Rating how concerned we should be about slow starts from different Cardinals' bats

Paul Goldschmidt

Much like Nolan Arenado, people seem to overstate the struggles of Paul Goldschmidt from a year ago. Sure, he was not the best hitter in baseball like he was two years ago, but he still posted an .810 OPS and was a very productive hitter.

This year, Goldschmidt is slashing just .183/.290/.233 in his first 60 at-bats. Concerning? Yes. And even though there is evidence to say that he's potentially on the decline, there's an elephant in the room that Cardinals' fans need to acknowledge that should help them find some peace.

Goldschmidt is a notoriously slow starter at the plate. March/April have always been the worst months of his year since he broke into the big leagues. Maybe he just needs time to get it going, or maybe it is hitting in warmer weather, but whatever it is, it's clear that Goldschmidt will crank things up multiple notches by the time May rolls around.

If your expectations of Goldschmidt were that he would be one of the best hitters in baseball again this year, your concern level though be pretty high. But if you expected Goldschmidt to be about 20%-25% above league average at the plate this year, I think those are still very fair expectations.

Once May rolls around, if Goldschmidt still can't get things going at the plate, my concern level will rise significantly. But until then, I'm sitting right in the middle between no concern at all and freaking out. I need a larger sample size before I sound the alarm, but I'm also not naive to think that there's no chance that Goldschmidt is falling off the cliff.

Concern level: 5