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

The Bad: Anemic Offense

The Cardinals are now down to a .125 average (3-24) with runners in scoring position thus far.

They are averaging more than 12 strikeouts per nine innings with a measly five extra-base hits through the season’s first three contests.

The seven runs scored in three games is pretty bad, but at least we aren’t the Padres (they’re yet to score a run in 2016).

Not surprisingly, the Cardinals are in the bottom five of baseball in batting average, on base percentage, and slugging.

Only the Blue Jays have struck out more times (46) than the Cardinals (37).

Clearly, there are very few positives with the Cardinals offense right now. Getting out of frigid Pittsburgh should be of benefit, but that still doesn’t change the fact that the offense has seemed lifeless for the better part of three weeks now (going back into spring training).

The Cardinal offense doesn’t have any kind of an identity. They have little power and less speed. They haven’t been a group to grind at-bats, as evidenced by the 37 strikeouts, and the overstock of left-handed hitters was exploited by Pittsburgh’s left-handed pitching all series long.

Most disappointing has been their approach within at-bats. They’ve been timid when they should be aggressive. They’ve chased when they need to show discipline.

The formula for Pittsburgh pitching was simple; get ahead early in the count and expand. The Cards played right into their hand by taking their way into two-strike counts and chasing the bad ones that followed.

The “big bats” let the Pittsburgh arms get in on their hands with the hard stuff and gave away at-bats going after the bad ones out of the zone.

That’s the most troubling thing about the offense so far this year. Even when they struggled through most of 2015, they were still putting together quality at-bats.

They made the opposing pitchers work to get them out, rarely going down without a fight.

The first three games, the Cardinals haven’t done much more than strike out or roll over with a whimper.

Warmer weather, lesser opposing pitching and simply the law of averages will help in the coming weeks… but I wouldn’t expect things to be much (if any) better than they were last year.

Hopefully, we are in for a pleasant surprise.

Next: The Ugly: Just Bad Baseball

The Ugly: Fundamentals, Complacency, Lack of Urgency

After kicking three balls last night, the Cardinals are dead last in baseball with four errors.

I can’t help but to sense complacency with this club, made evident by a perceived lack of urgency in an important early season series against a club that is trying to de-throne them.

That’s what I noticed in the Pittsburgh series more than anything else.

The past couple of seasons, it seemed like we always had and edge about us that other clubs just couldn’t bring to the table.

Pittsburgh had that edge this past week and we were the ones spinning our wheels.

That’s what I’m worried about most with this club. Numbers are going to come up. We may not have a truly great roster, but it is still a very good baseball team.

I’m truly worried that we’ve lost the edge that’s defined this team for the past decade. I’m worried that the extended team meetings at the end of spring training had a lot to do with this, and I’m worried about a lack of competitive fire in a handful of our “core” guys.

The idea behind the “promote from within” model that we’ve taken to roster development is that it’s supposed to alleviate these kinds of issues.

Instead of taking a chance on the big-money free agents ( i.e. Cespedes) who may be motivated more by the number of zeroes on their pay stub than the success of the club, you are able to build guys up to play the game how you want it played.

But what happens if that stops working?

There’s no doubt that I could be reading way too far into this. We are three games into the season, after all. The sample size is way too small.

The guys have a lot of time to turn it on and get back to playing the game the way it needs to be played. But with the division we’re playing in, they better not wait too long to get to it.

Next: What's next for the Birds?

What Now?

The Cardinals will get relief from the frigid Pittsburgh air as they open a three-game set in Atlanta tomorrow.

Jaime Garcia and Matt Wisler will square off on the hill for the 6:35 CST Friday contest.

Assuming all is still well with Carlos Martinez‘s shoulder (I’ve heard nothing to the contrary), expect to see him on Saturday and Adam Wainwright to close things out on Sunday.

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The Braves are pretty much in full rebuild mode, and two out of three is pretty much a must for the Cards.

The Braves were last in baseball in runs scored a year ago, and they are one of the few teams that have been worse than the Cardinals offensively thus far in 2016.

The Braves are 0-2 on the year after dropping each matchup of their two-game set at home against Washington.

Look for the Cards to get every facet of the ball club on track against Atlanta. With series’ against Atlanta, then Milwaukee and Cincinnati at home ahead of their first meeting with the Cubs, the Cardinals have a chance to get some positive momentum going.

Next: Boring, Bad Baseball so far in 2016

If things don’t get better over their next nine ballgames, we could be in for an ugly series against Chicago and, consequently, a long season of baseball in St. Louis.