The lackluster National League is giving the Cardinals a false sense of security

The Cardinals have been hovering around .500 over the last week or so and had an iconic win against the Giants during the Rickwood FIeld game on Wednesday, helping to continue to boost their spot in the Wild Card standings.

This was a huge win coming off of back-to-back losses in Miami against the Marlins. Maybe it helped them get a little bit of their confidence back.

Because the National League is so weak, .500 is enough for the Cardinals to be in the second wild-card spot. In any other scenario, .500 would not be good enough for a team to be in playoff position.

While it's great to see the Cardinals remain in playoff position, this version of the National League is giving them a false sense of security.

The NL is giving the Cardinals false hope

I'm sorry. I hate to kill the vibe, but this Cardinals team is not that good.

Personally, I don't think the National League is going to remain this bad for the rest of the year. I have a hunch that eventually, teams like the Diamondbacks will heat up and take control of one of the last two Wild Card spots while the Cardinals keep hanging around .500. Heck, even the Mets have heated up, having only lost once since Grimace threw out the first pitch earlier this month.

You could make the case that it's time for John Mozeliak to reward fans' patience. Some additions may help, but this version of the National League has done nothing but reinforce the idea that just getting into the playoffs is enough.

I mentioned this in a prior story about how people need to stop comparing the Cardinals to last year's Diamondbacks squad, but even if you "just get in", your team still has to have the necessary pieces to go on a run. Last year, Arizona had Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, and Brandon Pfaadt leading the charge in their rotation. Even the Cardinals had Chris Carpenter, Jeff Suppan, and Jeff Weaver during their run in 2006.

This year's Cardinals team just doesn't have that, and it's only a matter of time before hanging around .500 catches up with them. We as fans keep thinking that there's hope when they win a few games or series in a row and move up in the standings, only for that hope to be subsequently squashed. The series loss to the Marlins was enough to convince me for certain that this is not a playoff team. The Cardinals had to fight extra hard just to win one game in that series and they lost the other two in heartbreaking fashion.

When your offensive cornerstones continue to struggle, and you can't score runs against some of the worst teams in the league, that says a lot about who this team really is. Andy Heckroth, a fellow contributor here at Redbird Rants said it best in his latest piece describing how the series loss in Miami exposed the Cardinals for what kind of team they truly are and killed any momentum they had.

Sure, the Cardinals could get to the playoffs. But do people honestly believe that they could beat the Braves, Phillies, or Dodgers, even if they make moves to improve the team at the deadline? What evidence suggests that Mozeliak is going to go big for a top starter and another offensive piece?

And that's assuming that nothing changes in the Wild Card race. There's a lot of time left, and as I've said, it's only a matter of time before another team unseats the Cardinals in one of the Wild Card spots.