St. Louis, we have a problem. It's fairly simple and I would love to explain it to you. The Cardinals can't hit.
But wait, there's plenty more.
The roster, especially their anemic outfield production, stunk quite badly in 2019. If you had to name a culprit in the sweeping of the Cards at the hands of the Washington Nationals in the National League Championship series, it was the cold bats. They couldn't muster anything, going so silent in the NLCS that you almost forgot how they got there.
2019 carried excuses. Paul Goldschmidt didn't torch National League pitching like he was supposed to, instead opting for a modest season by his standards. Matt Carpenter had the worst season of his Major League career. Harrison Bader went downhill at the plate, swinging at sliders away like they offered free haircuts on that side of the plate.
But the offensive struggles of this team run deeper than a soft-hitting center fielder who should be a fourth set of legs for the field. They run into areas of misguided drafting, money spent in the wrong spot, or a combination of the two. The Cardinals spend money. A look at any payroll-tabulating website will inform you of that. But they aren't spending wisely, at least not on their offense.
This is the team that passed up on Luis Robert. You may not have known his name yesterday afternoon, but you should today. He hit a baseball last night that still hasn't landed, a moon shot into left field. He did this for the Chicago White Sox, the team that had a shot at signing him AFTER the Cardinals passed. He has 11 home runs on the season. St. Louis was too busy handing Dexter Fowler $80 million dollars for a career that included about one very good season.
The Cardinals offer Jason Heyward a ton of money, but wouldn't offer big on Bryce Harper. The same goes for Robert and Fernando Tatis Jr., who is hitting moon shots of his own for the San Diego Padres. Something tells me the scouting in the Cardinals' department isn't that wonderful on the offensive side. The outfield is a real tragedy.
In 2019, the combined OPS for all the outfielders was .755. That's nice if you like late-career Brandon Moss outputs, but not for a team who tells their fans winning is a top priority. The paltry .420 slugging percentage stinks of warning track flyouts.
What about 2018? It was worse. The slash line (batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage) was .259/.323/.412. A slugging percentage of .412 is like going to Russell's on Macklind and being served food from Denny's. It's not good enough and quite discomforting.
Back in 2016 and 2017, the slugging of the Cardinals' outfield was more robust, coming in at .451 and .460. But it's expired and looking quite pale these days. Bader can't find the bench for more than a couple of games and when he does well at the plate for a weekend, fans lose their minds and say, "TOLD YOU!" Let me tell you that Bader is 9-46 recently at the plate with 16 strikeouts. Fowler was swinging the bat like he did in 2017, but he went down with an injury. Every time Tyler O'Neill hits a home run, Cardinal Nation imagines a future where O'Neill isn't hitting home runs for Toronto, but it fades.
Here's the facts. Both Bader and O'Neill are hitting under the Mendoza line. Lane Thomas can't find his way into the lineup often and when he does, he can't come up with the big hit. Dylan Carlson is the newly appointed savior, but he's too raw and needs everyday at-bats to get in sync. After all, Carlson saw limited time at Memphis last season and made the team this year only when COVID-19 struck the clubhouse.
But hopes and dreams aside, the Cardinals have three outfielders with at least 46 at-bats during this abbreviated season hitting under .200. All of this happens while Marcell Ozuna rips the cover off the ball for the Atlanta Braves. The Cardinals offered him $200,000 less than Atlanta. Tommy Pham, traded because his attitude didn't sync up with St. Louis, has fared well in Tampa Bay and San Diego. Stephen Piscotty, rightfully traded for the sake of reuniting him with his then-ailing mother, is performing better than any Cardinal outfielder right now. Randal Grichuk is finding solace in Toronto but then again, who doesn't in that stadium?
It's deeper than just missing what you used to have. Those guys don't win you a World Series. All of this points back to the questionable scouting tactics of the Cardinals when it comes to pure breed hitters in the outfield. Is there a stud out of all those ex-Cards that I just listed? No. They are better than what the Cardinals currently have at the moment, but neither of them push the needle too far.
The truth is the Cardinals have been gun-shy since Oscar Taveras unexpectedly died. They have missed out on big-time Cuban hitters and have seen faulty operations creep up in their system. It's not hard to remember the Cardinals were slapped for hacking into the Houston Astros computer system, a black eye that only found ice due to the Astros' illegal doings in the very recent past.
Carlson could very well pan out, but when will that come into fruition? Will Mike Shildt and John Mozeliak sign off on giving Carlson full-time reps in 2021? His clock should start next year and he shouldn't be removed from the lineup. If Paul DeJong can play 158 games, so can Carlson. The Cardinals need him to be the guy. That's how they set it up.
I know this. The outfield bats were weak the past two seasons, and are weak again this year. Fowler's resurgence couldn't even help the group ascend much. Same old story for a team willing to come within a visible distance of the finish line while failing to storm through it.
As I said recently on this same website, they have either passed on big-hitting talent or failed to offer enough. Bryce Harper, Robert, Tatis Jr., or even the likes of extra-base hit machine, Nicholas Castellanos. Instead, the Cardinals opted for O'Neill, Bader, and Fowler. A mix potent enough to make you a .500 team.
I never thought writing about baseball would become tiring, but it's starting to take that shape. Watching a high-flying offense team up with a stellar pitching staff would be nice to write about one day. At this point, the idea of a hard-hitting Cardinals offense seems overly cinematic. Something located in make-believe land.
If it doesn't change next year, what do you do, Cardinals fans?
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