This was the one. This’ll be the game we look back to, the one that cooked the Cardinals.
They lost Wednesday at Cincinnati. Were swept at Cincinnati. Outscored 19-4 at Cincinnati. The Cardinals are now under .500 (60-61) and 4 ½ out of the final wild card spot — which they’re battling five other teams to nab.
This game was the mortal wound of the 2024 season, which was supposed to be a resuscitation season after the deflating 2023 campaign. Sure, of course, there are 41 more games. We live in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, so we know that “2011 can happen†or “2006 can happen.†But this sure feels like the beginning of the end. And if the Cards miss the playoffs, chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. needs to truly reevaluate. He must consider giving Chaim Bloom a larger role in the front office, as John Mozeliak enters the final year of a contract. Because if the Cards are to miss the 2024 playoffs, that’s five of the last nine years. And in the other four, they won a total of only four playoff games. It’s been a decade of “just you wait.†The Cardinal Way has been The Cardinal Wait.
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Over-dramatic?
For fans’ sake, I hope in a couple months you can laugh at that paragraph and say it was. But I don’t think it’s over-dramatic. I feel like this is the fork in the season and the fork in the road. The Cardinals are playing unacceptable baseball. And ºüÀêÊÓƵ fans are too invested — both with their hearts and their money — to have to experience this.
After all, when DeWitt and Mozeliak fired manager Mike Matheny, back in the summer of 2018, DeWitt said: “In some places a winning record, or even .500, is even acceptable. Not with this city, not with this franchise, not with its history, and not with the fans."
What happened in 2024? Really, you could simplify it and say: they didn’t get what they thought they’d get out of Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Gorman and Nolan Arenado. Three big bats basically missing from the lineup. Goldschmidt has a .680 OPS and 138 strikeouts; Gorman has a .680 OPS and 148 strikeouts. And Arenado has been reduced to a singles hitter. The probable Hall of Fame third baseman has a .717 OPS and just 12 homers and 17 doubles.
But there is so much more to why the 2024 Cardinals have fallen. The starting pitching has come back to earth — in the Reds series, Nos. 1-2-3 Sonny Gray, Erick Fedde and Kyle Gibson all got rocked; With runners in scoring position, only the Chicago White Sox have a worse OPS than the Cardinals (.633); Against the division, the Cards are 17-22; Overall, the Cards’ run differential is minus-63, third-worst in the National League; They seldom hit lefties; And in many major stat categories, as covered in my column Monday, the Cards are just average.
And while this isn’t a stat, the Cardinals surely lead the league in “crappy pop ups caught by the catcher or an infielder.†There were three ill-timed ones in Wednesday’s loss.
“Roller-coaster†is an overused term in sports, but the season has had a distinct down, up and down again.
First 39 games: 15-24.
Next 51 games, starting on May 12 (Mother’s Day): 33-18
Next 31 games (through Wednesday’s loss at Cincy): 12-19
And thus, the Cardinals are 60-61. And their next SIX series are against the Dodgers, Brewers, Twins, Padres, Yankees and Brewers again.
As for the trade deadline, Look, I admit I wrote that Fedde was a great get. Maybe he will be, but in his first three ºüÀêÊÓƵ starts, his ERA is 5.63. But I also wrote that they could’ve done better with bullpen enhancement than Shawn Armstrong, which seems to ring true.
Welcome to the .500 days of summer. Man, remember when it was “which wild card spot will they get?†Now the odds are bad that they’ll even make the playoffs at all. Oh, and the last time the Cards finished under .500 in back-to-back seasons? It was 1958 and 1959.
Heading into Tuesday’s game — Tuesday’s, not Wednesday’s — I wrote on Twitter/X: “Gosh I feel like tonight’s Cardinals game has huge implications. If they lose, they’ve thus lost a series to Cincinnati. And after last night latest lackluster loss, they need to do something to show they still have offensive oomph.â€
Well, they lost that one. Only four hits and a lone run. And then came Wednesday’s 9-2 debacle.
They say they have urgency — but they aren’t showcasing it on the field. They didn’t just lose the past three games, they were throttled.
The ºüÀêÊÓƵ Cardinals are faltering when it matters most.