by Tom
Please let this Keith David clip speak for what it’s like to be a Cards fan right now:
In a time before the Olympics, or Israel blowing up another refugee camp, the St. Louis Cardinals were cooking. After snapping a 7-game losing streak the day after Mother’s Day, the Redbirds went 35-22 up to the All-Star Break. They had…no all-stars, except for the obligatory mercy pick in Ryan Helsley, and people like me were skeptical of their staying power after being MLB’s hottest team during that stretch. Their early-summer rally got them to within 4.5 games of the NL Central and the second Wildcard spot.
Oh how the tables have turned. Since the midsummer classic, the Cardinals are 10-14 10-15 for the fifth worst mark in the majors. As of writing this, they’re currently facing a sweep against being swept by the Reds. Cincinnati opted not to buy at the deadline, but by completing a sweep tonight will move into a 2nd place tie with the Cardinals at 60-61.
The Cardinals, however, did buy. They bought…something. John Mozeliak used the Dodgers’s prospect capital and Tommy Edman to bring Erick Fedde to be one of this team’s many backend rotation starters. Tommy Pham came along with him, and provided an initial spark that propelled the ‘Birds to a series win over the Texas Rangers. Since then, they’ve gone 4-8 and slipped out of the playoff picture.
One of the most infuriating parts of this season has been the NL Central heirs-to-be, haven’t hardly sweated. Despite trading away a Cy Young winner and seeing their most prolific hitter lose significant time to a back injury, the Milwaukee Brewers have been firmly in control. Since May 9th, they’ve entrenched themselves at the top of the division, and the closest they came to losing it was July 13th when St. Louis narrowed the lead to 3.5 games. The Brewers have been up at least 5 games in the division every day except for 3 since June.
The Cardinals, in the meantime, suck. Their -56 (and counting!) run differential is finally confirming what we all suspected, that they’re not good but lucky. Michael Siani’s gold-glove caliber defense and a stingy bullpen–who at one point were 38-0 in games leading after 8–could only do so much for a team that has failed to mitigate opposing offenses bats in the first two-thirds of the game. Even worse, defense and a good bullpen can only patch so many holes, but the one thing they can’t patch is the glaring ineptitude of an offense that was supposed to be one of the league’s best.
It’s sort of a broken record at this point, but one of the reasons the Cardinals suck so bad is that their offense is completely broken. Their starting pitching has been terrible–as of writing this, Kyle Gibson couldn’t complete 5 innings and gave up 7 runs–with a 4.50 team ERA, but the offense deserves the lion’s share of blame. If you’re a fan of analytics and other nerd stats, their 96 wRC+ puts them in the bottom-10 of the league (fyi, 100 is considered average when it comes to weighted states like wRC+ and OPS+). Their .304 and .695 OPS also puts them at 20th in the league.
If you like some classical stats, their .245 average puts them middle of the pack in the majors, but their 123 homers is bottom-10. Their 494 runs are also bottom-10, along with their 65 stolen bases. Perhaps you’re starting to see a trend here.
What has doomed the Cardinals this year hasn’t been the general state of their middling bats, it’s been the moments they needed those bats to do anything. If you go by high leverage stats, you’ll find that the Cardinals sport a .759 OPS and a 109 wRC+. High leverage ABs usually mean moments when the game is really on the line, and it has felt like the Cardinals have risen to that occasion from time to time, take this Victor Scott clutch double:
But it’s those clutch moments earlier in the game that fall by the wayside, particularly situations with runners in scoring position. The Cardinals have a .636 OPS when runners reach 2nd and beyond, a mark so bad that only the lowly and despicable White Sox surpass them (a team that at one point lost 20 games in a row, but took 2 of 3 from the Cardinals back in May). Bested only by the White Sox, the Cardinals .337 slugging shows just how toothless they’ve been when they’ve had opportunities to put a game away early. The -56 run differential makes more sense when you understand this; the Cardinals lose games early because they often fail to cash checks their opponents happily write.
This is a historically bad Cardinals team when it comes to scoring runs that matter. Only four other teams in Cardinals history finished with a worse mark with RISP. The 1914-16 Cardinals put up an OPS of .623, .615, and .615 with runners in scoring position, and the 1966 squad posted a .634 mark. Last year a 90+ loss offense hit .761, and the year before they bashed .791.
The 2024 Cardinals are exploring new realms of frustration and futility. Heading that ship are the stagnant bats of their two star players Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. Both players are enduring the worst season of their careers. Goldschmidt is struggling to reach a .700 OPS and not strike out 200 times, while Arenado seems perfectly content putting up Chase Headley numbers and effort–all apologies to Mr. Headley. The former turns 37 next month and has the excuse of just getting old and shitty. The latter is four years younger, but seems determined to have the last three years of his contract be one of the worst in franchise history.
Alright, maybe I’m being a bit sensationalist here. But the ball doesn’t lie when these two come to the plate with runners in scoring position. Arenado is sporting a substandard .721 OPS with RISP–for your information, the league average is .750–and Goldschmidt is batting an abysmal .526. At a combined $50,000,000 this year, our two stars are hitting somewhere between Jeff Mathis and Robbie Grossman when runners reach 2nd base. Two years ago Arenado batted .880 with RISP and Goldy .981 in his MVP season. You can’t really tell with Goldschmidt, but Arenado has played some incredibly uninspired baseball at times.
It’s the end of the 8th inning and the Cardinals are down 9-2 to the Reds. In 3 more outs they’ll be under .500 for the first time since June 19th. The blame shouldn’t all rest on Goldy and Arenado. Only two Cardinal players, Alec Burleson and Brendan Donovan, have an OPS above league average with RISP. Current bWAR leader Masyn Winn has also struggled–in his defense, his .669 OPS is mainly due to his terrible slugging, he’s still batting a respectable .269–Nolan Gorman has a .538 and biteless bench bats Brandon Crawford and Matt Carpenter are sub .500. It’s been a team effort to be as lucky as the Cardinals have been all year, and now it will take a team effort for them to salvage whatever they can from a loss season.
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