Poor decision-making leads to undefeated record slipping out of Cardinals' hands

The St. Louis Cardinals' undefeated start to the 2025 season came to an unfortunate halt on Monday night as the club allowed another strong start to a game slip away with poor decision-making in the later innings.

Falling to the Los Angeles Angels by a score of 5-4 is disappointing, but it is the way the Cardinals dropped the game that will irk fans even more. This was clearly a game they were in control of, and yet, the Cardinals seemed to get too cute both on the field and with managerial decisions that cost them this ballgame.

The Cardinals made a variety of mistakes that handed the Angels the series opener

Like any baseball game, there is not one single play that truly "loses" a team the game. For the Cardinals on Monday, there were at least five decisions made from the 6th inning on that caused the Cardinals to drop this ballgame.

First, after Miles Mikolas cruised through five innings of work, he got into a bit of trouble in the 6th inning and had to be lifted for reliever Chris Roycroft. Roycroft came in and dealt, needing just six pitches to record two outs to close down the inning.

That's where mistakes number one and two came into focus.

In the top of the 7th, the Cardinals brought in Ryan Fernandez to relieve Roycroft, and Pedro Pages came in as a defensive substitution for Ivan Herrera. Both of these decisions were head-scratchers from Marmol.

Roycroft needing just six pitches to get out of that spot should have allotted him the 7th inning as well. He's clearly someone they trust and has proven to be a reliable arm, so it's confusing to me that he was not allowed to face the five, six, and seven hitters in the order.

The decision to bring Pages into the game is one I understand as a late-inning game plan, but personally, the seventh inning felt way too early with only a one-run lead. Oliver Marmol's reasoning was also extremely odd, as he claimed it was solely for controlling the run game. While Pages is better equipped to do that, Herrera was calling a good game, and why not trust your reliever, which should have been Roycroft, to keep guys off base.

To be fair, Herrera has botched the running game so far this year in a short sample size. He had an awful throw on Opening Day and then was unsure of the count during Monday's game and allowed a stolen base when he thought a strikeout occurred. Still, I am not a fan of going to Pages that early when you very easily could need Herrera's bat later in this game (which they did).

Bad decisions tend to have ripple effects, and that's where the next one came into play. Going to Fernandez in the seventh meant they needed to use Maton in the 8th in a tie game. Maton was excellent, striking out all three batters on 14 pitches. They could have kept him in for the ninth and held off on Ryan Helsley, or, you know, Maton could have been the guy they used in the ninth if Roycroft were given the seventh and Fernandez in the eighth.

By the time the tenth inning rolled around, JoJo Romero was their best option, and again, that's a mistake because they could have had Maton or Helsley ready for that spot. Instead, Romero is their guy, and he ends up allowing two runs in the tenth. That is what I am calling the third mistake.

The fourth mistake actually came in the bottom of the ninth. Lars Nootbaar singled to right field to lead off the inning, and with Willson Contreras up at the plate, Contreras bunted to move Nootbaar over. As their best hitter, it's an odd decision, even while he's struggling. That put Luken Baker up next, and after he flew out, they were able to intentionally walk Nolan Arenado and attack Pedro Pages with two outs...which would've been Ivan Herrera had Marmol not made that change so quickly.

Alright, four mistakes down, one more to go. Back to the top of the tenth. With the bases loaded, Romero forced a ground ball to second base, and Brendan Donovan attempted to go home with it even though he had no chance at the runner. If you look at where the runners were when Donovan had the ball, he clearly had a play at first, but it also feels entirely possible that he could have turned two in that spot, especially with Masyn Winn's arm.

If Donovan had even just gone to first with that play, Mike Trout's fly ball the next at-bat would have ended the inning, making it just a one-run game. But again, I do think Donovan could have turned two in that spot, keeping things a tie game and setting up a win in the bottom of the inning.

All of those mistakes compounded to hand the game over to the Angels, which is a frustrating reality considering how well the team played otherwise. Miles Mikolas turned in a good start, the bullpen was good outside of Fernandez, and the offense was producing again, albeit they did leave some runs on the table that would have helped seal the game.

Alas, that's baseball. They were not going to go 162-0. But it's frustrating to lose a game in that fashion, and now they'll have to try and bounce back against Kyle Hendricks on Tuesday.