But looking at the big picture, the Cards have the HIGHEST win total--311--of any team in baseball over the past three years, seasons and post-seasons combined. That, plus two pennants and one world championship! The best team, overall, of the mid-'00s, maybe of the whole decade so far.
[::nods::] Yuppers. You've got it exactly right, and the sour few lowest-win-total chuckleheads hereabouts are vamping what is (at best) a minimal grasp of how pro baseball works.
If regular season W/L records were the sole (or even the most important) arbiter in these matters: we (obviously) wouldn't even need to have post-season play at all. We'd just pick the single AL or NL team with the greatest number of regular season wins; duly annoint them as "champs"; and close up shop right there, until the following spring.
Neither the Tigers or the Mets were "better" than the Cardinals this year. The demonstrability of either one to beat what the embarrassingly poor losers, online, insist was a "poor" team in the first place -- when it really MATTERED -- is crushingly convincing evidence of that. :)