St. Louis Cardinals: The Good, Bad and Ugly from Pittsburgh

The St. Louis Cardinals suffered their first sweep in a season opening series since 2007 after yesterday’s 5-1 loss to the Pirates.

Well, that Pittsburgh series is not how I pictured the season starting for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Birds didn’t look very good, to say the least.

We scored seven runs in three games (a 2.33 average) and struck out 37 times in 29 innings of baseball.

As a team we have five extra-base hits (3 doubles, 2 home runs).

For comparison’s sake, the Colorado Rockies hit 10 home runs in their three game set with Arizona, while dealing with Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller.

Jeremy Hazelbaker is about the only guy in the Cardinal lineup that’s showing much of a pulse at the plate. I’m hoping to see plenty of him in the outfield until the three regulars start to get it in gear a little bit.

Mike Leake didn’t provide much relief for the rest of the staff yesterday after giving up four earned and making it through just 4 1/3 innings yesterday.

Things were bad in Pittsburgh, and we definitely need to see dramatic improvement if we expect to compete in 2016.

But, that’s baseball. Team’s go through stretches of really ugly play. They lose games that they shouldn’t all of the time.

I prefer to think that we are getting our bad stretch out of the way early. Let the baseball media write us off again. Let the Cardinal haters celebrate the slow start.

It’s far from panic time. If you are in the camp that is considering jumping ship, go ahead and do so right now. Go root for the Royals or the Cubs, since they’re both the latest craze, after all.

Next: The Good: A Super Bullpen has formed