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

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?