St. Louis Cardinals: Goodbye May, you won’t be missed

The St. Louis Cardinals were awful in the month of May, that’s no secret. Moving forward, June offers a chance to start over.

It just doesn’t make sense for the St. Louis Cardinals. How could the team we saw in April turn so fast so far?

Coming into the month of May, the Cardinals had the best record in the MLB at 19-10 and went on to be 10 games over .500 at their peak. Then it all turned around. After that point, the team went on to go 9-18 and went from being up 3.5 games in the NL Central to now being at the .500 mark with a 28-28 record on the year.

So from being the best team in the league in April to having the worst May of any team in the majors and more or less the worst May in the history of the team, where do they go now?

Kolten Wong was quoted in an article by Derrick Goold saying, “I hate May” and as confusing and maddening as it is for professional athletes to be affected by what month it is, the Cardinals may just have some sort of aversion to May.

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Well, the most positive thing to look at is that one, May is done. It’s June 1st and the even after all that frustration, all those horrible games, the Cardinals are just 3.5 games out of first place. Only five games separate the first place Cubs and the last place Reds, so nobody is out of it by any means, but it could be a whole lot worse.

The Washington Nationals, a consensus top-two team in the NL East are 24-33 and are already 9 games back of the Phillies.

It’s early enough in the year where nothing is yet permanent, but the St. Louis Cardinals are a good week away from being at the top of the division. The biggest question is whether that good week is ever going to come.

The Cardinals have a lot of talent. Paul Goldschmidt has yet to look like himself, but he will. Last year he was still a shell of his career self at this point and his numbers this year are much better so far. Matt Carpenter has shown small steps forward, bench guys are coming up big – there’s something to work with there.

The problem then is consistency. When this team gets consistent with their starting pitching and their offense, they will perform. There’s no magic potion, there’s no secret formula, the team just needs to own their mistakes and man up.

Mike Shildt needs to show a little more ownership of the issues of this team. Too many times he is making excuses and blaming losses on other things except for simply saying that the players that are supposed to perform didn’t do it.

There’s a difference between calling a player out publicly and showing a little more teeth just to light a fire under everyone’s ass. Shildt is new, sure, but he needs to learn fast that being great friends and teammates in the clubhouse doesn’t matter when you are losing on the field. They are correlated, but at the end of the day, the on-field performance matters most.

I believe this team will find more consistency as the weather continues to heat up in June. That may be naive, but the talent is undeniably there. For whatever reason, May just didn’t go well for this team. It’s dumb, but whatever it takes to win and get a mental reset, do it. I’m all in for June.