Show someone a club cruising and crushing on offense, and they’ll show you a confident team.
Show someone a club laboring or languishing on offense.
And that’ll be the Cardinals.
With another quality start on the mound from another of the new pitchers added this offseason to provide exactly that, the Cardinals rallied together to score three runs in one inning and did little else in the other eight. Their sudden bounty tied the game but fell short of taking the game when they lost, 4-3, to the New York Mets on Monday at Busch Stadium. Brandon Nimmo’s solo homer off reliever Andrew Kittredge was the difference in the game, but the difference for the Cardinals remains a punchless lineup.
In 35 games this season they’ve scored exactly three runs 11 times and three or fewer 22 times. They are 6-16 in those games. Players throughout the clubhouse and the manager in his office have called the lack of scoring “frustrating.â€
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Offense is the effervescent of any club, and without it things feel flat.
“I think pitching can do a really good job of bringing consistency to a team, but offense and what those guys do on the field brings confidence to a team,†starting pitcher Kyle Gibson said. “From a pitching side, we cannot do that. They’re going to have confidence in us. They’re going to have confidence in who we are but when they get rolling offensively that’s really where a team offensively and position players get confidence. I think that’s the hardest part. We know they’re putting in the work. We know they’re really good players and it just hasn’t clicked for them. I think that’s really the gist of it.
“When these guys get going, I think you see that confidence. You see that swagger.â€
All the Cardinals showed early Monday as they began hosting a three-game visit from the Mets was swings that are out of sort and off-kilter, at-bats that were unproductive.
But they were also over quick.
Gibson needed 40 pitches to get the first six outs of his start while Mets lefty Sean Manaea had four outs before he threw his 19th pitch. As Manaea held them scoreless through the first five games, the Cardinals completed at-bats in three or fewer pitches seven times and they were 2 for 7 in those spots. Toss in the six at-bats that that lasted four pitches and the Cardinals were 3 for 13. In a game that took 2 hours, 25 minutes, Manaea (2-1) was through five innings in around 70 minutes.
“I thought early on, at-bats weren’t great,†manager Oliver Marmol said. “I didn’t feel like the at-bats were extremely competitive. … You don’t get beat 0-0. You don’t get (beat) 2-0, 3-1. I think there’s an identity to that. If you’re going to let it eat, you want to miss a certain way in hitters’ counts. I do think certain guys took competitive at-bats. Overall, just not stringing them together. The quality wasn’t there early on.â€
What the Cardinals have lacked through these early weeks of the season has been gusto from the middle of the order and consistent slugging throughout. The only team with a worse batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage than the Cardinals just visited the Cardinals this past weekend and won two of three games at Busch. The White Sox did that by holding the Cardinals to one run Sunday and punchless with the bases loaded in the 10th inning Sunday.
Including their 1 for 6 on Monday with runners in scoring position, the Cardinals are 10 for 55 (.181) with runners in scoring position over the past eight games.
Their overall average is shriveling to .200.
“I don’t think an offense that is not in a good spot in general is somehow going to do better with runners in scoring position,†Marmol said. “If guys are in between and not feeling the way they need to feel, then a runner on second doesn’t do a whole lot. It’s not our issue. When you look at our ability to drive the baseball and slug and actually swing at pitches in the heart of the plate, hit them hard and hit them far – that’s more of an issue than just situational hitting. They both have their place. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a believer in situational hitting. That’s not the story here.â€
The story is increasingly one that Marmol and others spoke about earlier Monday, saw in inaction Monday night, and will again try to solve ahead of Tuesday’s game.
In advantage counts and against the most delicious of pitches, the Cardinals are not “hitting them hard and hitting them far.†The Cardinals, as Ben Frederickson detailed in a column for Tuesday’s Post-Dispatch, have seen the second-highest percentage of “meatball†pitches in the majors, per Statcast data. They have swung at them with the third-lowest rate. Other indicators of the lack of power are just as telling. As a team, they do not pull the ball much and when they do it’s not for much power, and they do not strike the fastball with much authority.
Their hard-hit rate (36.7%) is the second-lowest in the National League. They’re creating runs at a rate 17% less than league average.
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They have hit the fewest homers in the majors.
They are almost averaging 50 at-bats for every one home run. Twenty-four clubs, on average, hit one in every 38 at-bats or fewer. The Cardinals’ slugging percentage (.332) is less than the on-base percentage of the Dodgers (.356).
All of this paint by numbers creates the same picture.
“There’s not a magic button, man,†Marmol said. “There really isn’t. I would love to sit here and tell you the answer. If there was one the guys would be doing it.â€
Gibson, the starting pitcher, added: “It’s going to be over a few games. Getting to where you feel like yourself and normal – that doesn’t happen by forcing it. You’ve just got to keep putting in the work. That’s what these guys are doing. Maybe people don’t like to hear that. … To go out there and try to turn around a season, the only thing you can turnaround in one game is a series, a three-game series. Tomorrow we can turn around the series and make it 1-1. And that’s all you can do in one game. No one is going to go out there and turn around their season in one game. It’s so easy to think today has to be the day.â€
The Cardinals did almost turn around a game in an inning.
In his six innings, Gibson allowed four hits on his changeup and was frustrated that he “gave up so many hits on one pitch.†The Mets scored with two outs in the first and scored twice the fifth after an error in right field by Lars Nootbaar. The Cardinals’ outfielder said he tried to deke the runner at first base by playing the line drive tight, as if he was going to catch it. That put him in a vulnerable spot when a sharp hop got past his glove. The Mets used two productive outs to score twice and take a 3-0 lead into the sixth inning.
Unable to do much against Manaea to that point, the Cardinals got started with their first-time leadoff hitter. Jose Fermin threaded a single to left field. Willson Contreras followed with a double down the left-field line to score Fermin. Paul Goldschmidt drew a walk, and the Cardinals had the tying run on base with no outs and the middle of the order up. The real bonanza passed. Rookie Ivan Herrera salvaged the inning with a two-run double, and then he ended the inning by being thrown out trying to take third.
“Hitting is contagious,†Nootbaar said. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence we scored three runs in one inning. You get that feeling of – you see the ball land and guys start rolling a little bit. It’s that momentum. That’s the biggest thing. I always say that hitting is the most contagious thing there is. So when you start to feel that infectious energy and you start to feel guys doing that I guess that momentum kind of grows a little bit.â€
It just hasn’t spread yet.
Not within games.
Not throughout the lineup.
Of the Cardinals past 13 RBIs, 11 have come from Contreras, Herrera, or Nolan Arenado.
Confidence doesn’t carry if consolidated.
“Rarely do you go through a season where you have a lot of guys not feeling good where they’re at, and it’s unfortunate that we’ve probably been going through one of those,†Gibson said. “I don’t think there’s a guy in here who believes any different about ourselves than we did March 27. I know that might sound crazy. We sign up for 162 games and that’s what we’re going to do. Sometimes those statements can come off as complacency, can come off as chalking it up to bad luck. I don’t think this group is doing that.
“I do know that day in, day out, when a team is scoring runs and when a team is hitting the way it wants,†Gibson added, “it’s a more confident bunch. How can it not be?â€
Following a series lost to the lowly Chicago White Sox, chatters were concerned about more than a pedestrian lineup and whether Cardinals were losing a larger race.