Their record can get worse, though losing two out of the three to the White Sox will likely be a low point.
I just… I’m tired guys. I don’t know how to polish a turd. I’m annoyed CB Bucknor couldn’t let the Cardinals lose on their own, like genuinely. You provided an excuse. It’s entirely too easy to imagine a better-called strike zone leading to a single and then boom the narrative on this series is completely different. Like that’s it. But you wanted the game to be over.
I mean it’d still be depressing to lose a game to the White Sox, but like that happens all the time. White Sox are gonna end up winning around 50 games and that’s a third of the season. In other words, they’ll win almost one out of three games guaranteed (and if they’re closer to 60 wins, it’s slightly more than one out of three games. Like winning 2 out of 3 would have been fine.
Anyway, it doesn’t make sense to me that this team is bad and yet they are clearly playing like a bad team. Like there’s no denying it. After years of things going right for the Cardinals, even in seasons where they didn’t quite make the playoffs, this is now season two of so many things going wrong that shouldn’t go wrong. If they handled last season better, it could have gone differently. What are we getting a different offense this year? Nobody wanted that. I don’t know what the Cardinals could have done differently to make the offensive problems go away.
The Cardinals need the offense to come back to life. I don’t know how you do it. I really don’t. Whatever way you can. Do what Sonny Gray did and change clothes, buy the slump buster burger at The Post, cry to the heavens, go to therapy, it doesn’t matter, just make sure it works.
Anyway, we’re facing the Mets again. Maybe the Cardinals can have the Mets’ number this year. They did pretty well against them last time. They were one strike away from sweeping them in fact. This is the same team the Cardinals faced a week ago. In fact, the Cardinals are even facing two of the same starters.
When the Cardinals came into New York, the Mets were two games above .500 and when they left, they were just one game above .500. Since then, they split a four-game series with the Cubs and then got swept by the Tampa Bay Rays. So they enter this series with not much better of a record than the Cards, in fact with just one more win.
Starling Marte, who was on bereavement for the last two games of the series, is activated instead of Mark Vientos, who only ruined the series with his walk-off homer. J.D. Martinez, freshly promoted from the minors at the beginning of the previous series, has a 34.4 K% and 92 wRC+ through 10 games. Brett Baty has also turned it up since facing the Cards with a 2-home run game and now a 113 wRC+ on the season.
The Cardinals are coming off a bullpen game, but the Mets are also coming off some heavy bullpen usage. Five of their eight pitchers were used in last night’s game, two of whom were pitching on back-to-back days. Edwin Diaz threw 19 pitches in a blown save loss. Adam Ottavino threw 35 pitches on Saturday. They have Adrian Houser available, who was moved to the pen, but who the Cardinals crushed. They have Cole Suler available, who was called up a few days ago from the minors. There are other pitchers available, but this is a tired bullpen.
As I said, the Mets throw two of the same pitchers, Jose Butto and Jose Quintana. The Quintana one is bad news, sort of. He threw 8 innings last time. But you know forgive me if I’m not that scared of him when he struck out just 3 Cardinals and got lit up for 8 runs in his last start against the Rays. Butto the Cardinals actually did hit, with 4 runs allowed in 5.2 IP. He didn’t pitch particularly well either.
That leaves Sean Manaea, who has been… okay. He has a 3.29 ERA, though he has two rather alarming signs. His GB% rate is at a career low at just 32.5%. His previous career low was 38% and he had a 40.9 GB% rate last year. His HR/FB% is just 2.9% despite a career HR/FB% of 12.6%. So basically, he’s allowing a lot more flyballs and getting way better resuls than he ever has. The bottom should drop on that front.
The other alarming sign is that he has walked everybody. Again throughout his career, he has just a 6.7 BB%, though it was 8.4% last year. This year so far it’s at 14.1%. This is a guy due for regression, one way or the other. Unfortunately, regression can come in the form of pitching better and making this numbers look better.
This is an eminently winnable series, they get to avoid Luis Severino and avoid top 100 prospect Christian Scott, who had a pretty good debut start. The Cardinals have the better starter on Wednesday, guaranteed, because Sonny Gray is pitching. I consider Manaea against Kyle Gibson to be a wash, and by projections, Mikolas against Butto is a wash too. More or less 50/50 in those starts. Gray is better than Quintana, so the Cardinals are well-positioned to win this series.
Just please do it Cardinals.