4 Cardinals the fans have already lost patience with

Let's dive into a few Cardinals that the fans are beginning to lose patience with.

To kick off the 2023 regular season, pretty much everything that could go wrong for the St. Louis Cardinals has gone wrong for them.

Entering the new week, the Redbirds sit at 16-25, good for last place in the National League Central and the worst winning percentage of any NL team period. The club's -10 run differential isn't quite as painful as you'd expect from your typical last-place team, but you know something's wrong with your squad if they are statistically worse than the Colorado Rockies.

It hasn't just been one specific person, either. This has been a group "effort" to send a club seemingly destined for contention straight to the basement of the league. Position players have struggled with consistency, the starting rotation has been unreliable from top to bottom and a handful of the relief pitchers have been untrustworthy as well.

Through and through, this has not been the start that anybody saw coming from this team. Many of the club's followers are beginning to lose patience with the way things are going, and understandably so. On paper, there's no reason why the Cardinals weren't going to be favorites to win the NL Central this year; but instead, things are starting to look like a lost cause for the 2023 season.

Tyler O'Neill

Ah, yes, another controversial player who hasn't contributed on the field and has been a part of the drama.

O'Neill famously saw his name in the headlines early on in the season after failing to hustle home on a would-be run scored in early April. Manager Oli Marmol did not pull him from the game but made it known after the fact that this kind of lax approach to playing the game will not be allowed in his clubhouse.

"We've got a lot of guys playing really hard and that's not our style of play as far as the effort rounding the bag there", he said after the game in question. "It's unacceptable."

O'Neill, of course, did not agree with how Marmol viewed the incident, but the damage had already been done in the eyes of the media. Cardinals fans may remember something eerily similar to this happened with former outfielder Harrison Bader, who was ultimately traded away at the 2022 deadline.

Drama aside, O'Neill had been the top trade chip in a crowded Cardinals outfield picture as recently as this past offseason. With a multitude of guys looking to earn playing time, including prospects younger than O'Neill, he seemed like the clear option to be moved. Instead, nothing happened, and now all of these players remain on the roster and the Cardinals may not get much for him in a deal anymore.

Since the club failed to move him, they now will be forced to either trade another player, or sell low on the 27-year-old O'Neill. In 29 games so far this season, he has two home runs and six runs driven in with a .228 average, .620 OPS and 73 OPS+, all well off from his previous career numbers. This is all without mentioning that he has struck out in over 34 percent of his plate appearances, which would be the highest mark he's put up since all the way back in 2019. Like Flaherty, his time in a Cardinals uniform may be gradually coming to a close.

Steven Matz

Finally, we have a player who has not been mired in controversy to start the season!

Instead, fans are losing patience with Matz because of his inability to consistently get outs in games. After a relatively successful but inconsistent six-year tenure in New York as a member of the Mets, Matz spent one (solid) season in Toronto before joining the Cardinals prior to 2022.

Last year, he battled through inconsistent results and frequent injuries, limping to the finish line with a 5.25 ERA and 74 ERA+. At one point, he was even demoted to the bullpen for the first time in his career. Fans were undoubtedly hoping for a turnaround from the southpaw, but things seem to be getting worse rather than getting better.

So far this year, the 31-year-old has made eight starts and has surrendered 26 earned runs in just 41.2 innings of work, good for a 5.62 ERA and 4.93 FIP. He has struggled mightily with keeping runners off the bases, as his walks, home runs, and hits per nine innings have all gone up across the board.

What further complicates Matz and his situation is the fact that he's still under contract for quite some time. He was signed last year to a four-year deal that will not see him become a free agent until the conclusion of the 2025 season. Any hopes of him moving on from the Cardinals would result in the club eating a ton of salary or having to throw a top-shelf player into any type of salary dump trade.

Oli Marmol

There is perhaps nobody associated with the organization that fans are losing patience with faster than manager Oli Marmol.

His first season at the helm came last year, and the Cardinals promptly won 93 games and finished first in the NL Central. However, this year has not started off as strong and things are going south real fast for him.

So often are managers immediately viewed as the scapegoats for any given team's problems. However, there are times when such a label is warranted, and this appears to be one of them. For starters, the way he handled the aforementioned Tyler O'Neill incident was just awful. Instead of quietly addressing things behind closed doors, he blew it up and took it to the media, who always put magnifying glasses on things like this.

Aside from O'Neill, he has also given entirely too many chances to Jordan Hicks, who is now a shell of the pitcher he once was. The 26-year-old has a 6.19 ERA and has run into a complete loss of control. Marmol has only just recently begun to limit his high-leverage usage, but the first month-plus of the season was hard to watch as Hicks was absolutely annihilated every single time he took the mound.

And finally, there's whatever the heck you call what's going on with Willson Contreras right now. After the retirement of Yadier Molina and the failed attempt to trade for Sean Murphy, the Cardinals pivoted and signed the longtime Chicago Cub to be their long-term catcher. Just under two months into this new chapter, Contreras was removed from the catcher's spot after the pitching staff began to struggle. It's a well known fact that Contreras has never been known as a top-tier defender behind the plate, but for the Cardinals to openly announce that they had lost faith in him this early in the season is a massive no-no.

Less than a week after his demotion to designated hitter, Marmol, and the Cardinals are apparently ready to put Contreras back behind the plate. This move clearly signifies that Marmol got his hand slapped for how he handled things and is being forced to revert back to the original plan: Contreras is the catcher for the next five years, for better or for worse.

Time and time again, Marmol has put himself into hot water with his bone-headed comments to the press and head-scratching decisions made in-game. Fans are more than ready to have him out of the manager's seat, and at this point, who can blame them?