Cardinals' manager Oliver Marmol left speechless in postgame interview

The St. Louis Cardinals' season has reached the point of exasperation. For the second year in a row, the team is under .500 late in the season, and things aren't looking promising. The Cardinals have one of the toughest schedules remaining this year, and the distance between them and the playoffs increases with each passing week.

Many things have gone wrong for the team this year, but one facet of the Cardinals that stands out the most would be their abysmal offensive production. As a team, the Cardinals rank 19th in wRC+, 20th in slugging percentage, 19th in wOBA, and 24th in runs per game. The offense was supposed to carry the team this year, and it simply hasn't. That has led to the Cardinals slowly fading out of the playoff picture in the month of August.

Katie Woo of The Athletic asked manager Oliver Marmol following Tuesday's 3-2 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers about the team's lackluster offensive output. Woo said, "We've talked about the offensive struggles all year. You can play the numbers; you can platoon. At this point, what else is there to do?"

Marmol's reaction was a bit surprising, as he couldn't come up with a defense for the team's poor offensive output. There was even an extended moment of silence after Marmol initially spoke. His exasperation was quite evident.

"It's a good question. There's not a good answer for it, to be quite honest with you. We didn't do enough against their starter... I've said it before, in order for us to be playing in October, we're going to have to score more runs, and we were unable to do that again today."

Oliver Marmol

The most glaring weakness of the team's offense is with runners in scoring position. The Cardinals rank near the bottom of lists with virtually every stat when runners are on second or third base this year. The Cardinals have also failed to hit left-handed pitchers well this year, something they thrived at doing just two years ago.

While no one player or coach can be blamed for the team's uninspired offense, there are some individuals who were originally projected to help the offense more. Cornerstones Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt aren't producing at levels that we as fans have become accustomed to seeing. Young guys like Jordan Walker, Lars Nootbaar, and Nolan Gorman aren't hitting the way they were projected to. Matt Carpenter's pinch-hit home run last night aside, the bench players aren't coming up in big moments.

Calls for hitting coach Turner Ward to be fired were heard last year, but they've been amplified after a consecutive season of underperformance from the team's offense. What was once a formidable offense has become a unit that isn't able to produce during big moments in games.

As Oliver Marmol said, if the team wants to play meaningful games in September and October, the offense has to get off the ground. And soon.