Ah, there they were. Got a little confused on Friday and Saturday when these guys in Cardinals uniforms started slugging baseballs. But on Sunday, those were quintessentially the 2024 Cardinals in the batters’ box of the biggest game of the year.
With a home series there for the taking — against the mighty Dodgers, too — the Cardinals offense failed. Six hits and one lone walk in Sunday’s 2-1 loss — and 2-1 series loss. The only extra-base hit was Lars Nootbaar’s pinch-hit homer, which was a jolt from Noot but not for the team.
We can, and will, meticulously break down platoons and splits all summer long, but it’s really quite simple: If guys that are paid to hit don’t hit, you’re not going to make the playoffs. And really, this playoff talk is likely all for naught — after all, getting swept at Cincinnati sure seemed like the mortal wound for the Cardinals’ season.
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But the team says it still believes. That’s nice, but the team isn’t executing offensively.
On Sunday, it was grounder after grounder — 15 of the 31 Cardinal plate appearances resulted in a ground ball ... including three double plays. We lost some good worms out there.
Hitting coach Turner Ward oversees a Cardinals offense that is stuck in mediocrity — 19th in on-base plus slugging percentage (.697), 19th in slugging percentage (.388) and 18th in on-base percentage (.309). Possibly his closest pupil, Paul Goldschmidt, is hitting .204 in the past 15 games and .230 on the season. His OPS is .681. At this point, it’s fair to wonder if either should be back next season. Since Aug. 2, only two times has Goldschmidt tallied more than one hit — and both games, the total was two.
And Sunday’s loss ended with a scenario that, in other years, one would’ve desired: Nolan Arenado up with the game-tying run on base. But Arenado, of course, isn’t Arenado this year. He has dealt with arm pain and has seldom swatted homers (though he smacked one in Saturday’s game). Arenado’s career slugging percentage is .518 (tied with future Hall of Famer Miguel Cabrera!); this year, it’s .394. Sure enough, in the bottom of Sunday’s ninth, Arenado hit a sharp grounder but a grounder nonetheless.
Six. Four. Three.
Double play.
Dodgers win.
As for these Cardinals, Sonny Gray summed it up succinctly Sunday. After the game, the pitcher described the only thing that would save the season — and it’s something we haven’t seen all season.
“We have to go on a run, plain and simple,†Gray said. “We’ve got to get hot and go on a run. Feels like we need one of those eight-game win streaks or something like that. Maybe it’s coming. We haven’t really had that. It feels like we need to go on a run.â€
The 61-63 Cardinals have had only two winning streaks with four or more wins.
One was a four-game streak.
The other was a five-game streak.
Oh, and since June 26, the Cards haven’t had a win streak longer than two games.
The Cards are 11 games out of first place in the NL Central and five games out of the wild card.
“At the end of the day,†Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said, “it’s going to come down to if we hit enough, if we drive the baseball, if we slug, if we situationally hit, if we execute with runners in scoring position, once we do create those opportunities. Today, we weren’t able to do that.â€
Yet again, the Cardinals didn’t score Sunday with runners in scoring position. ºüÀêÊÓƵ was 0 for 4. As Post-Dispatch writer Derrick Goold tabulated from press row, Sunday was the 25th game the Cardinals didn’t get a hit with a runner in scoring position.
On Friday and Saturday, the Cardinals generated a bunch of base runners and 11 combined runs (in the previous four games, they combined for seven runs). But on Sunday, they compiled just the one run.
“I mean, momentum is kind of a day-to-day thing,†Cardinals second baseman Brendan Donovan said after the loss. “You feel different from day-to-day. You feel different from at-bat-to-at-bat. So obviously, the guys were ready to get after it today. And it was a tight game. And we had a couple chances there to drive some people in — and we just didn’t.â€
Nootbaar was the only one to drive in a run, and that was nice to see for the fellow, considering he’s struggled a lot lately. And the evening before, Noot had a walk, a hit and another batted ball that sure looked like it would be a hit — 99.8 mph hit opposite field but tracked down by the left fielder. So maybe Nootbaar is getting going.
Sure, that’s an encouraging sign. But the reality is, the way things are going for the Cards, that means another guy might start regressing.
It’s just been so tough for ºüÀêÊÓƵ to get many bats going at the same time.
“We kind of hold the future in our own hands, in terms of — we play a lot of our division still,†the optimistic Nootbaar said. “We have a tough schedule, but a lot of those teams are ahead of us, so if we beat them, we push ourselves (in the standings). There’s still a lot of time left. And so, you know, it doesn’t seem like it, being in the middle of August, but (38) games are a lot.â€
Sure, that’s enough time to go on a run. We famously saw it in 2021, when the Cards went on an absurd 17-game winning streak (with the help of a rookie Nootbaar). But very little about this offense suggests that a big run is coming, especially with the aforementioned tough schedule — the Brewers, at the Twins, the Padres, at the Yankees and at the Brewers. Every one of those teams has 70 or more wins.