So this is how the other half lives?
The Cardinals put the finishing touches on a 4-6 home stand Sunday with a loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates, dropping them to 16-16 on the season and 9 games back of the Cubs for the NL Central lead.
The Cardinals are now 1-5 against the Pirates on the year.
Bernie Miklasz of 101Sports.com laid out the season thus far:
If any objective, reasonable or pragmatic person looks at the 2016 Cardinals through 32 games, they’ll see a few obvious things:
(1) A team that hasn’t been able to match the quality of the 2015’s starting pitching. Which, by the way, is no surprise. It was easily predictable.
(2) They see a team that has been charged with more errors than any team in baseball.
(3) They’ve seen an offense that slides between extreme levels, high and low. The Cardinals have scored seven or more runs in 13 games, and 1 or no runs in nine games.
(4) They’ve seen the emergence of some exciting young offensive talent including Stephen Piscotty, Aledmys Diaz, and Jeremy Hazelbaker.
(5) They’ve seen enhanced depth that has given Matheny more lineup flexibility and more opportunities to look for platoon-split advantages.
(6) They’ve seen two of the younger core players – Randal Grichuk and Kolten Wong – struggle.
(7) They’ve seen a team that plays hard, as it should.
(8) They’ve seen a bullpen that’s been quite good most of the time.
(9) They’ve seen little production from the cleanup spot and mediocre results from the No. 3 lineup slot, which explains at least some of the inconsistency.
(10) They’ve seen Adam Wainwright battle to overcome a very poor start to the season, and he appears to be getting on track.
(11) They’ve seen some uncharacteristic early trends including a losing record at home and a 6-9 record vs. the NL Central.
(12) They’ve seen a +40 run differential, which is very good (if somewhat misleading.)
It’s certainly a mixed bag.
Sort through it all, and yeah, 16-16 seems about right – though based on the Cards’ run differential Baseball Prospectus (and others) calculate that the team record should be about 20-12. So if you want to say the team is underachieving, that isn’t unfair.
Mark Hayden summed all that up nicely:
https://twitter.com/OfficerWho89/status/729541296902168576
The most frustrating thing about the season so far is that we can’t point to one thing and say – THAT… FIX THAT. Some days the Cardinals need better starting pitching. Some days they need more runs. Some days the bullpen has to be stronger. Some days the manager needs to make better decisions.
And so on.
The Blues success this spring has provided some cover for the Cardinals, but the hard truth is that two months of average baseball is much harder to overcome than one month of average baseball.
The Cardinals head to the west coast to see if they can get May back on track.
Photo: Boston Herald
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