sides, being a hardcore braves fan, I'd hate to break it to you, but San Diego is the team to beat, not St. Louis.


also,

atlanta is a better hitting team than the cards, not much but according to mlb.com they rank better in the nl hitting column than both st louis and san diego. as far as pitching goes, each team is ranked up there so high, and have similar stats all around that they'd match out pretty equally. The deciding factor between all three teams isn't the hitting, not the pitching, its the fielding and san diego is far better defensively thus far.

now lets look at things historically, simply because you can't always tell whats going to happen just by whats going on at the current moment...

in the last ten years, the cards are only marginally better than atlanta hitting, however atlanta has the winningest pitching squad from 99-current. They also have the best fielding historically over the last decade than the other two teams. Why historically, well, for most of the last 19 years atlanta has been a second half team, coming from behind to sneak in and get into the playoffs and steal a pennant. san diego and st louis really aren't known too well for their second hal;f exploits, at least not like atlanta. Right now it's at the part where its gut check time for every major league team and nobody performs better than Atlanta.