The St. Louis Cardinals have the pitching to win. Too bad the rest of the team stinks
It’s a shame that the St. Louis Cardinals seem content to waste the best pitching staff in the National League, if not all of Major League Baseball.
What team besides the Cardinals could possibly weather having to play so many doubleheaders and manage to keep its head above water? The only reason why St. Louis is even in the playoff conversation at this point is the team has about 15 pitchers ready to contribute at the major league level.
Their pitching staff includes high ceiling young starters like Jack Flaherty, Dakota Hudson and Johan Oviedo, a crafty veteran in World Series champ Adam Wainwright and a host of plus bullpen arms including John Gant, Genesis Cabrera, Giovanny Gallegos and rejuvenated budding star Alex Reyes is almost an embarassment of riches. Lefty Austin Gomber would probably be holding down a rotation spot on two-thirds of the teams in MLB and Jake Woodford is knocking on the door. The team has been without highest-paid starter Miles Mikolas and closer Jordan Hicks all year as well as reliable reliever John Brebbia. The team’s second-highest paid hurler Carlos Martinez has missed almost all of the season so far, high-priced reliever Andrew Miller can’t stay healthy, yet the team hasn’t missed a beat.
If the Cardinals didn’t have the worst offense in baseball, it would be in first place by four or five games in the National League Central. I can easily think of four or five games where even a hint of offensive potency would have made the difference between a loss and a win. Defensively, the St. Louis outfield is a place where triples go to die thanks to the rangy trio of Harrison Bader, Tyler O’Neill and Dylan Carlson. But at the plate, the Cardinals outfield is the place where triples, doubles, singles and homers go to die. Bader, the number one whipping boy of angsty Cardinals fans these days because of his poor offensive production, is by far the most accomplished Cardinals outfielder who isn’t on the injured list with a .245 batting average.
It could have been different. For one year at $18 million the Cardinals could have brought back left fielder Marcell Ozuna for 2020. He’s hitting over .300 with 13 homers and 36 runs batted in. That’s half of the entire St. Louis roster’s home run total for the season. One could argue that the Cardinals didn’t know that Ozuna was going to have the season they wished he’d had after trading a boatload of talent to the Miami Marlins for him. But the point is that he was their cleanup hitter, the front office knew it didn’t have an in-house replacement capable of Ozuna’s power production. Even if Ozuna hit more consistently than he did in 2018-19, this team would score a lot more runs. Not just the ones Ozuna drove in — but the ones that Goldschmidt drove in because opposing pitchers suddenly had a reason not to pitch around the former Arizona Diamondbacks slugger.
St. Louis Cardinals also let Paul Goldschmidt down
Goldschmidt came to St. Louis because he thought he would have a chance to win. But the Cardinals have disappointed him — and all those pitchers who have done so well — by stopping one step short of truly going for a championship. Frankly, I’m afraid they’re going to do it again this winter. By “afraid” I mean I am all but certain the team will refuse to spend the money it takes to sign a legitimate middle of the order bat because it is stuck paying bad contracts for one more year. Matt Carpenter has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he’s toast. During the past two seasons he’s played a total of 158 games and in that span he’s a .216 hitter with 17 homers. He’s sunk to a .333 on-base percentage and he strikes out twice as often as he walks these days. His defense is atrocious, he can’t run. The Cardinals can’t win with him as a starter anymore, yet they won’t add to the payroll until they can subtract him from the ledger.
How can the Cardinals expect to compete in 2021 without reinforcements? And how can they expect anyone to want to come here as a free agent when they’re not committed to doing what it takes to win?
It’s not likely St. Louis will ever be the club that is going to be the top bidder on the top talent to hit the free agent market. But, even if it has to go the trade route to try to land a big bat, it still has free agents to think of. Namely all those young pitchers who will someday be looking for greener pastures if they don’t have the same promise of being competitive for the post-season that Adam Wainwright, Yadier Molina and Chris Carpenter enjoyed during their glorious days at Busch Stadium.
The Cardinals are going to have to get creative if they plan to keep Wainwright and Molina in 2021 while getting better at the same time. They have a surplus of pitching to trade for offensive help and more than enough pitching to make it all the way to the World Series. But they need their Lance Berkman, Jack Clark or Orlando Cepeda to put the offense in position to do its fair share of the heavy lifting.
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Scott Wuerz is a lifelong St. Louis Cardinals fan. The Cheap Seats blog is written from his perspective as a fan and is designed to spark discussion among fans of the Cardinals and other MLB teams. Sources supporting his views and opinions are linked. If you’re looking for Cardinals news and features, check out the BND’s Cardinals section.
