The Cardinals did everything within their power Sunday to push the season one day closer to their expected destination, but all they could do was watch as things they didn't do all season caught up to them.
The Cardinals rallied and rallied again for a 10-4 victory against visiting Pittsburgh, yet moments after they pulled away from the Pirates on the scoreboard they learned they weren't going anywhere. San Francisco's victory against the Dodgers, which went final in the eighth inning of the win at Busch Stadium, eliminated the Cardinals (86-76) from the postseason. St. Louis will not host a major-league playoff game, concluding a run of five consecutive postseasons that was the most in club history and the longest active streak in baseball.
For the first time in his managerial career, Mike Matheny ends a season with a win.
It's somehow less, because the losses have come in the playoffs.
"I want to get to the postseason. I wanted to get to the postseason and take our shot," Matheny said in his office while players packed and taped boxes in the clubhouse. "Is this better than going to the World Series and losing to Boston? The answer is no. That was special. I still have that unbelievable desire to win the last game _ and have it be the last game of the postseason. We can get better. To the point that I felt we took care of what we needed to take care of there is a sense of satisfaction. We got called to the carpet and we answered.
"It wasn't the ending we wanted."
Matheny described that playing baseball "deep into October (is) what we feel our job description is." Every year for him it has been. Starting with the Cardinals' improbable World Series victory in 2011 through the first four years of Matheny's tenure, the Cardinals have always played at least as far as the National League division series. Matt Carpenter, a rookie in 2012 and a core player now, has never had a season end earlier than Oct. 13. He deadpanned that he "doesn't know what the first week of October is going to feel like at home."
As it was in 2012 and 2014, in 2016 it was those even-handed Giants who nudged the Cardinals out of the playoffs, this time before they started. The Giants swept the Dodgers and matched the Cardinals win for win in the final week of the regular season to claim the NL's second wild card berth by a game. That one game could have been the one that ended with the tying run stranded at third this past week, any one of the ninth-inning ruptures, or the one that sailed away on an error in April or May or August. The Cardinals tried nine previous times to get 10 games better than .500 and lost all nine.
The first time they got there was the last game of their season.
"We finished strong but we didn't finish strong enough," general manager John Mozeliak said. "To characterize this season in the end it's still disappointing. I don't feel like anyone in this room needs to hang their heads but we didn't reach our goals. Everything is sort of an excuse otherwise. So I'm not going to sit here and say everything is great because it's tough. I don't think anyone is thrilled they're packing their bags right now and going home and not to play in some other city."
To win Sunday and possibly force a one-game tiebreaker Monday if the Giants had lost, the Cardinals set up ace Adam Wainwright for the start. The Cardinals' right-hander had a maddening season. His signature curveball misbehaved most of the summer. His mechanics betrayed him. He finished with a 13-9 record and a 4.62 ERA, far shy of the 19 or 20 wins and 2.00-something ERA he expects from himself. He said he entered Sunday ignoring the noise of the season and focusing on the game that could be.
He even swore not to keep checking the Giants score for hope, though his eyes wandered in between innings.
"Anything I hadn't done all year long, any failures I've had, any success, didn't matter," Wainwright said. "All of it was about today."
Wainwright provided his second quality start of the final month, throwing six innings and striking out eight, though he left with the Cardinals trailing. He had pitched with a one-run lead for a majority of the game until Andrew McCutchen connected in the fifth for a two-run single. The game at Busch was played in virtual simulcast with the one at AT&T Park, which started at the same time. Rain fell at Busch when the Giants took a 5-0 lead, and "air went out of our dugout," two Cardinals said.
The rain intensified as the Dodgers started removing their everyday starters to prep for their division series appearance. LA finally got a hit when Carpenter came up in the fourth inning.
When Carpenter batted in the sixth, the Cardinals trailed by a run. Carpenter connected on 3-0 pitch for a three-run homer to vault the Cardinals ahead. Though the Giants also led, Carpenter kindled thoughts of magic as he rounded the bases for the 21st and last time in 2016.
"When you do something sometimes in a game and you look back to go, yeah, that was the moment, that's going to be the big moment," Carpenter said. "I had visions of playing this game, the Giants collapse, and we're coming back and that's how it plays out. I did. They had a different route. The season had a different ending for us."
After the Pirates tied the game in the seventh the Cardinals unloaded with six runs in the seventh inning. Six consecutive Cardinals scored, highlighted by Yadier Molina's third hit of the game. If there were constants for the Cardinals it was Molina and their offense. That burst gave them 779 runs this season. This 86-win team scored 132 more runs than last year's 100-win team. It also allowed 187 more.
One game was the difference in the standings, but one game wasn't the difference in these Cardinals. For most of the season the Cardinals, both players and manager, described how they hadn't "clicked" yet as a team, how they had not had "their run" of success they knew was somewhere on the schedule, how their best baseball was ahead of them. Always, their best baseball was ahead of them.
Now they'll never know.
The season is behind them.
"We could have been playing for our lives," Wainwright said. "But we're not. We're left to reflect. ... Every time we got rolling a little bit we'd have a couple-games hiccup to put us almost back where we started. And that's the regret that we'll have, knowing that we could have played a lot better baseball throughout."
