St. Louis Cardinals offense has been in a deep freeze. Will it thaw out for postseason?

The paradox of watching the St. Louis Cardinals over the next week is not knowing whether something that it seems like could never happen again will happen (Albert Pujols hitting his 700th home run), and at the same time not knowing if something else that seems like it will never happen again will happen (the Cardinals scoring one, single, solitary run).

Thursday morning, ahead of the series finale in San Diego, ESPN Stats and Info shared a particularly mind-boggling piece of information: With three consecutive shutouts in which they recorded a total of only nine hits, the Cardinals became the first team since the 1995 Tigers to record both as few hits and as few runs over so long a span.

What on earth happened?

For five full months, one way to tell the story of the 2022 St. Louis Cardinals was through a lens of redemption. Much maligned hitting coach Jeff Albert was in charge of an offense that sat at the top of the league in nearly every major category, and at the same time players who came up through the developmental system with a more modern training focus were making major contributions.

The Cardinals, who overhauled their approach without painfully rebuilding their roster, seemed to have won their gamble, and several people both in the front office and on the coaching staff were primed for victory laps, even if very few would be likely to take them.

Now, with a regression to the mean happening at a particularly visible time and in particularly painful ways, it’s worth wondering whether the team that was baseball’s best in August can return in any measurable way in the approach to October.

It’s notable, when examining all the ways in which the Cardinals have not rebuilt, to examine the outfield, which is perhaps the one unit on the team which has been rapidly, aggressively turned over. The savvy deadline trade of Harrison Bader to the New York Yankees for lefty starter Jordan Montgomery has continued to pay dividends, even as Montgomery has come slightly down out of the stratosphere.

Carlson, Dickerson struggle

Still, a divorce from Bader meant rolling the dice that the two remaining members of the offseason starting trio, Dylan Carlson and Tyler O’Neill, would be able to produce at levels which at least approached what they were able to provide in 2021. That roll has come up snake eyes.

Carlson, after spending a minimum-length stint on the injured list with a sprained thumb, has been relegated to merely the short side of a platoon, standing in against lefty pitchers as the switch hitter searches for any pop in his lefty swing. O’Neill is yet again on the injured list, nursing a strained hamstring. And while optimism seems relatively high from both player and team that he’ll be able to return as a contributor, the clock is ticking. Loudly.

Corey Dickerson, who had a stretch as one of the hottest hitters in the league after the all-star break, has come crashing back to his early season futility. Lars Nootbaar has acquitted himself as a rock-solid defensive outfielder with occasional pop who has a useful place on a winning team.

A team with two quarterbacks

That place is probably not the majority starter in centerfield, as his plummeting contact rates have borne out — though his fifth-inning homer Thursday did mercifully prevent the Cardinals from tying a modern day record for consecutive innings without an earned run, by one entire inning.

An old football maxim claims a team with two quarterbacks is a team without a quarterback. The metaphor doesn’t transfer flawlessly, but in a broad sense, what does that say about a team with six outfielders? If the Cardinals without O’Neill are indeed planning on strict platoons at all three spots — Dickerson/Brendan Donovan in left, Nootbaar/Carlson in center, Alec Burleson/Juan Yepez in right — do they have a reliable offense at all?

Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt will not finish the season without driving in any additional runs. Tommy Edman will perform roughly to career standards at shortstop and second, and Yadier Molina has somehow been the team’s best non-Pujols hitter in September. There is plenty of reason to believe that each of those spots will normalize; if hitting is contagious, slumping surely is as well.

Outfield concerns

Still, again, the Cardinals will enter a winter with a cascade of question marks in their outfield. For a club that’s been laser focused on seeking out reliable upgrades everywhere else on the diamond, the failure to find stability there seems to be a much more glaring issue than whatever struggles may be occurring with an offensive game plan that has otherwise shown success at all levels.

One thing the Cardinals assuredly do not yet want to do is have conversations about the winter. They believe, with conviction, a long fall of baseball is still ahead. For that to be true, they will yet again have to catch fire in a way that outstrips what they’ve thus far shown is their likeliest level.

It can happen because it has happened. That’s a long way from being confident it will.

This story was originally published September 22, 2022 at 5:31 PM.