Frustrated Arenado moved down in Cardinals’ lineup reboot. Here’s why
When the St. Louis Cardinals’ clubhouse opened to reporters on Monday afternoon, Nolan Arenado and a clubhouse attendant were gathering bats out of his locker by the dozen, depositing them in a laundry cart to be whisked away to an unidentified location or lumber pile.
If the hope was to reset his offensive performance with a purge, that was the most visible place to start.
Coming off a road trip on which the Cardinals won seven of their nine games but Arenado was a mere 8-for-37, manager Oli Marmol dropped him from his familiar fourth spot in the batting order to sixth, pushing Willson Contreras and Iván Herrera each up a slot.
Arenado homered on opening day, but entering play Monday, had just four total on the season. His OPS was as high as .908 as recently as April 15, but since that day, has posted a .210 batting average and .581 OPS; his season in aggregate is that of a slightly below average hitter, albeit one who has reclaimed top defensive form.
“Good conversations with Nolan,” Marmol said. “Just as he’s working through some things, we talked a couple days ago in Kansas City, and giving him a breather as he works through this and moving the other two guys up a spot.”
“Guys are playing well in front of me, or that were hitting behind me, and they should move up in front of me,” Arenado said. “It was really nothing more than that.”
The third baseman and the manager had “multiple” conversations during the road trip, and Arenado was more than willing to yield his traditional spot in favor of hitters who have been turning in superior results.
This is also not the first time Marmol has executed this particular gambit; with Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt both struggling last summer, Arenado made 14 starts hitting sixth between June 26 and August 3, the majority of which were in the opening days of July.
Those Cardinals, though, were struggling to tread water and keep pace in the National League Central. These Cardinals instead are surging, entering play Monday having won or split seven consecutive series. That stretch has seen them climb from four games below .500 to five games over the brea-even mark, and however the Cardinals would prefer to frame the discussion, the change is not insignificant.
Indeed, Arenado pushed back against the idea that he might require a breather of any sort.
“I don’t know,” he said when the switch was placed in those terms. “I mean, if those guys get on base, they’ve gotta hit. We’ve gotta drive them in anyway. I think it’s more about the guys who are playing well getting more at bats right now.”
Marmol said Arenado did not request days out of the lineup and that he did not believe that would be in his best interest as he attempts to work through a funk. A notoriously hard worker and self-critical driver, it comes as no shock that he would prefer to take game speed cuts as a demonstration of his ability to perform.
There are also delicate considerations around his future with the team to consider. After President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak declared trading Arenado to be “priority one, two and three” over the winter, Arenado blocked a deal to the Houston Astros and the Cardinals did not otherwise come to any agreements.
The team has remained open to moving Arenado as the year has worn on, and there are contradictory sliding scales in play which pull both ends of that particular knot; every dollar the Cardinals pay on his salary during the season is one a trading partner will not have to pay, but the more his performance lags between the lines, the harder it would be to convince a trade partner to take on the risk of an aging position player whose offensive performance has more or less followed the expected decline curve.
That trade desire also took place outside of the context of a winning ballclub. The message to and impact on the clubhouse would be significant if Arenado were to be moved even as they make an unexpected run. And yet if he continues to struggle, making him more difficult to trade, the team will be left absorbing that spot in the lineup, lower though it may be.
Arenado’s frustration was evident as he addressed the situation in the home dugout on Monday afternoon, responding “I don’t know” as a preamble to several questions about what may be leading to his struggles. He did strongly deflect a query about the situation being a demonstration of his skills as a leader.
“I don’t know if it’s a leadership thing,” he admitted. “I think it’s more of just, we need guys that are playing well hitting more often than the guys that aren’t hitting well.”
Whether Arenado wants to outwardly acknowledge the pressure heaped on his shoulders from the cleanup spot or not, the Cardinals clearly see a need to find an outlet for a building internal tension that has been insufficiently frequently released into the baseball. Whether the next time he cleans out his locker is after the regular season, after the postseason, or on his way to a new team likely hinges on the outcome of his work.
“Just, uh, play better. I don’t know. I don’t really have an answer,” Arenado said when asked what he wants to get out of this change. “Play more the way I think I’m capable of. But it’s been a minute since I felt like I could play the way I should, so I don’t know if it’s coming back or not.”
