5 baseball things on my mind: Gray skies for Cardinals as trade deadline looms

Let's get into a few things as the heat starts to make its way back to St. Louis.

Is Sonny Gray an ace, or just a Cardinals ace? Before we get into that and other things, let’s talk about my least favorite superhero team-up: humidity and heat.

St. Louis offers this up like cedar plank-grilled salmon in July and August, turning the city into a literal furnace. The tag team partners take turns pounding hard-working humans like myself as we wager and quake our way through a work day. The temps on Friday only got into the mid-80s, but the humidity slammed the pedal to the floor.

At one point in the warehouse I work at in University City, my beard was sweating. I could run my hand through it and have a handful of sweat water on my fingers to fling at the nearby boxes laughing at me. They’re sitting there, lifeless and sweatless while I ruffle through them to count and pick products. Next week, the heat returns to tag into the ring, and basically suck all the oxygen out of our mouth and chest.

If the forecasted high is 95, expect it to really be 97-98 by the middle of the afternoon. Back in the scoreboard days, you could look out of an inning and see the moisture boiling in the air over the field. It hits that kind of inferno on the blacktop of our work parking lot. All this to say next week will suck and there will be lots of sweating, something the Cardinals are doing at the absolute wrong time.

1) Paging Mr. Gray, an ace?

For the second series-opener in a row, the big offseason acquisition, one I painted ace colors all over in my commentary, pitched like white hot garbage. Sonny Gray took the mound against the Washington Nationals, a team with 47 wins before first pitch, and gave up five runs in five innings of work.

Gray’s previous two starts covered 14 innings, but involved eight earned runs. After last night’s fart gas performance, his ERA stands at 3.79. If that were Miles Mikolas or Kyle Gibson, it would be an honorable mark. For a guy making $25 million buckaroos, it’s bush league work when the team really needs him.

There are three days until the trade deadline. Three days and change before the clock runs out. The Cardinals rocketed to six games over .500 on July 8 after a win from Mikolas, but have produced a 5-8 record since. After winning two of three against the sinking yet still very talented Braves, St. Louis dropped three of four versus Pittsburgh and Washington.

Every time the Cardinals take two steps forward, something knocks them back on their ass. Gray letting a 6-2 lead slip away and parts of the lineup being unable to come through with runners in scoring position led to a series-opening turd against the Nationals. They’re an adequate 53-50. If you’re John Mozeliak and you know the wildcard chances are there and the division gap isn’t too large, what do you do?

The team has five starters, but can always use another. The bullpen has been taxed for weeks due to the number of close games played, so they need a reload of arm strength. The offense can go dormant for days at a time, but where are you improving? With a fringe team like this, it’s the little things like your best starter doing his job that count.

Gray won his last start against Atlanta, but gave up five earned runs. In his last five starts, covering 28.1 innings, Gray has allowed 21 earned runs. The Cardinals need more.

2) Three big bats took a tumble, offense falls

The Cardinals have a below average offense. They currently rank 19th in OPS, 20th in slugging percentage, 18th in on-base percentage, and 14th in batting average. The last mark puts it barely above league average. I don’t even want to look up their RISP work. Suffice to say, the lineup has rebounded from a putrid start to climb back closer to respectability. It’s like the 2024 team climbing back to more respectable waters with their record, but still sitting in the murky area of bubble contention.

What happened? It’s simple. Three right-handed hitters took a nose dive at once. Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, and Jordan Walker. They haven’t been what the team needed them to be, and it’s laid a gauntlet of thick shit all over the team’s scoring ability. Think about it. We’re happy about a Goldschmidt homer every 3-4 days, but he still can’t get his OPS above .700. That’s awful.

Arenado hits for 10-14 days, but it’s mostly singles and some doubles. He ripped home run #11 last night to help build an early lead. It’s too bad he had double the amount of homers after July concluded last summer. He’s living on a floor three or more levels down from where he was in 2022.

Walker was propped up as the second coming of Albert Pujols (Mozeliak’s worst comment ever), but has looked more like Brock Peterson this year. After rebounding from a rough start in 2023 to finish the season as the team’s most consistent hitter behind Willson Contreras, Walker hasn’t risen above Memphis in months. He went down there for a few week experiment, but has only slashed .237/.303/.374 in 262 plate appearances.

He’s shrinking like Dylan Carlson, instead of rising like a Pujols clone. That comparison was a black eye on the development of Walker, coming in second to the apparent coaching problem laying on a pool raft inside this organization. The bad news is this all bodes terrible for Walker, a guy who is losing important time. They could promote him, but what if he keeps hitting rough up here? No good.

That’s three prominent lineup pieces who have given the team a combined WAR of 1.3 this season. That’s how bad it’s gotten, and that is why the offense is where it is.

3) Trade Carlson or DFA him

It’s time. The experiment is over. How many more at-bats and outfield gaffes can be wasted. Last night, he took a route to a line drive that a high schooler would have been grilled for missing. The ball sailed over his glove, and cleared the bases in extra innings. If Alec Burleson struggles, Carlson isn’t much higher.

He’s adequate at best in the outfield, and his bat has been turned off like a cellphone stuck in water for years now. If he’s still on this team in a week, the front office failed at their job. Trade him. Give him away. Designate him for assignment. Offer him a job as a clubhouse chef. Whatever he will become somewhere else, it’s not happening here.

People need to realize that last part. The success he finds elsewhere wouldn’t be found here. Same for Jack Flaherty and Jordan Hicks. There is no guarantee he changes uniforms, and is able to tap into his stuff in Detroit. Some players just don’t thrive as Cardinals. The list grows.

4) A centerfielder found

Count Michael Siani as a bright spot this season. While visiting the Opening Drive yesterday, J.P. Morosi talked about Siani’s defense being a nationally respected performance. He’s a run saver out there. His bat is improving each month. He’s one of those rare players you look up, and find that his last 7/15/30 games are all golden.

In his last 30 games, Siani is slashing .295/.329/.410. He’s hitting .400 over the last week, and still saves his team runs in the field. He does from the last spot in the order, offering speed and some burgeoning pop before the lineup turns over. The overall stats won’t impress many, but he’s gotten better each month.

The defense is next level great. Whether it’s chasing down a surefire double in the gap or going back beautifully on a deep fly, he makes it look easy and doesn’t have the confidence and swagger streak of Harrison Bader. Siani just fucking plays.

5) Oliver Marmol pulling the right moves despite record dip

Marmol is set to experience every norm for an MLB manager, specifically the record a team finishes with. The Cardinals won 91 games in his first year, 71 games in year two, and are shooting for somewhere in between for his third. He’s improved his in-game work as much as someone can with a hand stuck up his ass, but I can’t blast many of his moves.

He’s gotten better with pulling starters, using all of his pen, and trying to stick to a lineup. He dropped Goldschmidt in the order, and moved Masyn Winn to the top. He’s doing as much as one can with a roster containing impressive promise, but also one with three sunken offensive pillars and a tired pen.

Managing a team that plays a 1-2 run game 98% of the time is hard ass work, and should be respected from the outside. The Cardinals are who they are at this point, and the results are player-oriented. It’s not like the Mike Matheny days where there was a head-scratcher each night. Marmol is doing the best one can do, even if his sense of true control isn’t what it used to be between a manager and front office.

No roasting from me. I’m quite honestly tired of this team, yet can’t completely break away. Tired of wondering if they will go up, down, or stay in the middle… but still waiting for an outburst. My good friend P.J. has said they were a pile of underachieving dudes for months now, but I tried to stay in and believe despite my honest ruminations on their fate. They’ve seemed prepped to launch for weeks, but can never take that big step.

As Bono said, running to stand still. I don’t know what they will do at the deadline and am starting to care less. If you haven’t noticed, there’s been less Cards talk here over the past two weeks, and subscribers/reads have reflected that. The truth is I don’t wish to watch this team every single night, because they’re not worth that kind of time.

I don’t watch City SC instead, or sit on hands and knees waiting for preseason hockey. I give it what the team deserves, and this Cards team is just a frustrating (and exciting) bunch of pretenders. They’re not looking like real contenders at the worst time.

The last ten years of Cardinals baseball has been largely unremarkable.