The Cardinals are back at the bottom of the NL Central through six weeks. At 15-21, they're ahead of only the Marlins and Rockies in the National League. St. Louis viewed their 2023 last-place finish as an anomaly. They invested in their rotation to try for a quick turnaround, but their current 68-win pace is below where they ended last season.
Their problems aren't quite the same as they were in 2023. Last year, the biggest issues were a starting rotation that couldn't miss bats and a defense that was surprisingly the worst in MLB at turning batted balls into outs. The Cards haven't been great in either area thus far in 2024, but the slight improvements they've made in those facets have been negated by a lifeless offense. At the center of those struggles: Paul Goldschmidt, who is amidst what is by far the worst stretch of his time in St. Louis.
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Should’ve traded him at the deadline last year
Should have kept Palacios, Arozarena, and Alcantara. I, too, have 20/20 hindsight.
Gallon, O’Neill, Garcia. I, too.
*GALLEN. He’s not a bottle, lol.
A gallon is a unit of liquid volume not a bottle, lol.
@FartCopter: Bottles are made in gallon size, and the point is the same, lol.
Your point isn’t the same. You mocked him for a spelling error while making a bigger error yourself. Drums, bags, and cans are made in gallon size as well.
Sorry you can’t gracefully take an “L” when you get beaten at your own obnoxious game, lol.
If it makes you feel better about yourself to consider it a game, you win.
Whoopee-dam-doo for you.
Thank you. I graciously accept your surrender and look forward to our next encounter.
Good tidings,
Fartcopter
Dang the extra characters don’t post when I put tidings.
It starts…
LOL!
Him and Arenado should’ve both been gone, along with Matz.
Love to see the Padres take a chance at landing him for DH/bench depth.
At least the Cards have something to work with unlike the California Angels or Chi Sox.
It doesn’t matter what pieces come up if the system is flawed
Never understood all the love for StL before the season. NLC contender? Whateva…
They signed a few FA. That gets sports media in a big tizzy!! No matter how mediocre a FA signing is. Sports Media always gives the benefit of doubt to FA and teams who sign them.
Also, the Cardinals appear to have a base of entitled fans not unlike that of the Yankees. You can see that reading between the lines of comments on here.
Past success and that sense of entitlement seem to create a bias in the media toward thinking the teams are better than they actually are in a given season.
I got two buddies who are Cardinal fans. They are EXACTLY as you describe them.
Bring back Simon Hampton
There are no easy answers with Goldy. Really no choice but to just let him play through it.
There are other moves to be made, however. Gorman needs to go to Memphis for about a month to get his head right. He could also get some work at 1B while he’s there, since he makes sense as Goldy’s heir apparent. That would also give us a chance to take a look at Fermin, Saggese, or Prieto.
We had might as well find a dignified way to move on from Brandon Crawford. He’s barely playing because Winn has been so good, and he’s looked pretty cooked in the opportunities he’s been given. There’s just no reason to keep a player like him on a team like this. Fermin can act as SS insurance until Tommy gets healthy.
Firing Turner Ward should have already happened, but it needs to happen. The Bellville News-Democrat wrote an interesting piece about how the entire line-up is struggling to hit pitches thrown over the heart of the plate. When a trend like that becomes this pronounced, coaching has to play a role. He needs to go.
The easy answer for Goldschmidt is what he doesn’t want to face or admit: He turns 37 in September and might be finished.
If he doesn’t turn things around by July, it’s likely time to hang ‘em up.
Very unlikely he retires midseason. Guys making that kind of money don’t leave it on the table, even in the name of pride.
The Cardinals rode it out with Matt Carpenter and others during winning seasons. I’m sure they’re willing to ride it out with Goldy in a lost season.
When specifically he makes the decision and plays his last game is irrelevant if this is his last year.
And if the team is out of it and he’s not performing, what’s the point of giving him playing time instead of looking at younger players who could be part of the future?
He’s not Adam Wainwright struggling to reach a statistical milestone.
“The easy answer for Goldschmidt..might be finished”….Unfortunately, the Cardinals have become quite adept at holding onto assets until they have very little remaining value. I have to agree with the poster who said they should have flipped Goldy at last year’s trade deadline. I might add they should have considered flipping Arenado too.
Mlb fan that’s nonsense. The Cardinals traded 5 guys away at the deadline. Of course if they knew both guys would suck from last July until now they would have traded them but so what? The Cardinals aren’t in the business of trading assets while they are high in value that’s not what successful winning teams do which the Cardinals definitely were up until last year.
This team is not that different from the 2022 team that won 93 games and looked like a legit contender.
Something is off. It’s the manager. He’s the problem.
“The team is not that different from the 2022 team…”
This team is very different from the 2022 team.
Goldschmidt posted 7.7 WAR in 2022, 3.4 in 2023, and is at -0.2 and counting this year while aging from 35 to 37.
Arenado also posted 7.7 WAR in 2022, just 2.4 in 2023, and is at 0.5 and counting this year while aging from 31 to 33.
Both players have reached ages where improvement is not guaranteed at best and unlikely at worst.
Subtracting those nearly 16 wins from the 2022 total of 93 brings the team under .500 to 77 or 78 before you account for declines in performance by any other players.
Saying that this team is not that different from 2022 is rather naive, and the aging of key players is not the manager’s fault.
Arenado is younger today than Goldschmidt was in 2022. It’s fair to think Goldschmidt would decline at his age but Arenado not quite so much.
The problem is the manager and the coaches because good coaches don’t seem to want to work for the manager.
But comparing one player to another is not always apples to apples. Different players have different physiological attributes and may decline at different ages and rates.
Roger Maris, for example, went from 26 homers, 71 RBI, .281 at 29 in 1964 to 5 homers, 45 RBI, .255, and retired at 33 in 1968.
Howard Johnson went from 38 homers, 117 RBI, 30 stolen bases, .259 at 30 in 1991 to 7 homers, 43 RBI, 22 stolen bases, .223 at 31 in 1992 to 7 homers, 22 RBI, .195, and retired at 34 in 1995.
It’s absolutely not fair, or realistic, to think that any player, no matter how great at one time, cannot drop off sharply after age 30.
And again, that’s not the manager’s or coaches’ fault.
Sure they CAN drop off that doesn’t mean they will. Goldschmidts entire contract was for ages after 30. And he won a freaking MVP at age 34.
Yes the Cardinals have an old team. And yes Goldschmidt appears to be about toast. But let’s stop with the “it was predictable” nonsense. The Cardinals lost Pujols and kept it going with Beltran and Berkman. Old guys can play well and young guys sometimes don’t.
One huge problem is all the money spent on ordinary pitching. Gray has been great but the other 4 starters have an FIP of about 4.7 and make over 50 million combined.
Of course if they knew both guys would suck
=========================
You don’t have to know that. All you need is trends, and age. You don’t necessarily need to wait until they ARE bad. By that time, it is too late.
They were out of it, so there was no need to hold on. They had 9 players, without those two, that you could make a case should be fulltime players.
Not all teams trade guys away just because it’s the best financial decision they can make. There are other factors involved. Part of the reason they went and got both Arenado and Goldschmidt was because they want both guys to go into the hall of Fame in a Cardinals uniform. And if they trade them that probably won’t happen. That stuff matters to the Cardinals and many other organizations that have history.
What were they actually going to get for Goldschmidt and Arenado anyways? Not much. Both guys had and still have big contracts.
If both guys were playing well and the team was playing well would you still he saying all this stuff? Of course you wouldn’t.
Teams acquire players because they believe those players will help them win.
No team bases decisions like that on speculation about if said players might be elected to the HOF and what cap will be displayed on their plaques. They don’t care about that.
Arenado and Goldschmidt are hardly locks to be voted in anyway.
Winning is very important but it is not the only thing that teams take into consideration when signing or trading for a player. The Cardinals most certainly care about that stuff. Some teams don’t but they do.
If you say so. Then the joke will be on them if they fail to be elected.
Baron-Good ole Ho Jo! He was an assistant coach for my HS team. This was early 2000’s when he was working for the Mets. My HS was near their ST facility in Port St.Lucie, and every year during ST Ho Jo would always bring some of the guy’s out to our practices. Got to take infield practice with David Wright and Jose Reyes.
And he was a textbook case of how suddenly a good player can fall of the cliff to mediocrity.
I simply don’t see Gorman as being a major problem like you do. If we send him down after proving he can hit at AAA as well as in the bigs what precedent does that set? Who’s next Nootbaar? Winn? Walker is different he never actually earned the promotion to the bigs but Gorman did.
Crawford is garbage I agree he needs to go. And if everyone is healthy so does Carpenter. Scott is in AAA where he belongs. Siani is finally a bench bat and no longer starting so that’s good. Carlson better step up or he may never get another shot once Edman is healthy.
The manager and the coaches who work under him are the real problem. Marmol has to be fired.
As I detailed above, age-related declines in players’ performances are not the fault of coaches and managers.
Firing Marmol won’t resolve any issues.
When your core players get old, they’re old and the team sinks like a rock.
This has happened to once-winning teams time and time again throughout the history of baseball.
Father Time is undefeated, and that’s really all there is to it.
We sent Paul DeJong down when he was struggling and he had been in the majors longer than Gorman. It worked to some degree.
It’s not that uncommon for a struggling young player to be sent down for a period of time after they’ve had success in the big leagues. I truly believe the Memphis coaches can do more for Gorman than the ML staff. If a month in the minors results in three good months to finish the season, it’s a win for everybody. I don’t see the problem.
DeJong had been struggling for a very long time. Gorman has been struggling for a month.
If the Memphis coaches can fix him when the big league coaches can’t then that’s the problem.
Dejong also added value with his defense where Gorman doesn’t, if Gorman isn’t hitting he’s useless. So comparing the 2 doesn’t really fit
If Goldschmidt’s hitting does not improve in the next month or so, they will be lucky to get a pitcher in the rookie league with a 6 or 7 era for him.
Striking out at nearly 31% of the time. Swinging at pitches waaaay out of the strike zone, and even when they are in the strike zone, all he can do is foul them off.
Then the third strike is usually a swing and a miss. Hard to keep watching him struggle like this.
Chase rate of 45%. That’s nearly 20% worse than last year and nearly 30% worse than two years ago. His BB% has cratered too.
He’s not seeing the ball well at all.
Translation: He’s old and probably finished.
Ahhhh, father time. We have a contentious relationship indeed
Seems every night is more frustration and it saddens me. I’ve endured very few of these seasons. As you know, we come to expect winners so even the early exits in the playoffs are frustrating. Watching the Cardinals during the season is my go-to entertainment. I can’t watch all of a game. I just run it in the background and pay attention when something happens. I am getting a lot of reading in though.
Poor baby. Welcome to the world of normal baseball fans. Even the Yankees don’t always win, and their fans sound even more entitled.
Aaaaand now the podcast people are eating their words when I asked about the Card’s hitting problems, including the part of Goldy not being able to “hit the broadside of a barn”. It wasn’t a stupid question guys! What is going on in St. Louis? It is now where good hitters go to die. Goldy’s problems may be age related, but the rest of them? They were supposed to be can’t-miss rising stars!
O’Neill hasn’t missed, but they traded him to Boston. Oops!
They traded him because the manager wanted him gone. The guy who should be gone is the manager he’s the problem.
It takes a front office to trade players. And how do you even know Marmol wanted him gone?
You seem to state lots of things you have no way of knowing.
Marmol called ONeill out publicly after the 5th game of the season last year. Oneill came off the IL and would play for a couple games then he would get benched. It is a well known fact that ONeill was traded because Marmol wanted him gone. Why else would a win now team trade away a guy like him with his potential?
Swing is too slow. He used to be able to damage the mistake pitch. Time to bat in order Winn, DH Donovan, then, Arenado, then, Burleson, and leafers, then, Herrera, then, Gorman at second, then, Goldie, then Noot bar in right, then Carlson and center. But this line about their no matter what pitcher is pitching for the next two weeks and you’ll know if you’ve got a team that can play and win.
Sonny Gray signed with them right? Trade him back to MN at the deadline, we need SP..
Pay for what’s likely a very superficial article written by transaction reporters about a topic which would be better covered by Fangraphs for free? No.