone wanted to take responsibility for the loss. Our hitters said that they should have added runs, our starting pitcher said that two runs should have been enough, our bullpen coach and relievers said the miscommunication was their fault. That willingness to share responsibility over a loss that put us on the brink of elimination again, down 3–2 in the Series, placed a star next to the 2011 club indicating just how much this was an “us” and not “me” club. I told them that whatever happened with calls to the bullpen and whoever came in or didn’t was entirely my responsibility. And it was.
What really hurt us was that from the third through the eighth innings, five out of the six times we had runners in scoring position we didn’t score. We definitely had our chances but didn’t come through. Leaving nine men on base left us vulnerable to their comeback.
We’d put ourselves in jeopardy. I had to come up with something quickly to say to the guys before we headed back home.
We had a meeting in the clubhouse afterward, and my words were “We’re not going to allow anybody who’s not in this clubhouse to dictate our attitude and determination to compete in Game 6 and Game 7. We control our minds.
“You know how hard this season’s been. We’ve been here before. We lost the first game in the Division Series to the Phillies and then got four runs down in the second game. And then we lost Game 3 of that series. Elimination game and we won. I don’t need to remind you all of how many times a loss could have done us in. And it didn’t. We’re still here.”
To finish up, I did something I’d done during the comeback by planting that seed in their minds, getting them to anticipate a positive just a bit.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead, but if we get to Game 7, Dave and I have a really great way to pitch that game. After we win Game 6, we’ll share it with you. I think you’ll agree how likely it is that we’ll win that Game 7.”
I then chose to refer to another great comeback in sports. “This is going to sound like Ben Crenshaw at the Ryder Cup, but I’ve got a really good feeling about us going back to St. Louis and winning the next two games.”