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

Apr 10, 2016; Atlanta, GA, USA; St. Louis Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong (16) fields a ground ball to end the inning against the Atlanta Braves during the fourth inning at Turner Field. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

The Ugly: Defense, Walks, Atlanta’s 2016 Season Outlook

After the season opener in Pittsburgh, the Cardinals are yet to play a clean ballgame in the five contests that followed. In other words, they’ve committed at least one error in every game they’ve played so far, other than in the opener.

It looked like they were going to make it through the finale earlier this afternoon without kicking a ball until Kolten Wong booted his third of the season with two outs in the bottom of the 9th.

The Cardinals have committed 10 errors in total so far this year, three more than the second-worst team in baseball, Oakland, who has seven.

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Seven of those errors have been committed by middle infielders, which is troubling. Those guys see the bulk of the action defensively, and kicked balls can mean the difference between wins and losses (see Diaz in game two in Pittsburgh).

On top of sloppy defense in Atlanta were all of the walks. That’s what made the series seem so sluggish. I mean, 37 walks between the Cardinals and Braves is a pretty ridiculous number.

I can remember no more than a handful of clean innings that didn’t involve some combination of walks, errors, wild pitches, etc.

When you win, all of that can almost be tolerated. I’m going to choose to “ignore” all of that, if you will, and instead chalk the walks and errors up to early season rust.

At least for now…

After all of the success that the Braves experienced from the early 1990’s through 2013, they really are in a rough spot as an organization.

I get the fact that they are rebuilding and that they are going to experience some lumps in the process. But man, it seems like they’ve already mailed it in for the year.

They’ll be back at some point, but it really looks like it’s going to be a tough year for baseball in Atlanta, in their final season at Turner Field, the place they’ve called home for the past 20 years.

Next: The Birds Head Home to St. Louis!

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