The Limits of Complacency

 

Let's be honest with ourselves. The Cardinals have a very okay team that's had some very good games. The star performer is Brendan Donovan, and again the Cardinals have to be careful about building the team around a utility guy. Nolan Arenado has calmed down, Fedde and Gray are human, and there just aren't standouts. The Cardinals have gone deep without standouts before, but in those cases there's been a sense that they're building something. In 2019, even if I didn't like the infrastructure of it, that was a youth movement backing up a core of guys like Goldschmidt, Ozuna and Carpenter. Here, everything's all over the place.

So seeing the Cardinals plummet through June, toiling around fourth, even after proving they can win games for a good month...isn't surprising for me. The Cardinals have trouble confusing a winning streak with truly clicking, and right now has cemented that they just haven't clicked. This current shellacking of the White Sox is an attempt to distract you all from that. It's only the White Sox.

Honestly, given everything that was put upon Sonny Gray when joining this team, he hasn't done too badly for himself. Last year he gave up a ton of homers but he still struck a lot of people out. His 203 K season was his second of 200 or more, and his first since 2019. And right now he's 7-2, with a 3.84 ERA and 85 Ks, which is a pretty decent line honestly. But he's not keeping runs down like he did in Minnesota. Maybe it's because he's 35, which...it's wild that we've reached veteran hurler era Sonny Gray after how he broke in as a rookie postseason hero. But the sheer dominance that got the Cardinals to pay for Gray has dissipated a bit. Now he's just a regular ol hurler with some K perks. It's still working fine for them, he's been pretty trustworthy, but the Cardinals' rotation doesn't have that strong ace, and hasn't since Jack Flaherty left.

There are good pitchers aligned in a group, but it's not really a cohesive rotation. I guess Matthew Liberatore is the closest thing to an actual young talent, but his ERA's over 4. Fedde, Liberatore, Pallante and Mikolas are all fine, but there's no one who can be consistently relied upon to close down an offense, just like there's no real consistent power hitter on this team. Nobody has over 10 home runs: Willson Contreras is the closest with 9. There's no real bench depth, an okay bullpen...this team just feels unfinished. And the first half of May has poked holes in the armor.

There's a chance the Cardinals bounce back, and the way this organization works it's always possible, but I think they're better off unloading some of the bigger pieces, doing away with Arenado, and just trying to get everybody on the same page at some point. Cause whatever this is won't get them a playoff spot. I don't even know what I'm looking at here.

Coming Tomorrow- Not even that disastrous 2022 season could derail his career, and that must mean he's in it for the long haul.