The late afternoon, early evening is here, which means it is time to submit my latest review of Cardinals baseball.
As the old saying goes: don’t shoot me, I’m only the piano player. I’m just the dude riffing out a little ragtime as the Redbirds turn raggedy in July.
Your beloved and bedraggled Cardinals are 4-9 since July 5, and I focus on that for two reasons (1) it’s the NL’s worst record over that time and (2) the carnage behind the record is revealing.
For the Cards’ lacerated relievers, the late innings have become violent innings.
The damage report covers the 7th, 8th, 9th and extra innings over STL’s last 13 games.
Runs for opponents: 26
Runs for the Cards: 5
Xtra base hits for opponents: 20
Xtra base hits for the Cards: 2
ERA, opponent bullpen: 3.02
ERA, Cards bullpen: 5.50
Opponent slash line: .250/.338/.479
Cardinal slash line: .139/.217/.189
Damn. Should I call the Humane Society?
This alarming trend requires emergency surgery. The Cardinals believe they can make the postseason with the No. 3 wild card in pocket. It’s possible, but this late-inning bloodshed must stop.
And by the way, it isn’t up to me to make a ruling on their postseason chances. The Cardinals will settle that, one way or another.
Plus it seems weird to scream “THE SEASON IS OVER!” each time the Cardinals lose a game.
Starting Tuesday night in Anaheim – where the fired-up Angels are desperately trying to win for the Cardinal expatriate John Mozeliak – there are 63 games remaining on the St. Louis regular-season magnet schedule. And the crowded National League wild-card column shows the Cardinals parked near a playoff spot.
Since I’m venting … which by the way is a phony way of saying “whining” for people who don’t want to be accused of whining …
OK, well, let me add something here: it ain’t up to me to dismiss the Cards problems and failures with a lazy brush-off or cover-all excuse.
“Oh, well. It’s a rebuilding season.
“So who cares?”
I care. It’s baseball season in a baseball town and I’m paid to write and talk about Cardinals baseball. I care deeply.
Though it may be hard to tell here of late, Cardinal players are trying to win. They want to win. Very much so.
As manager Oli Marmol told Cardinal TV on Friday night at Arizona: “I’d be lying if I didn’t say I want this group to taste the playoffs. I really do, I want them to experience and see what that’s like.”
I don’t know if the Redbirds have the wings to fly that high. But they’ll try. However, this is still a talent-based game; the intangibles that make the old-school fans weep for joy can only carry a flawed team so far.
This is a team in transition. A transition isn’t settled. That’s why it’s a transition. It’s unsettled. And transitions usually have holes that need filling, and plans that must be redrawn — especially for a franchise that has a new baseball regime in place and hasn’t won a playoff game in a full MLB season since 2019.
The Cardinals, Marlins and Pirates go into Tuesday’s slate in a three-way tie for that No. 3 wild card.
The Diamondbacks, Nationals and Padres are nearby, breathing hard and trying to keep pace. Here are the wild-card probabilities as of 3 p.m. central standard time.
This time I’ll go with Clay Davenport’s projection model. This does not include the three NL teams that lead their respective divisions: Braves, Brewers, Dodgers.
Cubs, 72.6%
Phils, 52.6%
Pirates, 45.4%
Dbacks, 30.9%
Cards, 25.9%
Marlins, 18.1%
Nationals, 9.7%
Padres, 3.8%
The Cardinals – like most of the entities listed above – have multiple problems, issues and challenges.
With the St. Louis National Baseball Club, three particular troublespots get my attention.
1. BULLPEN FIRE HAZARD: It bursts into flames the moment the scoreboard hits the seventh inning. But the smoke can billow earlier, in the sixth inning.
— Since July 5, the Cardinals have held sixth-inning leads of various sizes on eight different occasions. Six of the eight leads turned into 9-1-1 calls and severe smoke inhalation. The Cards were 2-6 in those games.
— The kindling often starts to crackle in the seventh inning. In the 7th inning of the last 13 games, Cards relievers have a 10.95 ERA, have been torched for a .345 batting average, 11 extra base hits and a .691 slugging percentage. And emergency crew has walked 13 percent of the hitters and conceded a .431 onbase percentage.
— The loss of lefty reliever JoJo Romero (appendix-removal surgery) has led to dire consequences. Don’t let your kids view these numbers, but … in the seventh innings of the last 13 games, here’s the gory reality …
— In these seventh inning meltdowns Jared Shuster, Ryan Fernandez, Luis Gastelum, Ryne Stanek, Justin Bruihl and George Soriano have combined for eight innings pitched and gotten clubbed for 15 earned runs, 16 hits, seven walks and four home runs. That’s an ERA of 16.87. The eighth and ninth innings have hardly been a picnic in Forest Park.
— As I mentioned earlier today, in his last 28 appearances, closer Riley O’Brien has a 6.50 ERA, 20% strikeout rate, 11.5% walk rate and hitters have a contact rate of 92.6% on his pitches in the strike zone. I’m not trying to pick on the All-Star, who is a good man. But we gotta stop acting surprised when O’Brien enters the fray and a save opportunity goes kaboom. Riley has 18 saves since April 25 – that’s when things began going sideways – and he’s had a clean 1-2-3 inning just seven times.
2. THE OFFENSE IN HIDING: We could file a few missing persons reports. During the team’s 11-17 slide since June 17, the Cardinals have scored four runs or fewer in a whopping 68 percent of their games. And have a 5-14 record in those 19 games. The Redbirds have also scored no more than three runs in 54% of their games over this time. And they’re 4-11 in those low-scoring failures.
— In July the Cardinals offense ranks 26th to 28th in batting average, slugging, onbase percentage and OPS. The hitters erupted for 35 runs spread across three high-scoring games; other than that the Cards have averaged 3.1 runs in the other 15 competitions.
— Eight Cardinals have performed at least 19 percent below league average offensively this month … and some have been much worse than that. The eight are Masyn Winn, Ivan Herrera, Blaze Jordan, Nathan Church, Pedro Pages, Nelson Velazquez and Bryan Torres.
— Through Monday, Herrera’s hitting line for the month includes a .209 average, .260 on-base rate and .269 slugging percentage. He struck out four times in Monday’s awful 3-2 blown-lead loss at Anaheim. And Lars Nootbaar has a .178 average and .289 slug for July.
— It’s been a dry month for Nathan Church and others who have taken shifts in center field. Through Monday, the Cards’ center-field spot had provided a .129 average and .395 OPS for July. For the season STL center fielders (mostly Church and Victor Scott) have collectively produced a .213 batting average, .276 OBP and .313 slug. The position is 35 percent below league average offensively which ranks 29th among the 30 CF groups.
3. AS THE ROTATION TURNS AND WOBBLES: I’ve respected the work done by Cardinals starting pitchers this season. The shortage of strikeout powder in the musket isn’t their fault. The vulnerability remains high because of a low strikeout rate and a high contact rate against them. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more damage inflicted upon them. On pitches into the strike zone, the St. Louis starters have yielded the fifth-highest total among the 30 rotations for balls in play (1,275.) And opponents have a .349 batting average and .565 slug when they connect with a strike thrown by a Cards starter.
If that seems dangerously or unusually high to you, consider this: 18 sets of team starting pitchers have allowed a higher slugging percentage than STL starters. And 23 sets of team starters have been rocked for more home runs than the Cards’ group.
That said, the Cardinals need Dustin May to settle down and solidify after a run of five consecutive shaky starts. The same goes for Andre Pallante. He pitched very well in his July 3 start, but in three other starts since June 27 Pallante was cudgeled for 14 earned runs and 24 hits in 17 innings for a 7.41 ERA.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Keith Tkachuk, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.