Looking Up At Rock Bottom

The latest Cardinals loss is probably the worst. So far.

This season hasn’t completely destroyed my faith in St. Louis Cardinals baseball. It’s giving it an awful strong shake, though.

Last night, when Jordan Walker launched his two-run homer that had the Cardinals leading in the top of the ninth a game that they had trailed 5-0 after two, I felt good about the chances. Even terrible seasons have bright spots and as soon as Jordan Hicks did what he’s been doing, this game would give us a temporary respite from the crushing weight of 2023.

Even when Hicks walked the leadoff man, I was OK with it. Well, not OK per se, but accepting. Since he was temporarily moved into low leverage situations, where he found his adjustment and rebuilt his focus, he had walked eight batters in 21.1 innings. Not super, but much lower than the rate he was going. More importantly, in that span he’d only allowed four runs because he’d struck out 30. Putting the leadoff runner on wasn’t ideal, but Hicks is probably the only pitcher on the staff with the stuff to get out of it.

Indeed, he struck out Garrett Cooper and it looked like we were on our way to another one of those outings where a walk slightly mars a dominant save. When he gave up a single to Yuli Gurriel, I got a little more concerned, but again, a strikeout and a flyout and things are good.

As regular readers and podcast listeners know, I haven’t had an option to watch the games this year, disconnecting my DirecTV Stream to ease the budget. Watching on GameDay, this came up and my brain broke.

There was an agonizingly long time before it updated, which meant I had a lot of time to speculate. My best guess was that Joey Wendle had stuck out his bat, a flare over the infield had dropped in, and the game was tied.

The truth was so much worse.

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This season has given us plenty of opportunities to cry “worst loss of the season”. Nobody said that on Opening Day (at least, not seriously) because if your worst loss winds up being on Opening Day, you are probably having a really good series. Opening Day is the closest thing to an exhibition that the regular season can have. However, the fact that the Cardinals gave up two in the top of the ninth to lose to the Blue Jays 10-9 after taking the lead in the bottom of the eighth isn’t just remarkably similar to last night’s game but it was a portent for the rest of the season.

There was being shut out by the Pirates (who admittedly were running well at the time) at home, giving up five runs in the last four innings. In the same series they gave up the tying run in the eighth then Hicks allowed three runs in the 10th. There was scoring three in the ninth only to fall a run short to the Diamondbacks. There was Ryan Helsley giving up a three run bomb in San Francisco. And that’s just in April.

May brought us an extra-inning loss to Detroit that capped the losing streak at eight. It brought us being blasted by the Cubs looking for a sweep with the team’s best starter on the mound. We saw the club put up just two hits in a game against the Dodgers. Cleveland got to Helsley for two to turn victory into defeat. Perhaps the most humiliating loss was the Royals—one of the few MLB teams with a worse record than St. Louis—taking a no-hitter into the eighth and winning 7-0.

And May was a good month, where the Cards won more than they lost. What about June? June started with Andre Pallante and Giovanny Gallegos giving up six runs in the seventh at Pittsburgh to erase a 5-1 lead. Tying the Rangers in the eighth only to be walked off in the ninth. Giving up 11 to the Giants at home, then turning around the next day and taking a lead into the ninth before Gallegos gave up a two-out, two-strike, two-run homer to tie it and Steven Matz allowed three in the 10th. Losing the next night to the Mets to run the losing streak to six (it’s serious). Getting obliterated in front of an international audience. Having a 7-5 lead against the Astros (with a series win just outs away) turn into a 10-7 loss. The Astros then putting up two touchdowns in an Adam Wainwright start.

There’s only been six games in July but four of them have an L against them. This Marlins series has been particularly rough, as the first game saw the Cards lose a 4-2 lead in the seventh, the second game sent Wainwright to the IL, and the third was last night.

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Ben Simorka of the excellent Talking About Birds podcast has been slightly more optimistic about the Cardinals’ rebound chances than most people, pointing out his belief that the Reds don’t have the pitching to keep this up, the division is terrible, and while he wasn’t buying playoff tickets, he wasn’t completely ruling it out.

On the last (well, next-to-last since one just came out today) podcast, though, he said that, in his mind, the Miami series could be the bellwether. Come out of that with a series win and maybe that points St. Louis in one way, lose it and it probably wraps things up. I think we’ve got that clarity.

The Cardinals are five games out….of fourth place. They are 12 1/2 behind the Reds. They are 11 1/2 out of the last wild card spot. They are 16—sixteen!—games under .500. If the Redbirds could somehow suddenly furiously have positive regression, that everything completely went right, and they won 70% of their remaining games (a 113-game pace for a full season) they’d have 88 wins. Even that sort of amazing run—and let’s be clear, that’s not going to happen—would keep them very possibly at home in October.

John Mozeliak can hem and haw all he wants in public interviews but, for the first time in his tenure, the Cards are going to be sellers. What that looks like, I’m not sure, but I hope that they don’t approach it timidly. I’m not suggesting Paul Goldschmidt or anything like that, but trade all the free agents (I’m assuming by now they can’t come to terms with Jordan Montgomery) and maybe a few folks with a year of control left if you get the right deal. The future may depend on this trade deadline and the offseason. We can only hope they are up to this challenge. There’s a growing section of fans that isn’t sure they are.

Rachel Green said it first, Brad Pitt in Moneyball brought it to baseball. There’s rock bottom, 50 feet of crap, then us. You’d like to think the low point of the season was Jordan Hicks overthrowing Paul Goldschmidt. With this season, though, a new low might be just a game away.