Excuses, myths, and real reasons for the Cardinals' awful season

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"I promise you it's going to be a fun team to watch and one that is going to be very competitive," John Mozeliak during the 2023 Cardinals Winter Warmup.

Well. This team is not competitive. They are at the bottom of their division and this team has not been fun to watch.

This entire season the Cardinals have been offering their fans excuses and myths as reasons for their losing season. The only one that hasn’t been called out yet is Fredbird.

We have seen management find excuses for losing in all the wrong places. Players are not hustling. It’s the catcher’s fault because he isn’t calling the right pitches at the right time. It must be because a player’s launch angle is not where the analysts say it should be, even though he is getting on base, so we must send him back to the minors. We have too many outfielders so we can't find enough ABs for them all. Oh, wait we are losing because we have to use our infielders in the outfield.

What is the definition of an excuse? Dictionary.com explains it this way: an explanation offered as a reason for being excused; a plea offered in extenuation of a fault or for release from an obligation, promise, etc: Anyone with kids knows what an excuse is. It’s not my fault. We have heard a lot of that this year.

A myth? A traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact is a story without a basis of fact. We have been told a few of those also.

It's time to look at the excuses, myths, and real facts about the Cardinals 2023 season

Excuses

The first excuse is injuries. - They lost Wainwright, Nootbaar, Helsley, O’Neill, and others for various amounts of time. With no consistency, it’s very hard to have a winning season right? Well, the Dodgers have lost more games to injuries than any other club and they are in first place. According to Spotrac, the Blue Jays, Orioles, and Guardians are the only MLB teams to lose fewer games to injury than the St. Louis Cardinals.

The umpires don’t like the Cardinals. - We’ve seen it time after time that this manager has a problem with the umpires. I am guessing that this has been a problem since the first baseball game ever played. This doesn’t hold up either. There are several sites now that grade umpires and while several of the umps grade out poorly, there doesn’t seem to be a bias against the Cardinals. Checking Umpscorecards.com the Cardinals are right in the middle third of teams being screwed by the umps. Not enough to really make a difference.

The other night, I saw three Cardinals get ejected for arguing balls and strikes. For all the analytics the Cardinals say they use, I don’t understand how this happens. Just a quick Google search and I found out the HP umpire would be Brennan Miller. Another search and I found out he was a pitcher’s umpire. Two quick searches, and if I am a batter I know I had better swing if the ball is close to the plate. Get mad at those who sent you to the plate uninformed, not the ump.

They just can’t seem to - Fill in the blank. Can’t drive in runners in scoring position. Can’t seem to make that one last pitch to get the strikeout. Can’t win those pesky one-run games. These are all excuses that losing teams seem to have problems with.

Myths

World Baseball Classic - The WBC was used as a reason for the bad start almost from the first month of the season. They told us this story so much I started to believe it was true. Michael Baumann wrote a great article for Fangraphs looking into just this. The first thing that jumps out is the Astros had 12 players and we had 11. As of today, the Astros are 17 games over .500. The Cardinals are 17 games under .500. After doing a deep dive into the numbers he concludes “As it stands, feel free to freak out as much as you like about your team’s early-season performance. Just know that the WBC probably isn’t to blame". I highly recommend reading his article.

The shift - The Cardinals were affected more than any other team by the elimination of the shift. How many times have you read this this year? In 2022 the Cardinals ranked 20th in using the shift and yet we are to believe that somehow we were affected more than the 20 teams that used the shift more than us. With all the Gold Gloves on this team, they should have been the least affected. The Cardinals’ defense has been awful but not because of the shift. I completely break down what I think has happened here.

Reasons

Pitching, pitching, and more pitching — The front office failed this offseason on so many fronts when it comes to our pitching staff. Everyone knew it would be a problem but they didn’t want to spend any money to improve. Not only did they not bring in a true number one or even a two but there were other major problems. First, for the first time in 19 years, there would be no Yadier Molina controlling the game. Second, their longtime, well-respected pitching coach leaves them. That meant that the pitching staff the Cardinals did have would have to trust in a catcher they didn’t know and a pitching coach that had never coached in the major leagues, or even the minor leagues for that matter.

Coaching staff issues - The Cardinals have the youngest manager in all of MLB who was completely out-coached in the playoffs, coming back for his second year. He just lost his bench coach, hitting coach, and the pitching coach. When they did find a bench coach he quit after two months. This used to be a team that coaches and players wanted to come to and be a part of.

Now instead of being able or willing to hire experienced baseball people, they are relegated to hiring a hitting coach who was fired by the Reds after one year. That year FanGraphs had the Reds ranked 25th in the Major Leagues in wRC+, 21st in WAR, and 26th in wOBA. Then they replaced Mike Maddox and his twenty years of coaching experience, who by the way, has done wonders with the Texas pitching staff, with someone with no experience as a pitching coach.

Summary

What we have here is a complete failure.

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A front office that has failed with acquisitions and has overseen a minor league system that is going backward.

An inexperienced coaching staff that throws players under the bus constantly and seems to be getting worse with game management rather than better.

Just like you tell your kids, you can't get better until you stop making excuses and start looking at the reasons.

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