Examining an odd trend with the St. Louis Cardinals

The St. Louis Cardinals are in first place but as the season heads to the end, there is a weird trend that the Cardinals have picked up in 2019.

Overall, the St. Louis Cardinals sit at 18 games over .500 at 81-63 with a 4.0 game lead over the rival Chicago Cubs in the Central. Nobody should be complaining about the team’s performance, especially after they were as bad as they were at times this year.

The Cardinals M.O. is pretty well fleshed out at this point as they have leaned heavily on their starting pitching performances, the bullpen, and stellar defense as the bats have been inconsistent for the vast majority of the year even if they’ve been better since August.

The Bullpen and Starters are nothing bad to lean on though as the starters currently rank eighth in the National League by WAR and the Bullpen ranks second in WAR and first in ERA.

The Cardinals may not be fantastic on the road with a 35-37 record but at home, they are good enough to offset that with a 46-26 record. The team is nowhere near the split the Cubs have on the road as their 30-43 record has been the biggest anchor of the year for them.

It’s all clear, teams the Cardinals play know what they are going to get. There is, however, another trend that is slightly more troubling and is one that not many have called attention to, especially after the team’s disappointing first game in Colorado. As fans saw Tuesday, the offense was only able to muster one run at the boombox of Coors Field directly after their first day off after a stretch of 12 games in 10 days.

No, I’m not talking about how the team has gone 2-9 in their fancy new powder blue uniforms. It’s something slightly more troubling. The Cardinals seem to be really bad on games coming directly after off days.

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In total this year, the team is 7-13 after getting a day off, to travel or otherwise. That .350 winning percentage is awfully troubling considering the way that postseason schedules go.

There could be any multitude of reasons why this trend occurs. Players might not like to travel, they may be worn out, or they may just play better when they play every day. It may sound counterintuitive but pitchers like Carlos Martinez and Andrew Miller have both said that they prefer to pitch multiple days in a row to stay sharp.

In the postseason, off days and travel days are more prevalent than ever and this is something troubling if it keeps up. The scariest thing is that there is no indication that this trend has even been recognized by the team.

Postseason play might be different with all the adrenaline and hype, but This is something that hasn’t just been recently but has occurred all year long. Most of the time, the problems in these games are directly related to the offense going quiet. This could just be a regular-season problem but going into the games in October, it’s something to watch for.

Whatever is causing this weird trend will need to be fixed in the postseason. When the team has to have a day off or a travel day in between games more times than not, an inability to perform as this trend suggests will lead to a quick exit in October.