St. Louis Cardinals: Early recommended changes to continue winning

The St. Louis Cardinals have completed two series but are already showing places where changes are required and advised.

With the young season only five games in for the St. Louis Cardinals, the sample size on pretty much anything is too small to make real, lasting judgements. That said, there are a few items that stand out- to me at least- as being worthy of examination and/or change. In other words, I would like to take the time to urge the St. Louis Cardinals do these things in order to continue winning.

Before we dive into the recommendations, let us first look back at the two losses and one win against the Mets and the one loss/one win (at the time of this writing) facing the Brewers.

The St. Louis Cardinals limped through the first two games of the season with staggering strikeout counts but they turned this around and learned from the mistakes. After their trip through New York and Milwaukee, the St. Louis Cardinals sat at a solid .500 baseball.

But let us hope they don’t stop there. Let us hope that they figure out a way to eclipse the Brewers the remainder of the season such that the Cardinals can rest assured that they are punching a ticket to October baseball.

But how can they do that? What did we learn from the first six games of the 2018 St. Louis Cardinals season? Plenty…

In this slideshow, I will look at a few of the things that the first six games indicated to me as needing to change or needing to remain if the St. Louis Cardinals are to realistically content for the National League Central Division and/or lock in one of the Wild Card slots.

The 2018 St. Louis Cardinals struck out far too frequently in games 1-3.

Here’s the skinny on this one: the St. Louis Cardinals need to hit like they did in their winning contests and less like they did in their losing contests. How’s that for some “duh” writing?

But when you get right down to it, that’s what is needed. Here’s a breakdown of the winning games vs. losing games as they relate to hit counts:

Winning games- April 1 (nine hits), April 2 (13 hits), and April 4 (nine hits).

Losing games- March 29 (six hits), March 31 (seven hits), and April 3 (10 hits).

While there isn’t a real pattern here, we can see that the St. Louis Cardinals hit a total of 31 hits in winning contests and only 23 hits in losing competitions. But wait, it gets worse still…

In winning competitions (a quick reminder of the small sample size), the St. Louis Cardinals struck out a total of 25 times. These broke down to eight Ks on 4/1, eight Ks on 4/2, and nine Ks on 4/4. On the flip side, in losing competitions the Cardinals K’d a total of 34 times. 34 times in six games!

Before moving on, let’s look at those numbers one more time. In winning contests, the St. Louis Cardinals out-hit their losing competitions by a margin of 31-to-23 or a difference of eight additional hits. Furthermore, the Cards struck out at a rate of 25-to-34 (winning-to-losing) or a difference of nine additional strikeouts in lost competitions.

One quick aside: the St. Louis Cardinals walked at a shockingly-low rate in the first six games of 2018. The team walked only 17 times in the six contests. If you are keeping score at home, this means that the Cardinals K-to-walk ratio is 59:17. The team struck out 42 additional times to their number of walks!

Lastly, related to offense, the Cardinals left a horrific 73 runners on base during the first six contests. These broke down as 35 LOB in winning contests and 38 LOB in losing contests. Look at that again: 35 LOB in winning contests and 38 LOB in losing contests. Notice that the disparity is not so great as were the comparisons above.

What does this tell you? To me it says that the Cardinals have a problem with the offense on two fronts– striking out and gathering hits with runners on base/scoring the ducks on the pond.

I recommend that the Cardinals finally fess-up to the fact that their offense has been miserable over the past few seasons and that John Mabry should be exiting (and should have exited alongside Derek Lilliquist).

Let me add this before moving on: I do not believe this will be a pandemic the entire season. The individual parts of the 2018 team will get it together and certainly have the opportunity to rake.

The St. Louis Cardinals need additional quality starts from their pitchers.

Thus far in the season a quality start seems quite elusive to the starting staff of the St. Louis Cardinals and this will continue to hurt the team. During their winning games, the starters- Luke Weaver, Miles Mikolas, and Carlos Martinez– all pitched at or beyond the fifth inning.

During their losing games, the starters- Martinez, Michael Wacha, and Jack Flaherty (albeit he deserved a win)- the starters had a tough time reaching the fifth inning. Flaherty, however, did complete the fourth inning.

Let’s look even deeper. In Martinez’s first start, he managed to pitch 4.1 innings of 90 pitches. That is far too many for far too few innings. Moreover, only 54 of these were for strikes. In those innings, he surrendered four hits and four earned runs (five total).

Wacha’s losing effort saw him pitching 4.2 innings of 95 pitches. Of these, only 52 were strikes. In those innings, Wacha surrendered five hits and four earned runs (4 total).

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In Flaherty’s losing effort (albeit he didn’t record the loss as this was levied on Dominic Leone following two unlikely back-to-back home runs to end the game), he pitched five innings of 91 pitches. Of those, 57 were strikes. In his no-decision outing, Flaherty allowed one earned run on six hits.

On the flip side, the Cardinals won their first contest of the year behind five innings of Weaver who pitched 92 pitches in the contest; 50 of his pitches were strikes. He allowed one earned run on five hits in his victory.

The second win of the Cardinals season came behind newcomer Mikolas. Mikolas, having eaten a lizard, tossed 91 pitches in 5.2 innings of which 64 were strikes. He allowed four earned runs on seven hits but was saved by an offense that recorded eight runs on 13 hits.

The most recent win of the 2018 season was the redemption- and nearly complete game- of Martinez. In the contest facing the Brewers in Milwaukee, Martinez pitched into the ninth inning at an astonishing 114 total pitches (54 for strikes); astonishing since it is so early in the season.

In looking over these numbers it seems that the Cardinals need their starters to be (1) more efficient, and (2) pitch deeper into games. At the same time, the fact that the starters pitched as long as they did is a testament to the fact that their contests were- perhaps- already lost and no reason to exhaust a bullpen arm?

But the counter to that argument is simply Matthew Bowman who has made an almost daily appearance from the pen throughout this young season.

The St. Louis Cardinals would do well to have a stronger manager. There, I said it.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ manager, Mike Matheny, is not my favorite guy. I am not apologizing for that (so don’t @ me). That said, I do not want my displeasure to be thought of as a desire for him to fail. Quite the opposite actually.

Those disclosures aside, the 2018 St. Louis Cardinals would benefit greatly from better management. Since the start of the season the press has already released the Jose Oquendo article that gently disparages Matheny and the Tommy Pham Sports Illustrated article that seems to attack the entire organization.

Both of these articles fail to lay praise on the decision-making skills of the St. Louis Cardinals’ manager. To me, Matheny plans well on paper before the contest begins (although it would seem that he doesn’t when you consider the second slide of this show) but is inept at making changes on the fly.

Take this tweet for example:

Notice that it indicates that the Cardinals’ front office had to go grab a legitimate closer- and a good one at that- to force Matheny to make a decision. This is not okay in the form of a manager and is illustrated in the fluid roles of the lineup and the bullpen.

Bottom line is that the St. Louis Cardinals have better options than Matheny at making decisions. We know that Mike Maddux is already been given greater freedom than former assistant coaches and from the Oquendo article it seems that he too has been unleashed. How much longer will the Cardinals’ front office hold onto the perennial paint-drying Mike Matheny?

If the St. Louis Cardinals are truly invested in winning, I am urging them to take note of the elements above and to put changes into play ASAP. This team and its fans cannot take another frustrating up-and-down season like we endured in 2017.

Next: The week that was

What do you think? Did I miss something that would behoove the 2018 St. Louis Cardinals? Let me know on Twitter and thanks for reading!