St. Louis Cardinals have a failure to communicate

“I thought communication could have been a little bit different.” St Louis Cardinals pitcher Dakota Hudson

There were a couple of statements made after Monday’s loss to the Baltimore Orioles that stood out.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“I felt like it was we were in the situation, second and third, and I’m throwing my stuff for either a very weak contact hold the guy at third or I’m coming out there and trying to get some swing and miss under the zone,” Hudson said. “Guy takes it, a walk, bases loaded. I’m thinking, okay, here I am — groundball guy — double play opportunity potentially. That just wasn’t the case. I thought communication could have been a little bit different.”

Asked if he’d approached the Mountcastle at-bat as though he’d thought he’d get a chance to work out of trouble, Hudson replied, “Yeah, I mean the game is right there. It’s 4 to 5, regardless of the previous runs. The situation is still there. The game is in hand. I’m throwing the best stuff out there I have and it just didn’t work out. I feel like it’s unfortunate, but that’s baseball.”

Communication is probably the most important quality a manager can have. For a pitcher to say he would have pitched differently if he had more information is inexcusable on several levels.

We have seen communication being a problem throughout the year. First, it was publicly calling out Tyler O’Neill. Then we had the whole Wilson Contreras situation. In both cases at the core, they were communication issues. When Marmol was hired one of the qualities that Mozeliak kept coming back to was his ability to communicate with his players. O’Neill and Hudson both are players that have worked with Marmol for years. Hudson goes all the way back to their minor league days. If they have trouble communicating with this manager then this is a bit troubling. I wonder how things will work when we bring in a whole new group of players this off-season. Will we see more Wilson Contreras type issues?

The other part of this is when Hudson says (per the P-D story), “ I’m throwing the best stuff out there I have and it just didn’t work out ” and you see Marmol say Dak was “doing a nice job navigating that lineup”

Hudson was responsible for seven earned runs, he walked more than he struck out, and he could not even get you five innings. We seem to be hearing this a lot. He pitched a great game, except.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pitcher come out and say I sucked? Oh, wait.

“I’m pretty sad about it, honestly,” Wainwright said during the London series. “I pitched terrible trying to make Cardinals fans, but we didn’t make any today because of me. That whole game was my fault. I pitched terrible, I put our team in a bad spot and we lost the game because of me.” said Wainwright after pitching in London this year.

The rest of the Cardinals could learn better communication skills just by listening more to Adam Wainwright.