In 2006, the Cardinals and Mets met in the NLCS, a series that would turn out to be an underrated classic. The Cardinals had been to the NLCS the past two years on the heels of 100-plus win seasons, but only won 83 games in 2006.
The Mets on the other hand, hadn’t been to the playoffs since winning the pennant in 2000, where they actually beat the Cardinals in the NLCS. But in 2006, they were scary. They had tied with the Yankees for the best record in baseball and we’re clearly the best team in the National League that year.
The series went seven games, with the turning point being Yadier Molina’s ninth-inning home run in Game 7. The momentum was on the Cards’ side after Molina’s home run, but the Mets rallied in the ninth and had the bases loaded with two outs. Carlos Beltran, who had been the Cardinals nemesis over the past few postseasons, was the only thing standing between the Cards and the World Series.
Then-closer Adam Wainwright got ahead 0-2, then fired his signature curveball for the knockout punch, fooling Beltran as he struck out looking to send St. Louis to their 17th World Series.
But what would have happened had Wainwright been unable to strike out Beltran? What if instead of looking at the right-hander’s curveball, Beltran took him deep and sent the Mets to the World Series?
Beltran was locked in all series. There’s of course no guarantee he would have won it for the Mets there, let alone hit the ball. Wainwright had, and still does have, one of the nastiest curveballs in all of baseball.
But assuming Beltran had gone deep, things would change a bit. It would be the Mets going to Detroit to face the Tigers. Detroit had been off for a full week, and that ended up hurting them in the World Series against St. Louis. That wouldn’t change. In fact, the Mets, having been a powerhouse that year and probably the best team in all of baseball on paper, probably would’ve had an easier time dismantling the Tigers, which means the series would likely have been a Mets sweep.
On the Cardinals side of things, the obvious difference would be that Wainwright wouldn’t have gotten a chance to close out the World Series a week later. In fact, Wainwright, when recalling the iconic moment, theorized that if he hadn’t struck out Beltran, his days in a Cardinals uniform might have been numbered. He even suggested he might have been booed out of town if it had gone differently.
I don’t think this would be the case. We can chalk this up to Wainwright being extra hard on himself, which a lot of pitchers are. Even if he had failed in that spot, he had been on a roll that postseason, filling in for the injured Jason Isringhausen. The Cardinals already had plans to make him a starter anyway. They had liked what they had seen out of him that year. It’s also worth noting that after his disastrous debut in 2005, manager Tony La Russa had told him that he didn’t have what it took to be successful at the Major League level.
But beyond all odds, Wainwright cracked the Opening Day roster in 2006, and ended up having a pretty solid season. We can assume that the Cardinals plans for Wainwright would have been the same heading into the 2007 season, and that Wainwright would have still become what he is today, only this time, with a little bit of a chip on his shoulder after giving up the grand slam to Beltran.
For the Mets, the 2007 season probably would have still played out as it had in real life. The Phillies had just gotten hot at the right time and came out of nowhere to take the division title away from New York.
So while the 2006 postseason would have played out much differently if Beltran had taken Wainwright deep, I don’t think a whole lot would change in the grand scheme of things. The Mets would just have three rings instead of two. The Cardinals probably would have still gone on to win it all in 2011 as well, as after the 2007 season, they chose to retool, with one of their moves being the trading of Jim Edmonds to the Padres, which ultimately brought David Freese over to St. Louis, where he would live out his dream as the hometown kid and World Series hero.
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