Cardinals are headed to the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season

(Getty Images) Despite losing 5-4 to the Cubs on Saturday and playing poorly overall in September, the St. Louis Cardinals are the first team to clinch a playoff berth in 2015.

The Cardinals are in by virtue of the Arizona Diamondbacks, who defeated the San Francisco Giants 6-0 at AT&T Park. This will make it five straight postseason appearances for St. Louis, and 12 overall dating back to 2000.

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It’s a remarkable run of consistency and dominance. At a time when Major League Baseball is enjoying more parity than any other major professional sports league in North America, the Cardinals always find a way to stay competitive.

Even with Adam Wainwright out with a torn Achilles. Even with Matt Adams and Matt Holliday missing extended time with quad injuries. Even with rookies, unproven prospects and fill-ins supplementing the roster, St. Louis was able to jump ahead of the pack and position themselves for a postseason run. Now we wait to see if they have enough left to make it five World Series appearances during their run, or if a top-heavy National League will present too many obstacles.

It definitely won’t be an easy road. Especially now that we’ve seen some chinks in the armor. With Saturday’s loss, the Cardinals have now dropped 10 of 17 games overall in September. More importantly, they’ve gone 2-6 against the Cubs and Pirates during that stretch. One of those two teams will likely be the Cardinals NLDS opponent.

The Cardinals hold on the division is getting precarious as well. The Cubs moved to five games back with 14 left to play. The Pirates could move to within four games with a win in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Those three NL Central powerhouses currently hold the three best record in the NL, so one of them will likely have home field up until the World Series. Typically, that isn’t a big deal in a wide open playoff format, but all five NL contenders are poised to top 50 wins at home this season. The Cardinals are already there at 50-24.

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The grand takeaway here: The Cardinals are in, but there’s still plenty of work to do in the two weeks that remain. First and foremost, they just need to stabilize their play and replace recent frustration with renewed confidence. From there, it’s holding on to that top spot and hopefully watching on as the Cubs and Pirates go all-in in a do-or-die wild card game.

If all else fails though, at least they know they’re in and anything can happen. October baseball is the most unpredictable baseball, even though it often leads us to the same conclusions.

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