Are the St. Louis Cardinals falling into a familiar habit?

Just 12 games into a promising season for the St. Louis Cardinals, the team appears to still be frustratingly inconsistent when it comes to scoring.

In all 12 games this season for the St. Louis Cardinals, it’s been hard to know what you’re going to get from game to game. In the season opener with Cincinnati, the Cardinals dominated with an 11-6 win. In the next two games, the Cardinals lost to the Reds 6-9 and 1-12.

The Cardinals were pretty dominant in Miami where they defeated the Marlins 4-1, 4-2, and 7-0. Then against Milwaukee, they won 3-1 in the home opener and lost the next two games 5-9 and 3-9. Against the Washington Nationals, it was a similar story. They lost the first game 2-5, they won 14-3 on Tuesday and couldn’t do anything Wednesday, losing 0-6.

To this point, the Cardinals have allowed 63 runs and have scored 60. Leaving the Cardinals at a -3 run differential.

That’s a hard number to consider. It proves they aren’t as bad as we may feel they are, but it also shows they have a lot to work on to improve, including more consistent pitching as discussed here by Evan Mead and Robert Murray here. It’s incredibly frustrating to see them be world-beaters one night… beating teams 14-3 and 11-6 and then failing to put anything together some nights losing 0-6 or 3-9.

So what’s the problem with the Cardinals? Obviously, they are incredibly inconsistent. Is the hitting coach contributing to the inconsistency?

Not necessarily. During Tuesday nights 14-3 win, you could see players like Nolan Arenado and Justin Williams talking with hitting coach Jeff Albert. In fact, Justin Williams talked with Albert before knocking a single off of Luis Avilan who had just entered the game. Arenado was picking Albert’s brain after each at-bat including after hitting his third homer of the season. During batting practice, he and Paul Goldschmidt are always working with Albert to improve.

It’s nice to see the team be more open to the team’s hired hitting coach rather than depending on a guy you hire to personally work with you on hitting. I remember hearing this was more of an issue when John Mabry was hitting coach. John Mozeliak hired Albert because of his use of analytics-based coaching. In today’s environment, it’s very important.

Sure it’s great to pay a guy personally to work on you alone. But the team hires a hitting coach to implement a strategy of how they will go about hitting as a team. The hitting coach has the team at heart.

Being inconsistent in scoring has been an issue for a few seasons now dating back to Mabry.

While incredibly frustrating, inconsistency is just part of baseball some nights.

The Cardinals were able to trade for a top hitter in Arenado. Adding his bat to that of Goldschmidt and Yadier Molina is great to see. Getting more consistency from Tommy Edman, Matt Carpenter, who has made dramatically positive changes of late, and Paul DeJong, who is still finding is way, as the season progresses will be nice.

Getting productivity from the young outfielders, including Dylan Carlson, Tyler O’Neill, Justin Williams, Austin Dean, and Lane Thomas will be key as we get further into spring and summer. It may be a while and you want to get more consistency from your lineup when you add Harrison Bader back into the fold.

We are 12 games into this season. It’s too early to say they have completely fallen down that inconsistency hole. It is incredibly frustrating to watch a team with so much potential, not produce. The baseball season is long. The team has plenty of time as we are not even half way through the first month. May we have patience for our team and hope they get on a consistent run.