St. Louis Cardinals: Opening Day Takeaways

The St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates have concluded the first game of the 2016 regular season. What can be taken away from loss?

Well, Opening Day has come and gone. The St. Louis Cardinals are in last place, as they lost their first game of the season 4-1. While the outcome may not have been the best, there are still things that can be taken away from the game and there are things we learned about the team.

Positives

While most fans are going to chalk this game up as an absolute disappointment and start their worrying early, but there are things that were good to see from this team in this first game.

Final Boss

Seung-hwan Oh looked pretty good despite falling behind most of the hitters he faced. He recorded a couple strikeouts despite pitching almost exclusively on the outside of the plate. He is going to be a pivotal part of this bullpen and with the news of Walden missing most of the season, it is going to be important to see him continue to improve and perform at the back end of this bullpen.

Wainwright 

Adam Wainwright did allow three earned runs to the Pirates, but he did battle and looked better as the game went on.

This is good to see, as Waino will be a key to the Cardinals continuing with a strong rotation. I would expect Wainwright to get even better as the season goes along. His curve looked good most of the time and looked to have a bit more break to it, and he mixed in a changeup.

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The changeup is a pitch that Wainwright has not featured in the past and is something that could be an extra bullet in his arsenal this season.

Yadi swinging the bat

Yadier Molina‘s offense has been in question for much of the offseason and Spring Training, but today Molina went 2-3 with a walk and a couple singles. He also had a sharp liner to right that went foul. If Molina can continue to swing the bat well, this could be an unexpected bonus for the Cardinals moving forward. The best sign here is that Molina was shooting the ball to the other way.

This is something that has always been a sign of how well Molina is seeing the ball and swinging the bat.

Offense working at-bats

Look, I know the offense didn’t get going today, but they did work Francisco Liriano‘s pitch count up above 70 before the sixth inning. This is something that will be good for the offense to keep up, as the season continues. This was shown in the 9th as well, with Carpenter (who is the best at this) singling off of Melancon in eight-pitch at-bat

This was shown in the ninth as well, with Carpenter (who is the best at this) singling off of Melancon in an eight-pitch at-bat to drive in Molina for the Cardinals.

Negatives

Situational Hitting 

The Cardinals had their options to come back in this game and failed to do so. If the Cardinals want to continue their reign of dominance in the NL Central, they have to make this not a theme.

Bullpen Management

With the team down 3-0, Mike Matheny chose to bring in Seth Maness (who had a down 2015 and down Spring Training) in for the eighth inning, instead of a slew of other options. Maness gave up a run on three hits and a run in his one inning and was not spotting his pitch down in the zone like he needs to be successful.

Maness is going to be better served as a situational righty and not used in spots like he was in the eighth.

Strikeouts

The biggest concern taken away from this game was the team striking out 14 times against Pirates’ pitching. Now, ten of those did come against Liriano in first six innings, but that still is not a good thing to see.

There were some questionable strikes today and that is likely to happen more than once, so this hardly can be used as an excuse. Hopefully, the team makes more contact moving forward, as strikeouts cannot be a theme for this team.

Big City doesn’t look improved

Matt Adams has been talked about all offseason and Spring Training as an improved player and has potentially claimed the first base job against right-handed pitchers. However, in four at-bats today, Adams went 0-4 and struck out twice.

In years’ past Adams’ number one struggle has been plate discipline, he struggles with pitches that finish below his knees and he showed that again today. While the season is still young, I got to wonder if he really is improved or if it will be another puzzling year for the first baseman.

Pham Injury

This was not the way we wanted to start things, losing Tommy Pham could be a bad loss for the team. I am hoping that isn’t a big injury, and that Pham will be back sooner rather than later.

Next: Holliday Should Have a Better Place in the Lineup

Summation

It is a long season folks and it is just one game, I still believe that this team is improved from last season and things will get better. I do find it puzzling that the Cards are starting yet another season in a sub 40-degree weather city while we have a nice 73-degree day here in St. Louis.

I still will be anticipating the game on Tuesday and am excited that the season is finally here. I am excited to spend most of my spring/summer days/nights watching Cardinals’ baseball. Hats off to the new season Cardinals’ fans.