Here, within this crucial season in ºüÀêÊÓƵ Cardinals history, we’ve reached the crux.
Pivotal days in a pivotal year. The team is slipping, entering Saturday outside of the expanded playoff field. And the trade deadline is looming, as fellow contenders will get better in the coming few days. Will the Cardinals? And how much better?
What unfurls from now through Tuesday’s deadline should define this season. And if ºüÀêÊÓƵ misses the playoffs for the second consecutive season — and, thus, the fifth time in nine years — it will be a Cardinal catastrophe. Maybe not to the ownership, which continues to draw fans, make money and still fields a pretty competitive team. But a Cardinal catastrophe to anyone who believes their blood is red for a reason.
Cards can’t blow this. At the trade deadline, the team must acquire multiple players. Might be hard to fill all three needs, but there’s a need for a reliable reliever, a right-handed bat and a starter such as Erick Fedde, who would be ideal and realistic.
People are also reading…
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol, whose 2022 Cards got two new starters at the deadline, said teams truly experience a lift when they add players.
“Yeah, that’s a real thing,†Marmol said. “Players will definitely confirm that. They feel like there are holes that they feel like internally, with the group that they have, (they) can’t currently address. So there is a boost whenever you fill those. The other players will tell you that all the time.â€
Understandably, the Cardinals front office has some constraints. There are desired young players who shouldn’t be traded, such as Tink Hence and (my opinion, anyway) Jordan Walker. And the Cards are unlikely to take on a lot of money with a new guy’s contract — that eliminates some of the possible acquisitions out there. OK, but there are still numerous quality players who could make the Cardinals better, for a price, of course.
As for the current Cardinals, they entered Saturday 5-8 in their past 13 games and dropped a brutal one Friday, at home, to the sub-.500 Nationals. Sure, the Cardinals are still among the league’s best teams in the “since Mother’s Day†category, but of late, they’re not playing like a machine of a team built for October.
Starter Sonny Gray, a brilliant talent, must fine-tune his pitches and approach. Nolan Gorman, man — he’s going to strike out some, but this is getting out of control. Worst strikeout rate in baseball (nearly 38%). He entered Saturday with Ks in 12 of his past 24 at-bats. And he was in the lineup out of the eight-hole on Saturday night (not many teams have their reigning home run leader hitting eighth). And Paul Goldschmidt, who was in the seven-hole Saturday, has put together a couple good swings of late, but his OPS remains stuck in the .600s, a remarkable decline.
Meanwhile, Brendan Donovan is having an awful July, Dylan Carlson looks lost, Miles Mikolas and Lance Lynn are unpredictable and, all the while, the Mets, Padres, Pirates and Diamondbacks are playing winning baseball in their own pursuits of wild card spots.
This is the time for urgency.
What does that truly mean though?
I asked Marmol, because it’s fair to say that a player has urgency to succeed in, seemingly, every at-bat all year long. So why or how is this time different? His answer was telling about his team (but now we’ll see if it plays out in the way they actually play).
“There’s definitely urgency,†Marmol said. “But I think it’s a different sense than you would probably categorize it. Whether it’s April 9 and it’s first and third with one out, ‘Goldy’ has the same urgency in that at-bat that he does tonight, first and third, one out. So it may sound too simple to say there’s always urgency, but once you start to build out the season, and you’re 59 games away from the last day, there’s a clear picture as to where everything stands, right? So there’s urgency in the sense of knowing — ‘All right, here’s where (the other teams are) at, here’s where we’re at, here’s what we need to do.’ You’re still painting that picture on April 9. …
“(The Cardinals players) are convicted in doing what we’ve always talked about. We want to win the division. So if that’s urgency, you want to call that urgency, then call it what you want.â€
Urgency must be everywhere, from the clubhouse to the front office. Five of nine missed postseasons cannot happen.
This weekend, many members of the famed 2004 Cardinals were at Busch Stadium for an anniversary celebration. That included Scott Rolen, he of Cooperstown, who was a trade deadline acquisition in 2002. On Friday, a longtime member of the Cardinals organization recalled the team flight to Florida that July. It was announced that the Cards got Rolen ... and the Cards themselves cheered loudly (they indeed made the playoffs).
And in 2004, that team, too, made a trade deadline deal. Future Hall of Fame outfielder Larry Walker became a Cardinal. The club proceeded to finish with 105 wins … and win the pennant.
A trade such as the one for Walker “pumps the stadium up, it pumps the fan base up,†Rolen said Friday. “It pumps the team up, the players. You just feel that, ‘Wow, this organization, like, we’re going all in right here.’ … So to add that to the roster is huge. Psychologically, if nothing else.â€