Offense scorching hot for St. Louis Cardinals early in 2023. The pitching? Not so much

It would be difficult to more neatly script an opening salvo to the St. Louis Cardinals 2023 season than that which has unfolded across the first four games.

With 26 runs and 53 hits — the most hits in the National League — a deep and relentless offense is already establishing itself as a challenge for some of baseball’s top teams.

Simultaneously, the best performance from a starting pitcher in those games came from Jack Flaherty, who issued seven walks. In that tiny sample, the staff ERA+ has graded out to an 87 — 13% worse than league average.

They are going to hit. Whether they’re going to get outs will determine whether they win games. That was evident in the first week of February and the first week of March, and as the first week of the season draws to a close, it continues to crystallize.

“We’re going to need more,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said Monday of his starting pitching, following his team’s 8-4 loss to Atlanta in the opening game of a three-game series. “We will get more. We trust our guys.

“These first four games, are they ideal? Not really. Do we feel like our guys are going to be more than capable of doing what we’re going to ask of them? Yes. I don’t think the first four games are indicative of what our year is going to look like from our starting rotation.”

Miles Mikolas, on opening day, got through just 3 1/3 innings, allowing five runs on ten hits (while posting a team-leading six strikeouts). Flaherty, in the second game, didn’t allow a hit or run, but did walk seven Toronto hitters. Jordan Montgomery, staked to a 4-0 lead after one inning, immediately surrendered back three runs before stopping the damage there.

Jake Woodford, pitching Monday, allowed three home runs in the first two innings, including a mammoth blast to Austin Riley which cleared the bleachers in left field.

‘Comes down to execution’

Woodford allowed only one homer in 48 1/3 Major League innings last season. He allowed two on Monday before recording his fourth out.

“It just comes down to execution,” he said. “We got burned on a couple pitches up, two fastballs, and a slider that hung. Just got to bear down and limit damage.”

The thing that’s encouraging — or, arguably, concerning — is the small adjustments Woodford identified are applicable across the board. Flaherty acknowledged falling out of sync in some aspects of his delivery and was also asked to pitch through extremely difficult weather conditions. Mikolas described his outing as “death by a thousand cuts;” Toronto recorded eight hits in the opener with exit velocities of under 80 miles per hour. Montgomery’s damage happened fast but stopped just as quickly.

An optimist could squint, remove a few problematic outcomes from the box score, and suddenly see a very different outcome. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, at last check, the league office does not permit teams to remove the bad stuff and keep the good. That’s a fair way to judge a pitching process, but perhaps not a fruitful way of making longer term staff decisions.

Positive signs

There have surely been bright spots as well. Packy Naughton and Zack Thompson have combined to deliver 6 ⅔ innings of scoreless work from the left side of the bullpen, and a healthy Drew VerHagen appears to have carried his spring success into games that count, giving the Cardinals hope that they may yet have struck gold on a pitching import who delivered a clunker in his first season back from Japan.

His good work is needed. Giovanny Gallegos was unavailable for the entirety of the Toronto series with a stiff back and didn’t pitch in any of the team’s first four games. Jordan Hicks appeared in three of them and delivered diminishing results with each appearance. Thompson is likely the backup option to close out games behind Ryan Helsley, but the competition for leverage spots seems to be sorting itself out in real time.

“I’m always going to take ownership whenever I feel like it’s on me,” Hicks said Monday after surrendering two seventh inning runs which put the game fully out of reach. “I’ve got to keep the game close.”

‘Cranky’ and ‘sticky’

Still adjusting to the regular season rhythms and pitching in his third game in five days, Hicks said his oft-injured pitching arm felt both “cranky” and “sticky” as he entered the game, but was very careful to differentiate that feeling from injury. He also insisted that he’s not feeling an undue pressure from the pitch clock, professing to prefer the snappier pace.

There’s nothing yet worth setting off any alarms, especially considering Adam Wainwright’s progression in returning from a groin strain and the traditional caveats regarding reading too much into things that happen too early. Choppy weather on takeoff does not preclude a flight from going smoothly at cruising altitude.

The Cardinals, at the plate, are climbing. The pitching needs only to trim smoothly enough to reduce drag. Those piloting the season haven’t yet reached for the emergency checklists, but it would be fair to assume they know right where to find them should the time come.