Until Cardinals’ starting pitching stabilizes, the team will continue to struggle

There was a moment in Wednesday night’s series finale at Wrigley Field — a stretch of several minutes, perhaps — when it was easier to see the path forward for the St. Louis Cardinals than it has been in weeks.

Having broken an eight-game losing streak before taking off on a road trip and after winning the first two games of this series, securing a sweep in the Friendly Confines could have helped the team claw back to respectability in the standings and injected the sort of energy from the outside which would match that which the team insists is present on the inside.

In the small handful of seconds between the ball leaving the barrel of Patrick Wisdom’s bat in the bottom of the third inning and landing in the left field bleachers, that thrust sputtered. When Yan Gomes repeated the process in the fourth inning, the brakes were fully applied.

Wednesday’s 10-4 loss in Chicago was the Cardinals’ 25th of the season, dropping them again to 12 games below par. It’s the team’s worst start since 1907, when they were 10-28 over the same stretch to open the season. That 1907 start was identical to their start in 1903; together, those two seasons represent the worst starts in franchise history.

In 1973, the Cardinals had an equal 13-24 record to open the season, but won their 38th game to pull within 10 games of .500. They would finish the season 81-81.

The series finale was also their first loss of the year by more than five runs. From that wreckage, there’s no other path than forward.

“We’re feeling good about where we’re at,” manager Oliver Marmol said when asked if winning a series and three of the team’s last four provided a positive view from a wider lens. “We’re playing the game the right way. Today, (the) game got away from us on the pitching side, but, overall, still feel pretty good about some of the pieces that are coming together. So, good series win.”

The Cardinals are amid their eighth turn through the starting rotation. In turn seven, Jake Woodford swapped out for Adam Wainwright, but the club has otherwise rolled five starters in order since opening day — Miles Mikolas, Jack Flaherty, Jordan Montgomery, Woodford or Wainwright, and Steven Matz, in that order.

None of the five starters completed at least six innings in the team’s first spin through their starting five. At least one did in the subsequent six turns. Wainwright and Matz represent their last two chances to cross that threshold in this cycle.

“I hold myself to a pretty high standard,” Montgomery said Wednesday after allowing six earned runs in his five innings. “Anything under six innings a game is just a failure to me. I want to go out there and at least eat up innings for the guys.”

Both Montgomery and Marmol said the lefty — easily the team’s most consistent starter in the season’s first six weeks — lacked much control of any pitch other than his fastball. The Chicago rallies in the third and fourth innings had potential to knock him from the game and require toll payment in form of pitches from his teammates in the bullpen, but in scraping through five, Montgomery cut down some of that cost.

‘Just a quality start’

No pitcher wants to be five and dive, but it certainly beats being unable to finish the fourth.

“Just a quality start,” Montgomery said when asked why he values the six inning mark. “Get out of there in six and you have your setup guy and your closer to do the rest. Obviously I want to get farther, but I feel like that’s me doing my job every time at least.”

The Cardinals have allowed an outrageous 32 runs in the seventh inning this season, 27 of which have been earned. That’s their largest raw total and tied (with the second) for their largest earned total and it comes at a time when most teams would be turning to their highest leverage, most effective relievers.

You don’t have to know a lot about pitching to understand why they’ve had so much trouble minding the gap — if the starters don’t last, the relievers burn out, and the fissure point happens precisely before the closer and setup man are most likely to come to the stage.

Starters must pitch better

It’s the same root cause as the self-inflicted Willson Contreras toothache which festered through the first half of the week and it’s the obstacle the Cardinals have to clear if they want to turn optimism into real momentum rather than talking themselves into the best case scenario.

The starters must pitch better. They must pitch longer. They must be rock upon which the club builds a season. Or, they can continue to crumble, and the searches more than a century into the past for futility will become more and more relevant.

“Any time less people touch the baseball, (less) chance of something going sideways,” Marmol said. “You’re able to get that sixth inning with your guy and go from there, you feel pretty good about it.”

The time is now to show it.