Another tough start in St. Louis in 2024.
Any hopes the St. Louis Cardinals might have had that their abysmal 2023 season was fully a thing of the past have already begun to fade. The Redbirds are off to an 11-14 start, last place in the National League Central, with the third-worst run differential in the NL at -26.
There’s time yet to turn this season around, but too much has gone wrong, too quickly, to have blind faith that the Cardinals have the right formula to compete for a postseason spot in 2024. Significant moves will likely have to be made in-season, but that will only matter if a bunch of underperforming players can right the ship.
These were the names the Cards were counting on to be a legitimate force in Major League Baseball this season. Their play has been soundly disappointing and St. Louis can’t afford to wait much longer for them to pick up the slack.
It really is a shocker that this is the same Paul Goldschmidt who won National League MVP just 18 months ago. But by the same token, it’s shocking how much worse this Cardinals team is than their 2022 division champion selves, which largely correlates to the downturn in production from their stars like Goldy.
Of the 59 balls Goldschmidt has put in play this season, only two have been classified as barrels. He’s never struggled this much to make good contact and that’s resulting in a hugely concerning power outage. At 36 years old, there’s no guarantee that trademark power ever comes back.
If the Cardinals are going to do anything in 2024, it starts with Goldschmidt and fellow corner infielder Nolan Arenado getting back to the dynamic duo they were in 2022. This weekend’s series against the New York Mets is crucial both for Goldschmidt individually and for St. Louis in facing off against a potential Wild Card roadblock.
Nolan Gorman
NOLAN GORMAN #WALKOFF HOMER 🔥 pic.twitter.com/VnarjE76cN
— MLB (@MLB) April 23, 2024
It was tempting to write about Jordan Walker here, but being that the former top prospect was just sent to AAA, there isn’t much he can do immediately to help steer the Cardinals back on course. But Nolan Gorman isn’t going anywhere and he’s been nearly as futile, with the exception of one great swing Monday night.
Even after his walk-off home run against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Gorman has just a .634 OPS, a far cry from the .805 number he put up in his encouraging age-23 season. He’s striking out more, walking less and isn’t hitting the ball in the air nearly enough, with a 15% lower fly ball rate than his productive 2023 pace.
A lumbering second baseman with a faulty glove, Gorman’s primary job function is to hit home runs. When he isn’t doing so, his shortcomings on defense are magnified tenfold. Hopefully, for his sake, a walk-off Yahtzee was just what he needed to get his groove back.
Miles Mikolas
The Cardinals’ off-season strategy of veteran presence in the rotation, mocked by many, has actually paid off reasonably well thus far. But the one exception happens to be the veteran that was already on the team, Miles Mikolas.
Someone seems to have told Mikolas to throw an abundance of sliders this off-season and it simply isn’t working. The slider went from his third pitch to his first, but hitters are slugging .657 against it. Either the wily righty needs to revamp the pitch midseason or ditch it altogether.
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Mikolas is 1-3, posting a 6.39 ERA and is allowing a career-high 11.3 hits per nine innings. He’s led the majors with 72 starts since the beginning of 2022, but just posting the innings doesn’t help the team out much if he’s getting shelled. Though having Sonny Gray back healthy is huge, this rotation doesn’t function properly without a Mikolas that’s pitching to at least league average.
Oliver Marmol
This security guard was in the wrong place at the wrong time 😳 pic.twitter.com/eOn8qErgnU
— A’s on NBCS (@NBCSAthletics) April 16, 2024
We could throw out the names of other players that haven’t lived up to their billing in 2024, but the fact is that this is the second year in a row that the Cardinals have come out of the gates flat and uninspired. It’s on Oliver Marmol to correct that lack of edge.
The responsibility of a manager is to get the team ready to play each and every day and for too long, the Cardinals have been a 50/50 bet at best to show up with their game faces. It doesn’t help his cause either that Marmol has had some embarrassing public incidents the past two years, namely the Tyler O’Neill hustle debacle and the strange interaction with an Oakland Coliseum security guard.
Marmol received an extension in the offseason that surprised many across the game, but it’s still his head in the slammer if the team suffers the embarrassment of another losing season. He can’t force his players to throw more strikes or get more hits, but the Cardinals need to start showing some fire in 2024, and that starts with Marmol.
