The St. Louis Blues

By KYLE KEOUGH
Double Day AP

A recent six-game slide has St. Louis Maroons fans feeling down, but the team's surprising ascent within an ultra-competitive AL South--a division many are touting as the premiere division in all of Double Day--has raised the hopes of Maroons fans who suffered through a 64-win rebuilding effort in season two.

Thus is the story of the duplicitous St. Louis Maroons, a team both on the brink of success and disaster. Success, because the Maroons have a very legitimate chance to win their first division title or at least make the American League postseason. Disaster, because it wasn't too long ago that St. Louis was headed towards becoming the toast of a wide-open American League, before a recent 2-8 run (embedded within is a 6-game losing streak) has many observers proclaiming the Maroons pretenders.

Their play continues to beg the question: Are they contenders, or are they pretenders?

In an interview with Doubleday Daily, Maroons GM Stiller609 said, "coming in to the season, I didn't have extraordinary expectations of the team." Stiller went on to explain the process the Maroons front office took to capitalizing on early-season successes:

"We brought in couple new faces to help contribute and we hoped to tread water until some of our AAA guys were ready to make the jump later in the season, at which point we would see if it was worth it to make a run. Of course, that's not how it panned out and the team started to catch fire very early. So we called up our youngsters a bit earlier then expected because we felt it would help the immediate success of the squad."

Despite their recent slide, the Maroons' 39-31 record indicates this will likely end up as the best season in the franchise's short history. But the contender/pretender question is one that has plagued St. Louis fans, who not so long ago saw the Maroons win 11 games in a row, with 5 of those wins coming against AL darling Philadelphia. But then, a few hard-fought defeats began a 4-12 funk that the Maroons just can't seem to pull themselves out of.

On paper, at least, they're one of the more complete teams in baseball. Their 383 runs on the season rank 9th in the ML; their 3.94 ERA is sixth. Yet giving up numerous unearned runs has been their achilles' heel, especially against AL offenses that will capitalize on second chances.

With a meager $47 million payroll, the future in St. Louis is bright. But a see-saw season ratcheted up World Series aspirations for an untested club, and now, the struggles of a team over the midpoint of the season are becoming more and more apparent.

It will be up to bigtime free agent signing Cory Glynn (10-3, 2.63 ERA), offseason addition Ramon Martin (8-3, 3.79 ERA), and lights-out closer Ichiro Suzuki (16 Saves, 1.16 ERA - he's what Stiller has called the team's biggest surprise thus far) to help carry an inexperienced club past the low points of the season and into the postseason, where their strong rotation and pitcher's park seems a tough task for many offense-heavy AL teams.

"I think that our postseason chances are very good if we can answer a few needs before the trade deadline," Stiller said. "It also depends on our competition...the AL South is extremely tough this season."