The St. Louis Cardinals are exhibit A in why this baseball season needs to end — now

It’s a gut wrenching time to be a St. Louis Cardinals fan.

With the bad news flowing day after day, I can’t even feel good about hoping the team gets back on the field sometimes soon — much less have aspirations that it could make the playoffs or maybe win a World Series.

It’s probably for the best to get rid of any of those thoughts, though. Because, even if this team did suddenly put a stop to its COVID-19 outbreak and start playing games again, does it have any sort of chance to be a good club. It’s missing two All-Star players in Yadier Molina and Paul DeJong, two starting pitchers in Carlos Martinez and Miles Mikolas — even though the former went down for the season with an arm injury before the pandemic took it’s toll. The bullpen has lost several pitchers and now the disease is working its way into the outfield.

Seeing Lane Thomas has tested positive for COVID-19 was a rough blow on a couple of levels. First, he was supposed to get a shot to show what he had before the Cardinals bring top prospect Dylan Carlson to the big leagues. Second, if the Cardinals don’t replace Thomas on the roster with Carlson, it’s going to be painfully obvious that the team is gaming the latter’s service time, not doing what’s best for the club. You argue whether he deserves to be in the big leagues all you want when everyone is healthy and there is at least a little gray area for cover. But when the player the person in charge of personnel decision cites as the reason a prospect is being held back is suddenly on the shelf for a couple of weeks, you either bring up the kid or wait for the grievance to be filed.

This isn’t the way Cardinals fans want Carlson to come up to the big leagues. The complete lack of a plan is disconcerting and the fact that he’s going to be heavily leaned upon on a badly depleted team is a tough situation in which to place a rookie.

We’ve reached the point where it’s fair to ask if the Cardinals should even go on playing. They stand to be at least 13 games behind their competitors if they can resume play by next weekend. The word from the Commissioners Office is that should some teams not be able to complete their slate of games the playoff clubs would be determined by winning percentage not total number of wins. But what if the numbers are drastically off? Suppose that the Cardinals only play 10 more games and they win them all by facing dinged up clubs with a fresh roster. Then they have another outbreak and things are shut down. Does even the most rabid Cardinals fan think a 12-3 Cardinals team deserves to make the post season more than a team that is 38-22? Granted, the total probably won’t be THAT far off. But where do you draw the line? It’s still unfair for a team that plays 30 game and wins 20 of them to make the playoffs over a team that wins 38 of 60 because the team that played less games had less of a test.

I hate to think of a whole bunch of records that will forever carry an asterisk. What if someone hits .430 in a short season? What if someone wins a triple crown? But what would be even worse than those things is if a Major League Baseball team has to forfeit the bulk of its season and sit the pennant race out. And I think that’s really what we need to start to consider.

If the Cardinals resumed play this weekend, they would have to play seven or eight double-headers to catch up in the schedule. What’s more unfair than not making up the games? How about playing 14 seven-inning games when your opponents play all nine-inning games. What difference does it make? Well, a team playing seven innings doesn’t have to be near as deep as team playing full contests. You could very easily go directly from your starter to your closer in a seven-inning game. How many runs are scored against middle relievers in regular circumstances?

The bottom line is this whole baseball season never should have happened. That’s not sour grapes from a Cardinals fan. It’s the reality that COVID-19 outbreaks have already happened to two teams and I’d be shocked if they don’t happen to more. What happens when two teams are playing in the World Series and one of them suddenly has an outbreak? Do you force one team to play shorthanded? MLB has already said it doesn’t want to see the season bleed into November. So do you just cancel the World Series after all of this?

I just don’t see a way this mess is going to end well.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.