Embracing The Moment

The tarps are off and the Redbirds are flying high

On Friday night, as the Cardinals took on the Royals, I was behind the Meet Me At Musial microphone (which, to be fair, is also the Gateway to Baseball Heaven microphone, neither of which are golden) talking with Eugene Tucker of Portion Under Busch. While we kept an eye on the game as we talked, we had no idea that the baseball landscape was being shifted by a bunch of half-dressed college guys.

Started by the Stephen F. Austin club baseball team in the area for a tournament, the movement quickly spread and fired up not only the crowd but the players on the field. An encore Saturday brought the same level of excitement and while Sunday was a fizzle on the field, there were still some strong vibes above right field. All of this brings us to the question: can it last?

Over at Redbird Rants, our friend Thomas Gauvain wrote in the afterglow about six viral trends from the Cardinals’ past. While he included the “tarps off” crew as his first selection, the other five brought back some memories. The pepper grinder celebration of Lars Nootbaar that took a whole country by storm. Matt Carpenter’s salsa, an empty container of which sits on my memorabilia shelf. Memories of 2011—the rally squirrel from the playoffs, the legend of Torty Craig, and the #HappyFlight motto that got the Cards through the playoffs.

OnlyCardsFans came up with a few more on Twitter, though I don’t remember much about the Brendan Ryan mustache bit except that it was one of the Cardinals commercials back when they did fun commercials. All of these things are nice memories but they didn’t last very long.

There are two things that make the “Tarps Off” bit different, though I don’t expect that it will have any different ending than all of the others we’ve talked about, a passing fad that gets an “oh yeah!” when we remember it 10 years down the road.

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The first thing that makes this different from pretty much everything else on this list is it organically came from the fan base. This was something that the fans wanted to do and it struck a nerve. Is that enough to give it staying power? I doubt it, but it has a better chance as a grassroots movement than it does by being something orchestrated by the players or the organization.

The second is that it’s not tied to a certain player. The salsa was a fun story when Matt Carpenter was hitting three home runs at Wrigley, but when he struggled it took down the “vibe fuel” of it as well. The pepper grinder might have been done by the prime minister of Japan, but when Noot’s on the injured list what good does that do anything? This sort of thing, though, can adapt. The cheers are for whoever is out there. The energy is for the whole team.

Again, this has been a lot of fun and I can’t imagine how these SFA guys are feeling. They went to a game and got a little goofy and the next thing they know they are the toast of the town, they are on TV being interviewed, they are called out by the Cardinals manager, and eventually invited into the sanctum sanctorum of the clubhouse. Pretty sure none of that was on their agenda when they left Texas a few days ago.

Let’s give Oli Marmol a lot of credit as well. It’s one thing to be excited in a press conference about the fans. It’s another to put action to words and buy out a section, giving away tickets to try to create that vibe again. He also spent a lot of time encouraging and complementing the college kids that started this whole thing, which had to mean a lot to them.

So how does this become a lasting thing, something that lasts more than this home stand? I’m not the one to say, though I think the club embracing these fans will encourage folks to keep it going for a while. I’ve seen suggestions on Twitter that the club should invite local baseball teams, whether high school, college, club, or what have you, to lead the group for a series. There are some that believe the more the club embraces it the more likely they are to squeeze the life out of it, and there’s some risk to that, though I do think the fan engagement side of the organization has been improving over the few years as well. You have to encourage but not direct.

Hearing the soccer-style chants over the broadcast made me think of those fan clubs that sport has. From what I understand, they are organized but by the fans, they have chants and cheers and bring a ton of energy to the ballpark. Could something like that take root in St. Louis? Could a group of guys start recruiting and put together a group that would have the blessing of the Cardinals but not be restrained by them? I don’t know. I think it’s possible, though I don’t think that it’ll happen.

Viral moments don’t have to last to be effective anyway. This raised the profile of the club this weekend, letting people around the country know that they actually are pretty good this year and there’s excitement around them. It’s a great moment in time, even if that’s all it is.

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The Cardinals, on this off day, sit at 27-19. That means that they will go at least the first 54 games of the season without spending a day under .500. Fifty-four games is a notable mark, of course, because it is exactly 1/3rd of 162.

If the Cardinals play like the 75 win team that some people thought they were the rest of the way, they’ll wind up with 81 wins. To only win 70, they’d have to play at a 60-win clip. While anything can happen, especially since the strategy at the deadline is not yet set in stone, it feels very likely that the Cardinals are going to beat almost every projection people had of them this winter.

It also feels like they are doing this by being more than the sum of their parts. The team ERA is 17th at 4.12, which is a pretty respectable mark for the fact that they are dead last in pitching strikeouts (three behind Arizona, who has played one fewer game). They are 22nd in WHIP, 22nd in home runs allowed.

If you are looking for positives, the starters are 10th in the league in ERA at 3.88 and they aren’t last in strikeouts (third to last, but it’s something). The team ERA has dropped from 4.76 after the last game in April to that 4.12 mark now, which means it is trending in the right direction. We saw a remarkable start out of Andre Pallante yesterday, even though he lost, and Michael McGreevy continues to astound me.

While there are issues in the bullpen—Matt Svanson has had three outings in a row where he’s not been charged with a run but you still don’t trust him when he comes in, much like Ryne Stanek who has had a pretty good May (12.79 K/9, though still a 5.68 BB/9) before his last couple of outings—all in all, you feel like this team is constantly fighting and, more often than not, they come up with exactly what they need, whether it’s a diving catch, a key hit, or a big strikeout.

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It feels like Chaim Bloom and company are prioritizing stability and consistency when it comes to the roster. At this point last year the Cardinals had already made 34 changes to the roster. Granted, the early rains meant a lot of double headers so eight of those were a 27th man coming up, then going down. There was the move of Zack Thompson from the 15 day IL to the 60. Nolan Gorman, Ivan Herrera, and Masyn Winn had been injured. But there was also:

• Chris Roycroft swapped with Roddery Munoz

• Munoz swapped with Matt Svanson

• Ryan Fernandez swapped with Riley O’Brien

• Thomas Saggese swapped with Jose Barrero

• O’Brien and Svanson swapped with Roycroft and Munoz

• Munoz swapped with Michael McGreevy

• McGreevy swapped with Gordon Graceffo

It was that roster churn that we were so used to, most notably at the back of the bullpen as arms would come and go depending on need and performance. This year, there have been a total of 16 roster moves. Matt Pushard and Ramon Urias going on the injured list account for three of them. Jared Shuster being brought up and DFAd count for four of them. They made moves around Hunter Dobbins’s fill-in start. Honestly, the only “churn” like moves were when Shuster was called up the first time, sending down Roycroft, and the Fernandez for Shuster move that used Dobbins as a middle man. It’s been quiet, it’s been steady, and it’s hard not to believe that has something to do with the over performance of the team. Knowing that you aren’t going to Memphis if things get bad in one outing or even two allows you the freedom to work on things and the confidence that the team believes in you.

Does that mean that there doesn’t need to be improvements? Of course not. The catching situation is going to come to a head pretty soon. The fact that was highlighted this weekend, that Ivan Herrera hasn’t thrown out a baserunner since 2024 was an interesting one. Granted, if your option is him or Pedro Pages, you probably still take Herrera behind the plate and deal with the liability. (Pages does tend to do something great offensively just about the time we all give up on him, then slip back into obscurity.) However, with Jimmy Crooks not only hitting well at Memphis but starting to cut down on the strikeouts, how long can you keep him down on the farm?

There’s also the impending return of Lars Nootbaar. The clock started ticking on his rehab Thursday when he was sent to Palm Beach. They’ll ease him back some (though he was 3-4 with a homer in his first two games down there) but he’ll have to be activated by June 3 or 4. If he were to return today, it would feel like we’d see Cesar Prieto, who got into his first game in nine days yesterday when Masyn Winn left with a leg issue, returned to Memphis. The more meaningful thing would be that I believe Nootbaar would push Nathan Church to center and Victor Scott II to the bench, at least for a majority of games. I keep hoping that the offense will click for Vic, because he’s a lot of fun, but it’s still lacking. Church hasn’t set the world on fire, but he’s got a little more threat to his bat at the moment.

Other than that, there doesn’t seem to be a real clear option for anyone else. Dobbins would come up if there was a need, but the starters are healthy and going well enough. Ryan Fernandez has been doing all right in Memphis, but do you trust that to translate to the bigs after his recent struggles? I’m sure he’d get the call if there was a need, but I don’t think they’ll do a lot of maneuvering to get him up here, especially since much of that bullpen is locked down due to contracts, lack of options, etc.

(And yes, there’s always the desire for Joshua Baez, but given that one outfielder is coming already, there’s not space for another.)

The Cards are going to roll with what they have. Thankfully, that’s not a bad group to roll with.

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Since the last post, I finally finished We Sacrifice Everything to Baseball. I really recommend it to anyone that enjoys a good underdog story. Michael Clair paints the pictures very well and got to know the Czech team, which shows in the book. I’m going to have him on Conversations at some point soon to talk about it, I hope.

I don’t think I started anything new, though on Star Wars Day I did do a lot of reading of the book that came out a number of years ago, Jedi: Battle Scars. It’s set between the two Jedi Survivor games (neither of which I have played) so I’m learning the characters but it’s been pretty fun so far.

Blogger and Podcaster Day is next Saturday. It’s going to be a quick trip in for me—I’ll get to St. Louis a couple of hours before gates open and then leave out early on Sunday morning—but I always look forward to seeing my compatriots in the field and getting a chance to go to the game as well as hear from the folks in charge. This will be the first time Chaim Bloom has been in the room with us so I look forward to seeing how that goes. It’s also a Cubs game, which is pretty fun. There will be a lot of writeups and commentary after that on various sites, but I’ll try to give my two cents when I return.