St. Louis Cardinals: Marcell Ozuna’s failed catch sealed the deal

In Monday night’s contest in Philly, the St. Louis Cardinals dropped their first game in the set with the Phillies in dramatic, ridiculous fashion befitting this season.

The 2018 St. Louis Cardinals have plenty about which to be embarrassed and the start to the Philadelphia series in the city of brotherly love seemed to be a remedy to the string of frustrating performances. That was until the end of the game.

The St. Louis Cardinals were for a while behind in the game but showed their tenacity by working themselves back into the lead. Until they once again gave themselves over to allowing a tie. A tie that would take them into the 10th inning.

In the 10th, the Phillies were able to work two runners on but were down to their final out. The St. Louis Cardinals needed only one more out. Oh, wait, this was after the Cardinals had taken the lead. One run. The Cardinals were up one run.

Back to the action then, the Phillies were able to get to get two runners on with two outs. On a 2-1 count from Matthew Bowman, one day before going on the DL with some odd arm blood clot issue that makes his fingers go numb, the following shocker occurred:

If you missed that jewel, count yourself lucky. If you saw it, it might have reminded you of some of the genius work of Matt Adams during Mike Matheny‘s insistence that Adams play in left field. I apologize to any real baseball fans for my use of the word “play” in that sentence.

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To me, the Marcell Ozuna flop also reminded me of the glorious work of Chris Duncan. Duncan often looked confused and lost in left field. In fact, I’m pretty sure there was at least one fly ball that landed on his melon and not in his glove.

The struggle for me is that Ozuna won a freaking Gold Glove in 2017. Did that video above look like Gold-Glove material? Not to me. Not to me.

I haven’t given up on Ozuna but the dude needs to make better plays than the one he attempted on Monday night. Now that the St. Louis Cardinals picked up the second win in the series, we can hope that they will repeat the win on Wednesday.

Let me jump to the chase here, the St. Louis Cardinals- after committing another error on Tuesday night- find themselves at the bottom of the barrel of MLB in error counts. That is not okay. And is not okay when it allows two runs to win the game (see above).

Next: Five player rumors

I really believed that the return of Jose Oquendo would improve the pitiful defense but I’m fearful now that Matheny may be undercutting the secret weapon. Let’s hope there are fewer birds to fall flat on their beaks in the games to come.