The Oncoming Storm

After scuffling against Atlanta and Detroit, something has to give

It was time to get well. Time to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and become a player in the National League Central, if nothing else. After all, the Cardinals had done very well against sub-.500 teams this season. Coming into June, they were 23-11 against them, versus a paltry 7-13 against winning teams.

Squeaking by the Marlins was the first hint that this wasn’t going to go as planned. Yes, the Cardinals swept the cellar-dwelling team from Florida, but it took all their efforts to do so. A team that is going to pile up wins against the weaker competition isn’t likely to need two walk-offs in a row to survive.

That was gravy, though, compared to going to Atlanta and Detroit. Only one of those rare “everything clicks” games, with Adam Wainwright on the hill and the bats unfrozen, kept the Cardinals from losing six straight to teams that weren’t even within five games of .500 when the two squads tangled.

Atlanta you maybe can rationalize a bit, given their history and the expectations for their club going into the season. But being swept by Detroit? A team with no thought of being good for another couple of years? How can you take that data point and use it in a “these guys are actually good” argument?

You can’t.

We are consistently used to the Cardinals being good. So are they, as a matter of fact. So when they aren’t good, we look for reasons. When we can’t find those, we look for excuses. However, it’s not early anymore. 46% of the schedule has already gone by and St. Louis has two more losses than they have wins. The last time that happened at this point in the year was 2017, when they were 34-40. Granted, they played better from that point on but they still only wound up with 83 wins and, for the second straight year, were out of the playoffs.

This team should be better than the 2017 team, right? That team didn’t have Paul Goldschmidt or Nolan Arenado, for example. Yet even with those guys, even with the emergence of Tyler O’Neill, nothing gets going offensively. And even that problem is subordinate to the real issue—the legendary strength of the Cardinals, their deep and reliable pitching—is nowhere to be found.

How you fix it, I don’t know. What I do know is that something has to be done. There is a storm approaching. If you stay where you are, you are going to be drenched and miserable. It’s time to try to get out of the rain.

The Last Time We Met….

The Cardinals and Pirates have already tangled twice this year and all the games have gone St. Louis’s way. They swept them in Pittsburgh at the end of April/beginning of May, then did it again in a two game set in Busch later in May. Game 1 saw a pre-regression John Gant have one of his better games, giving up just one run and walking just one batter in 5.1 innings. The Cardinals jumped on JT Brubaker early, getting all five runs off of him in the first three innings. Nolan Arenado had a two-run homer in the first, Tommy Edman a two-run single in the second, and Edmundo Sosa with a double in the third. The Big Three finished it off from the bullpen and the Cards had a big red W.

The second game was a similar result. Trevor Cahill gave up an RBI double to Paul Goldschmidt in the first, then did not retire a batter in the second before leaving with an injury. The relief work of Duane Underwood Jr. was sorely lacking from a Pirates point of view, as all of Cahill’s runners scored plus two more. If not for Yadier Molina’s inning-ending double play, it could have been even worse.

That was plenty of support for Jack Flaherty, who gave up two runs in six innings. Thankfully the Cardinals scored two more in the fifth because Kodi Whitley came in and loaded the bases with nobody out, then Tyler Webb unloaded them. Eventually the good arms came in and sealed the deal, but that was a less-than-ideal result. Whitley only appeared in two more games (one of which had a similar line score) before going on the injured list with back trouble.

Season series: 5-0 St. Louis.

The Opponent

If you wanted to try to find your footing, you could do worse than have the Pirates show up in your stadium. Even as bad as St. Louis has been, Pittsburgh is still 10 games worse. They just had a 10 game losing streak, though they snapped that by winning two of three against the Indians and splitting two against the White Sox. As a team for the month of June (not counting yesterday’s game against Chicago) Pittsburgh is hitting .232/.299/.365 while the Cardinals are hitting…..you know what, I don’t like this game anymore. (It’s .214/.284/.318.)

Maybe the Cardinals have the edge in pitching? In June, Pittsburgh has a 4.89 ERA and has allowed 22 home runs. St. Louis is….at a 5.04 ERA and 22 home runs. Why again do we think the Redbirds are going to roll over the Pirates?

The Mound Men

Thursday: Chad Kuhl (1-4, 5.66 ERA, 5.88 FIP, 5.19 xERA) vs. Carlos Martinez (3-8, 6.62 ERA, 4.51 FIP, 5.91 xERA)

Friday: Wil Crowe (0-4, 6.42 ERA, 5.79 FIP, 5.29 xERA) vs. Kwang Hyun Kim (1-5, 3.60 ERA, 4.16 FIP, 4.30 xERA)

Saturday: JT Brubaker (4-6, 3.77 ERA, 4.07 FIP, 4.10 xERA) vs. Adam Wainwright (5-5, 3.74 ERA, 3.98 FIP, 3.66 xERA)

Sunday: TBD vs. Johan Oviedo (0-3, 4.62 ERA, 5.47 FIP, 5.61 xERA)

—xERA courtesy of FanGraphs

After you run into a team for the third time, there’s not often a lot of surprises. However, the Cards haven’t seen Kuhl yet this year, which on the face of it looks like a disappointment. Looks can be deceiving, though. Kuhl can get roughed up, like he did two starts ago giving up six runs to the Brewers in less than four innings, but he also is coming off a six inning, one run start against the Indians. Plus, as Drew Smyly and Kyle Davies can attest, the Cards have a way of turning bad pitchers good. St. Louis saw Kuhl at the end of last season, when his defense betrayed him and he allowed four runs (only one earned) in five innings.

The Redbirds have already tangled with Crowe, though. They saw him at the beginning of May and he took the loss when he allowed three runs in five innings, with four walks as part of the culprit. The three runs came on a home run by Harrison Bader, who won’t be available this time around. In his last start, Crowe was pecked away at by the Indians, going just 4.2 innings and allowing two runs on two solo homers.

We talked about Brubaker’s last start against St. Louis above, but this will actually be the third time he’s faced the club this season. He’s given up eight runs in 10.2 innings in those games, so let’s hope that continues. He was much better than that in his past start, going 6.2 innings against the Indians, striking out nine (with no walks) and allowing two runs.

As for the Cardinal hurlers, Martinez has eight scoreless innings against Pittsburgh this year, Kim has yet to face them in 2021 (though he had a 3.65 ERA in 12.1 innings last year, including his one attempt at closing), Wainwright hasn’t seen the Pirates since his first start last season (when he held them to one run over five innings), and Oviedo’s only career start against Pittsburgh was last August when he allowed two runs over five frames.

The Hot Seat

Find me someone that isn’t on the hot seat. By the time that you read this (or at least by this afternoon), there’s a good chance there will be some sort of shakeup. Whether it will be a replacement of some of the coaching staff, a reworking of the rotation, some folks moved up and down from Memphis, I don’t know, but it seems clear that things can’t stay exactly the way they are. The beginning of a homestand is often when these sort of moves are made anyway, plus it’s the time of the season where they’d try to do something to see if they are even in a position to be active at the trading deadline. Mike Shildt has already said that today’s lineup likely will look different. Everyone is feeling the pressure and we’ll see if some are no longer wearing the uniform come first pitch tonight.

Assorted Crudités

Matt Carpenter is starting to slow down again, at least over the latest small sample. Since the Cubs series of almost two weeks ago now, Carpenter is hitting .143/.333/.143. Granted, he’s not played as much either—only 18 plate appearances in that span. But the first part of the month leading up to Chicago saw him hitting .316/.435/.474 in 23 plate appearances. He had a tough strikeout with two on and two out in Thursday’s game in a spot where the Cardinals really needed something. If all he can do is walk, there’s going to be a much more limited role for him, especially with Lars Nootbaar getting time in the outfield.

We spend so much time talking about who isn’t doing anything, let’s give some kudos to someone who is. The conventional wisdom is Paul Goldschmidt heats up as the weather does and June has him at .303/.361/.530 with four homers. If only some of the others at the top of the lineup could be that hot, then maybe we’d see some scoring.

Before they pitched on Wednesday, Alex Reyes and Giovanny Gallegos hadn’t been on the mound since the Marlins series. For those keeping track of Reyes’s innings, he’s at 33.2 in 74 team games. That works out to about 74 innings, a significant dropoff from the last time we figured it up and well off the 100 inning goal they had for him. You just wonder if changing the thought process on him might not be a good idea given everything that is going on.

Random Links

Actually nothing really new here. I finished up Cardinals Off Day but I’ve not started something new yet. I’ve not been able to bring myself to listen to the newest Seeing Red, because I know how down on the team Bernie and Will (especially Bernie) will be. I was holding out for a new Chirps but I’ll have to wait another week for that, it appears. I need to listen to the latest Conversations with Cerutti, so I’ll fire that one up tomorrow most likely.

Also, from my work life, if you’ve got kids and are eligible, you need to look at those advanced child tax credit payments that are starting in July. Depending on your situation and how much you want a refund later versus money mow, it might be a good idea to opt out.