St. Louis Cardinals: One Step Forward Two Steps Back

The St. Louis Cardinals have slipped back into their Jekyll/Hyde play against two strong American League opponents.

We are three games into this short five game home stand and the St. Louis Cardinals have taken a step back from their hot play of a week ago. The offense and pitching have taken a trip back to 2015 where the pitching is great and the offense is non-existent; causing a slip back to their current state.

Less than a week ago there was a reason to believe this club was about to take off. Now, it seems as if this team has taken yet another step back. This team has been inconsistent through the first two months of the season and has yet to truly hit a stride this season and here we are again.

There are some positives, Adam Wainwright seems to have figured it out and the Cardinals are getting smarter about their roster construction by finally sending down Jeremy Hazelbaker. Kolten Wong may have fixed his swing issues down in Memphis and is now back to potentially relieve Randal Grichuk in center and add to the infield bench situation. 

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However, none of this changes that there are still concerns about this team’s inability to consistently play at a high level. Especially as they dip to four games below .500 at Busch, where they have dominated in years’ past. With this current losing streak the team has lost the ground it had made up on Chicago making Matt Carpenter‘s prediction look darn near impossible. However, the team has not lost the lead they took over the Pittsburgh Pirates as their free fall continues.

The crazy thing about this team is that they could conceivably win the final two games of this series with the Texas Rangers and put themselves in good position for their first series in Chicago against the NL Central leading Cubs. A series that certainly will stand to be a benchmark for the Cardinals and their season regardless of the outcome.

Unfortunately, as fans, there’s nothing we can do but sit back and watch. As prefaced many times before, this month really could stand to be a make or break month for this team and I certainly hope that we see them start to get in the habit of stacking wins together and avoiding stretches of play like their current one.