The Heroes of Game 5

No baseball tonight as the series shifts back to St. Louis for Game 6 with the Cardinals on the brink of elimination, but let's take another look at the heroes of Game 5.

5) Michael Young - The longest tenured Ranger is only hitting .210 in the postseason, but he picked a great time to get a big hit. Young led off the bottom of the 8th with a double off of Octavio Dotel, kicking off the winning rally and eventually coming around to score the winning run.

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4) Mitch Moreland - The Rangers first baseman finally got a hit in the World Series, and boy was it a big one. Moreland hammered a Chris Carpenter offering into the second deck in right field some 446 feet from home plate to put the Rangers on the board in the bottom of the 3rd. Moreland also had a nifty stretch at first to take a hit away from Rafael Furcal in the top of the 8th.

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3) Adrian Beltre - Beltre continues to play gold glove caliber defense at third and tied the game in the bottom of the 6th with a solo home run off of Chris Carpenter. The homer was Beltre's first since his 3-homer game in the Divisional Series against Tampa Bay.

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2) Neftali Feliz - Feliz has been wild this postseason and that trend continued last night as he came in for the 9th inning and immediately hit Allen Craig to bring the tying run to the plate in Albert Pujols. But the hard throwing Rangers closer came up with a huge strikeout of Albert Pujols as part of a strike-em-out throw-em-out double play, and then after walking Matt Holliday to bring up the tying run again, he fanned Lance Berkman to end the game. Feliz has allowed just 1 run in 10 games this postseason despite 7 walks in 10 1/3 innings.

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1) Mike Napoli - What a storybook postseason Napoli has had. Napoli delivered a 2-run double off of Marc Rzepczynski in the bottom of the 8th inning, and threw out Allen Craig trying to steal second base twice including once in the top of the 9th as he turned in yet another terrific October performance. Napoli has driven in 9 runs in the World Series, including at least 2 in four of the five games so far. He has 3 homers and 14 runs batted in during the playoffs while batting .314. Not bad for a guy who was traded twice before the season even started, once by the Angels for Vernon Wells, and a few days later by Toronto for Frank Francisco. Napoli hit .383 after the All Star Break this year with 18 of his 30 home runs and yet, despite all his recent success, he hit 8th in the Rangers order last night. Ridiculous. Through five games, this guy is your World Series MVP.

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