For St. Louis Cardinals to match what 2011 club did, reinforcements will be needed
Entering play on June 1, the St. Louis Cardinals were 33-23 and had a 2.5-game cushion for first place in the National League Central. That lead would dwindle over the coming months, inspiring the front office to make drastic changes to the roster and reshape a team that snuck into the postseason as the wild card on the season’s last day.
The year was 2011, and a decade removed from the franchise’s last World Series championship, the 2021 version of the club resembles their forerunners in many ways. There’s top tier talent, sure, but with a spate of injuries, an overwhelmed bench, and a bullpen with more arms which can’t be trusted than arms which can, it’s a team that will undoubtedly require reinforcements from outside the organization if the group is to become something special.
“Any time you want to compare a year to a year we won the World Series, that seems like a positive,” Cardinals general manager Michael Girsch said Tuesday from the dugout steps at Chicago’s Guaranteed Rate Field.
Still, he cautioned, “I think it’s, like, way too early in the season to say it’s similar. It’s only similar if we make a major move at the trade deadline. Otherwise ...”
Left unsaid as Girsch trailed off is that the Cardinals, recently, have not made moves major or otherwise at the trade deadline that would be characterized as a “buy” move for a contender.
Zach Duke, a lefty reliever acquired from the White Sox in 2016, was the last mid-season pitching acquisition in that category. Brandon Moss, traded from Cleveland in 2015, was the last hitter. Major moves in recent years, including sending Tommy Pham to Tampa Bay and Luke Voit to the New York Yankees in 2018, have been more about shuffling internal pieces and loading up for the future.
And yet both of those moves, despite criticism of them at the time, are responsible for the cornerstones of the current Cardinals bullpen. Righty Giovanny Gallegos came as part of a package for Voit and lefty Génesis Cabrera was at the center of the Pham trade, and those two and closer Alex Reyes comprise the trustworthy troika commonly seen at the back end of St. Louis victories.
It’s the rest of Johnny Wholestaff that needs a reboot.
Looking back at moves by 2011 club
This, more than anything, is where the 2011 team is instructive. Twelve pitchers broke camp with the big league club following that spring training, and only six members of that group would appear in the World Series.
Miguel Batista and Ryan Franklin were released mid-season. Kyle McClellan was injured. Bryan Augenstein was shipped back to the minors. Trever Miller and Brian Tallet, the team’s two lefties, were shipped to Toronto in an enormous package deal that was centered around malcontented center fielder Colby Rasmus.
That deal did more than open up playing time for Jon Jay and pull a thorn from manager Tony La Russa’s side. It also brought back Octavio Dotel, Edwin Jackson and Marc Rzepczynski, each of whom would play a crucial role in that championship run.
All told, the trade with Toronto involved a mind boggling eight players with significant Major League experience, making it a relic of its time that Girsch conceded would be challenging to pull off in the present day marketplace.
“We made a unique trade for a team that was competing, to trade a young guy not for a veteran, but for a bunch of veterans,” he said.
Cardinals bullpen running on fumes
The Cardinals bullpen outside of Cabrera, Gallegos and Reyes has struggled all season, putting up numbers that are well below league average. Manager Mike Shildt recently noted in a postgame press conference that he can’t throw those three every day, sounding like he was speaking less to reporters and more to the front office as he described the difficulty in knowing which other arms could navigate a tough spot on a given day.
Two months out from the trade deadline, Girsch understands the urgency, but doesn’t feel like the timing may yet be right for change.
“Look around the league at how many deals happen before mid-July,” Girsch said. “Very few.
“Opportunities at the margins are sometimes available in the near term. Opportunities to make...more significant changes are rarely going to happen until six to eight weeks from now.”
Other division rivals not standing pat
Still, division rivals are making moves. The Milwaukee Brewers, struggling to support Luis Urías’s defense at shortstop, traded for Tampa Bay’s Willy Adames, adding an every day player in the middle of May.
Girsch suggested that deal was the rare example of one where two teams had aligning interests at an early date; Milwaukee needed a shortstop, and Tampa Bay had Taylor Walls, Vidal Brujan, and uber-prospect Wander Franco all pounding down the door for playing time at Triple-A.
“It takes two to tango, and they may have had the perfect two to tango,” said Girsch.
The Cardinals would be best served to start searching for a dance partner and commit to some moves if they expect their end of season party in 2021 to approach the parade they enjoyed ten years prior.
“We’re not really talking about a trade deadline and the end of May,” Girsch explained. “I don’t know what our trade deadline plan looked like in any of the last five seasons as of May 25, so it’s sort of a moot point.”
