UPDATE FOR INDYCAR 12:50 A.M.:
By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(BASEBALL)—St. Louis Cardinals emerge from extra-long spring-training (well, it sure seemed like it) by winning four straight series, going 11-3 in that span and averaging more than seven runs a game (which is significant because the pitching staff’s ERA is 4.30 and is 16th in the league).
Newcomer Oscar Mercado and rejuvenated veteran Paul DeJong accounted for nine of the ten runs in the 10-5 win against the Dodgers Sunday.
The Redbirds took three of four from the Western Division leaders, the Los Angeles Dodgers, during the weekend to climb into a tie for third in the division with the Cubs. Both are five games behind Milwaukee and Pittsburgh, the only teams in the division with winning records.
The Cardinals now have won more games since hitting bottom than they won in the first 34 games of the year. They’ve won eight of their last ten and now are only six games below .500.
They’re up to sixth in team batting average and in runs scored. But the starting pitchers still struggle to make it past the sixth inning. They rank 27th in the league by giving up 1.44 walks or hits per inning.
Jack Flaherty, who looked so good his last time out, lasted only 4 2/3 innings in the Dodger series wrapup. He did induce his 14th double play of the year, a major league-leading number.
The Cardinals will be tested in the next couple of weeks, with 13 of their next 15 games on the road.
(ROYALS)—A .300 hitter is considered pretty good. A .300 TEAM is something else. The Kansas City Royals aren’t even that good. They lost their 34th game of the year Sunday, and coupled with their 14 wins, they’re at only .296 and are on track to lose 114 games this year (48 wins). That would beat their 2005 record of 106 losses. Home fans have seen only six winning games so far this season.
But it could be worse. The Royals’ predecessor in Kansas City, the Oakland Athletics are 10-38.
(HOS)—The star first baseman for the Royals’ 2015 championship team, Eric Hosmer, has been cut loose by the Chicago Cubs. It’s been a long fall for Hosmer, who signed an eight-year $144 million deal with the San Diego Padres for the 2018 season. San Diego sent him to Boston at the end of last year and he signed a one-year deal with the Cubs at the minimum MLB salary for this year. He’s 33 now, was in 31 games as a Cubs DH and was hitting .234 when the Cubs cut him loose last week.
–The Biggest weekend in Motorsports is next weekend with the focus on Indianapolis, Charlotte, and Monaco. But this past weekend—–
(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou ran the fastest pole-winning speed in Indianapolis 500 history during the weekend and will lead the race’s fastest first row into the first turn next Sunday morning.
Palou is the first driver born in Spain to win the 500 pole. He became the first Spanish driver to win the INDYCAR championship in 2021. He was leading the 500 that year when Helio Castroneves passed him on the 199th lap and stayed ahead one more time around to win his fourth 500, beating Palou to the finish by less than one-half second. It was the fastest Indianapolis 500 in history.
Palou made his four-lap, ten-mile run in two-minutes, 33.7037 seconds, edging Dutch driver Rinus VeeKay by six one-thousandth of a second for the ten mile run. Felix Rosenquist joins them on the front row, finishing six-one-hundredth of a second behind Palou. All three drivers averaged more than 234 miles an hour.
Thirty-four drivers competed for the 33 spots in the race. The one left outside is veteran Graham Rahal, who missed the field by .007 second. His story is reminiscent of the story of his father and the owner of his team, Bobby Rahal, who won the race in 1986 and failed to make the race in 1993. He was bumped from the field by teammate Jack Harvey, who will line up 33rd, outside of the 11th row, on Sunday. Another teammate, Christian Lundgard, will start 31st.
Rahal has run fifteen straight 500s. He has four top ten finishes with a best at third in 2011 and in 2020.
UPDATE: A crash during practice yesterday involving Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan driver Katherine Legge and Stefan Wilson left Wilson with a fractured vertebra and unable to race next Sunday. Rahal has been picked to drive in his place, in a backup car that as of Tuesday had not been on the track all month. Rahal will start 33rd alongside Harvey and rookie Sting Ray Robb, who was faster than either of the Rahal team cars.
One woman will start the race. Katherine Legge will start from outside the tenth row with a qualifying run of 231.070 mph to gain a spot in her third race. Her wrecked car is being rebuilt.
Rahal will have a chance to test his new ride and Legge will have a chance to get the settings right on her rebuilt car on Friday, the last opportunity the field will have to make sure the cars are race-ready.
The average speed of all 33 drivers in the race is 232.184 mph, a record. That means the average car in the race on Sunday traveled 340.53 feet every second during its ten-mile qualifying run.
That’s the equivalent of traveling from the south wall of Memorial Stadium in Columbia to the wall in front of the Big M in a second.
(NASCAR)—A couple of hours after INDYCARS were topping 230 mph, NASCAR returned to a track where it hasn’t run a race since 1996 for its annual all-star run during the weekend. North Wilkesboro had been one of the oldest racks on the circuit before it was shut down. New owners bought it a couple of years ago and put it back into racing condition for the all-star race although the race was run on the old, patched, pavement. North Wilkesboro’s future as a Cup venue is uncertain.
Kyle Larson dominated the race on the .625 mile track although he was sent to the back of the field because of a pit road speeding penalty. Within 35 laps he had driven back to the front and won by more than four seconds. It’s his third all-star race win. There was little passing for the lead, few yellow flags, and a winning speed far less than half the speed INDYCARS were running earlier in the day.
The winner got one-million dollars. Other competitors get nothing. Larson joins Dale Earnhardt Sr., and Jeff Gordon as a three-time winner of the event. Jimmie Johnson won it four times.
The Cup series holds its longest race next Sunday night, 600 miles at Charlotte.
(Formula 1)—Heavy rains in Italy forced the cancellation of this weekend’s Imola Grand Prix. The Emilia Romagna region has been soaked in recent weeks, leaving at least nine people dead in local flooding and forcing the evacuation of about 5,000 others. F1 cancelled this weekend’s race so relief efforts could go on.
The series moves to the streets of Monte Carlo for next Sunday’s Grand Prix of Monaco.
(picture credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)