You Take The Good, You Take The Bad
The road to a slightly above average team is never straight.
The Pittsburgh Pirates are in the middle of a turnaround, it feels like. Since Derek Shelton was fired and Don Kelly took over, they are 25-24. Before this past series with the Cardinals, they swept the Mets and over the six games, scored 43 runs while allowing four. It’s very possible that the Cardinals just caught them at the wrong time.
Not sure that explains not scoring once in the entire series, however.
There are other factors, to be sure. The Cardinals were at the end of 30 games in 31 days. There had been two rainouts in that span but they were followed up by double-headers so it’s not like there was a lot of rest there. Injuries have hit the club on the offensive side. You can find contributing factors without trying all that hard.
Like the song says, “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” The Cards have been great at that this season. However, they’ve also figured out the fact that you can’t get up until you’ve been knocked down. The roller coaster has been something fierce this season. Going from the highs of sweeping the Guardians (and allowing them to score in just one frame of three games) to getting swept by the Pirates (and, again, not scoring) with nothing in between is worthy of being added to Cedar Point.
The Cardinals have played 88 games. They have been nine games over .500, they’ve been five games under. They have a nine game winning streak, they have a six game losing streak. They’ve given up 18 runs, they’ve scored 14 runs. They have 21 comeback wins, they have 17 blown leads that lead to losses.
Even the monthly winning percentages tell you something. .750 in March (4 games), .407 in April, .704 in May, .500 in June, and .000 so far in July. Their first 22 games, they were 9-13. The next 15-7, then 12-10, and finally 11-11.
It’s hard not to see this team as a bit like a pendulum. They went far to one extreme, then far to another, and then the swings are getting slower and slower until they will wind up at what they are, which is a .500 or a bit higher team.
Assuming they stand basically pat at the deadline, it would not be surprising to see this team win 85 games or so. They’ve slipped five games behind the Cubs, making this weekend a pretty big deal. If they can take two of three, they can keep their division hopes at least somewhat alive. If they lose two of three (or, in a nightmare scenario, get swept), it’s pretty much the wild card. Even with their performance in Pittsburgh, they are still virtually tied for the last playoff spot.
Which, as John Mozeliak has often said he’s been hoping for, would make the trade deadline complicated. I don’t know that anyone truly trusts this front office to pull off the needle threading of buying and selling at the same time. Dispassionately, it’s hard to see the Cardinals have an asset like Ryan Helsley, an asset they likely won’t bring back (though maybe they give him a qualifying offer), and for them not to trade him because it would hurt this year’s team, a team that is possibly going nowhere. Then again, it’s possible that Helsley is the only real trade chip they have and even that might not bring back as much as expected, so maybe holding isn’t the worst thing?
When the season started, we thought the Cardinals might have three trade chips at the deadline—Helsley, Erick Fedde, and Steven Matz. It would be a pretty impressive sell job if Mo was able to bring back anything of quality for the latter two.
It’s possible you could make a solid spin on Matz. After all, he’s been extremely effective on lefties for the season, limiting them to a .169/.217/.231 line. He had a good first two months of the season. His June, though, felt like either fatigue (he’s thrown more innings than he did all of last year and soon will have the second-most over the past four years) or people figuring him out. He had a 7.30 ERA in 12.1 June innings, a number that was salvaged by 1.2 scoreless innings in his last time out.
Matz doesn’t walk anyone, has a middling K rate, and if June was more a dip than a new normal, a contender might buy into him for a small prospect return. Matz feels like the kind of guy you can trade even if you want to keep trying to contend, either promoting Michael McGreevy to that spot (or shifting someone from the rotation to it so McGreevy can regularly start) or revamping how the bullpen is used. I’d like to see Matt Svanson get a little more than just garbage time, honestly, even if he wasn’t the guy that took over Matz’s role completely.
Fedde…. On the podcasts, we expressed the concern this winter that we’d see more of what we saw when he came over to St. Louis than what he did for the White Sox in 2024. He did have a good September but his August was a 4.64 ERA/5.04 FIP. He doesn’t strike out a lot of batters so it wasn’t likely these numbers were going to change.
And, true to form, that’s really what we’ve seen. He has had his moments—a complete game shutout of the Nationals stands out—but he’s also had three starts out of 17 where he’s allowed seven runs and one other where he allowed six (in three innings). His Baseball Savant page is bluer than California on an electoral map. He’s in the bottom 2% in strikeout rate, the bottom 7% in expected ERA.
While Redbird Rants tries to come up with teams that would be interested, and there are all the baseball caveats about you can never have too much pitching, it does seem very unlikely anyone is going to give up something of any sort of value for Fedde. You could argue—and probably convincingly—that the biggest value would be removing him from the team and letting McGreevy take the spot.
In which case, of course, you could release Fedde. His salary for the year is $7.5 million. We’ve passed the halfway point so you’d guess all the Cardinals would be eating is around $3.5 million. The club has done that before and I wouldn’t be surprised, if they were confident in their pitching depth, that they wouldn’t do it again.
The last part is the problem, I think, though as we get farther away from the halfway point the problem becomes smaller. Assuming you cut Fedde today (which isn’t going to happen) you could slot in McGreevy, but what happens if someone else gets hurt? Quinn Matthews is still building back up and probably isn’t coming up until September at the earliest, I wouldn’t think. The club seems to have moved Gordon Graceffo to a relief role. Zach Plesac, signed as that depth, has scuffled in his four games there, with more walks than strikeouts and an ERA with two numbers on the left of the decimal point.
No, they’ll keep running Fedde out there for a bit, and who knows, maybe he’ll swing back from this terrible run he’s on to have a strong performance against the Cubs on Sunday Night Baseball. We can hope, at least.
On the bright side, it’s very unlikely this weekend’s set with the Cubs will be worse than the last three days. They’ll probably score runs. They probably will win a game. We’ve hit a valley on the roller coaster which means it’s time for things to start climbing upwards.
Just remember, when we get to the top of this hill, there’s going to be another drop on the other side. We probably won’t see it coming—nobody saw Pittsburgh, right, and the Cardinals only have one series with a currently above .500 team the rest of the month after this weekend—but they get up again and they get knocked down. That’s going to happen in a growth season and as growth seasons go, at least this one’s been entertaining.
Things are going well with the podcasts. Allen has returned to Meet Me at Musial, though he was in Hawaii last week so I had Eugene Tucker from Portion Under Busch join me in a wonderful conversation. We are doing well on Gateway as well, dealing with the whiplash of the season.
Of course, there are a ton of great Cardinal podcasts out there and you’ll find a style that fits you if you look. My go-tos are Talking About Birds and Cardinals Off Day, but there are so many other good ones that I wish I had time to listen to.
Hope you all have a wonderful Fourth of July. We’re not doing a lot—a few folks over for burgers, then going down to see the town display—and it doesn’t seem like it’ll be quite as hot as Fourths often are. Things may be a mess, but I’m still glad I’m an American.