With rough start to tough June, St. Louis Cardinals struggle to ‘get over hump’
With a 15-13 record in a tumultuous June, just a nudge better than thoroughly mediocre, the St. Louis Cardinals would enter July 10 games above .500 and inarguably in a position to have earned some outside help from the front office as they attempted to barrel down the stretch run into surprising success.
The Cardinals have instead gone 4-10 in the first half of those games, fading as quickly as they surged. The team with MLB’s best record in May has been two games worse in June than the Colorado Rockies, who have looked for the world as though they might take a serious run at finishing 100 games below .500.
“It’s a tough stretch,” manager Oli Marmol said over the weekend in Milwaukee. “We had a really good stretch, and now we’re learning some things, and we’ve gotta find a way through it. It sucks, don’t get me wrong, but there’s been some good conversations that have come out of it, and we’ll be better for it.”
What, precisely, are the things the team has been learning?
“Gosh, some of that is for me to keep in house,” Marmol answered. “Maybe I’ll have a better answer for you tomorrow, but some of it’s more for me than anything.”
He gave a wry smile when asked the next day if he had a better answer, but the answer itself did not follow.
There are times throughout a long season when truths reveal themselves bluntly, even if the manager has a responsibility to his team which prevents him from giving voice. One of Marmol’s commonly used tactics for handling situations like that is to prompt a reporter to, “ask it another way,” accepting that there needs to be public accountability but insistent that he doesn’t need to kick dirt on his charges in order to provide it.
However he may have taken the lessons out of the series loss in Milwaukee, and in whatever terms he might describe those lessons given his preference, it’s possible that what this challenging stretch has revealed more than anything is that the Cardinals are capable of cresting waves in the schedule when their players play to their absolute ceilings, but that many or most of them aren’t yet quite mature enough to hold that level throughout a long season.
That, ideally, is when a team should be able to turn to its depth, of which the Cardinals have vanishingly little. There is a near-unlimited amount of dissection and analysis which can take place over a 162-game schedule, but sometimes simplicity is correct – the Cardinals have played up and down baseball this season because the roster isn’t good enough to do anything else.
“There’s no excuse,” third baseman Nolan Arenado said. “Last month was a great month. This month is a tough month so far, and obviously with no days off makes it even tougher. There’s no excuses. Everyone has to go through it like that.
“We’re just not getting over the hump,” he added. “A credit to (Milwaukee), they’ve got good pitching. And if you don’t capitalize when they make mistakes, it’s going to be tough.”
Cardinals lack of team depth
Arenado led off the top of the ninth on Sunday with a 12-pitch at bat against Brewers closer Trevor Megill which ended in a single. Nolan Gorman followed with an opportunistic bunt single, which left the game in the hands of Jordan Walker, Victor Scott II and Masyn Winn, three players who the Cardinals absolutely must be able to rely upon as key parts of their future as well as present if they are to shorten their timeline back to consistent competitiveness.
That all three struck out in order does not make for a grand tragedy in the broader scope of the season, but it’s an unsettling microcosm of where things currently sit. Walker took his at bat, rather than Lars Nootbaar (who ran for Arenado), because Nootbaar is, “not in a spot where that would make sense,” according to Marmol.
The advertised plan was for Nootbaar to be fully off the field on both Saturday and Sunday as he worked through a career-worst slump, and for Winn to be given a full Sunday of rest to pair with the Monday off day. Nootbaar, though, made brief appearances in both of the last two games of the series – albeit not with the bat – and Winn asked his way into the series finale.
It’s encouraging when young players push to get more chances on the field, but the necessity of their usage is the result of not having sufficient bench depth to turn to other options. A question about the bench after Sunday’s loss was a question that was asked and then asked differently.
José Barrero is holding a roster spot because the Cardinals don’t have another viable option to play shortstop behind Winn, and because sending him to the minors would risk losing him on waivers. Yohel Pozo is holding a spot because the Cardinals need to hold onto three catchers; Pedro Pagés has been too good behind the plate to ignore, and Iván Herrera is too good at the plate to sit and see if he develops as a defender.
There are pieces, and the pieces don’t quite all fit. St. Louis in recent weeks has seen the Brewers, as well as the Dodgers and even the Royals fully unload their options from the bench to put pressure on their pitchers. That option doesn’t really exist for Marmol, because he doesn’t really have the horses in his stable.
He doesn’t have to say it. Everyone can see it. That is part of what a long season of learning is to be used for, even if it makes for short term discomfort.
“We know it’s going to be a tough stretch,” Marmol said. “Guys are playing hard. (Monday’s) off day is a timely one. Get to regroup and then get back at it. We’re looking forward to it.”
