Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - Sonny Shines But The Offense Is Still Searching For Answers

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

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The St. Louis Cardinals get swept at home by the first place. Brewers as the offense continues to be the number one issue. This is Locked-on Cardinals. You are Locked-on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey there, Cardinals fans. I'm J.D. Haffordan, and I'm a national radio sports anchor.

Born and raised in a Lou and a Lifetime Cardinals fan. And I'm your host for Locked-on Cardinals, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network covering your team every day. You can follow me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio. You can follow the podcast at L0 underscore Cardinals. We want to thank those of you who make Locked on Cardinals your first listen every day. You can make sure that you're, you know, listen to doing us free and available wherever you get your podcast. But if you haven't jumped over onto YouTube yet, I highly encourage you to do that.

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So stop me if you've heard this one before. The Cardinal's offense has to be better, right? I'll tell you what, guys. I know that this is very frustrating. The players are frustrated. coaching staff's frustrated. I'm sure the front office is frustrated. The fans are clearly frustrated. Third out today, just booze coming down from what was left of the crowd at Bush Stadium. Not a lot of times you hear booing from the home crowd,

but it's starting to happen again. And the frustration is starting to boil over for a lot of people. I mean, you see it online. You see it in the comments sections. things like fire Ali, fire the hitting coach when people don't know his name, Turner Ward, by the way, DFA, these guys who aren't hitting, all of these reactions, they're completely understandable. And I'm not here to rip on you for feeling this way.

I'm not an apologist for Ali Marmal or for the front office with what's going on right now. I'm just, I'm here to try to explain what's going on. okay so you know yelling at me to say i don't hold the cardinals accountable for what's going on i have no power over what the cardinals are doing you know it's it's not me it's not up to me to decide what they need to be doing who they need to be signing and stuff i can only relay the information as i see it how i review it and then give it to you so if you're fed up with what's going on with the cardinals already this year that's fine you can't can be. All right. Go ahead and turn them off. If that's what if that will make you feel better and make your day that more enjoyable.

All right. But continuously like tweeting at me about how miserable they are and how bad they are and how you don't want fans to show up anymore and how you can't watch this team anymore. Yet you guys keep tweeting me and watching the game. So, I don't understand that thinking. But like the stuff when it comes to like firing people and. you know, trading people and all the things that people are saying, which I consider outrageous, these are not things that teams are going to do in the first month of the season. Okay. I don't know what the hitting philosophy is as an organization that Turner Ward is teaching, but I'm pretty sure it's something that the Cardinals as a whole, like the whole organization that they're on board with or that he wouldn't be there.

So he's not going anywhere. Ollie just got an extension this offseason, all right? He's not going anywhere. Mo is not going to resign or retire. The DeWitts are not selling the team to another billionaire that's going to come in and shake things up like Steve Cohen did for the Mets. Failed doing it for the Mets, by the way. To get out of this offensive funk that the Cardals are in,

they're going to have to do it internally. with the guys that are here, with the coaches that are here, with the front office people that are here, it's not being lazy, it's not being cheap, it's not that they don't want to win. The facts are that the guys who they're paying to produce are not doing it. They're not. And until they do, this team is going to continue to struggle to score runs. that's just the plain truth. There's no miracle hitters guide that can turn everybody around.

Like, they just got to get through it. McCartle's made some roster moves before today's game to try and keep the guys who are hitting in the lineup more. The option struggling rookie center fielder, Victor Scott the second, to Memphis called the catcher Pedro Pahas. If you're wondering how that helps the offense, well, rookie catcher Yvonne Herrera has been one of the better offensive bats that they've had so far this year. Coming into the game, hitting 250, three home runs, nine RBIs.

They want to have it where the guys who are hitting the most get more bats, which makes sense. So they want both Contreras and Herrera in the lineup together when they can do that. It's very risky doing that when they're both your catchers. So, you know, you don't want to start them. And then heaven forbid something happens to one of them and injury happens. And then you're down a catcher. And you're kind of screwed. Like one of them, if they're deaching that day, if they're catching that day, like, how do you,

how do you do that? You're taking a risk by putting them both in the lineup when you don't have a third catcher. Now you've got Paul has coming. And that makes everything a little bit risky. You've got that third guy who can come in in case something goes wrong. Besides, you know, Victor struggling so much had lost his spot to Siani anyways. And now he can play every day in Memphis, which is where he should have been this

entire time. We know why the Cardinals brought him up. I understand that. We were hoping he wouldn't struggle quite as much as he did coming straight from AA, but it happened. He's now had his taste of Major League Baseball. He realizes how difficult it is. Goes back down to Memphis, get his swing straightened out, start working on putting the ball on the ground a little bit more, and hopefully he'll be back up at some point. They can help this team. Ali even adjusted the lineup a little bit today. Finally moving Paul Goldschman out of the number two spot, sliding him down to number five.

He moved Contreras up to number two, which was something that I brought up earlier in the week. I'm like, why not make that simple adjustment? It's not like you're benching goal. You're just moving him down. You're taking him out of a spot where he's just not producing right now. He's move him down. It's a simple adjustment.

Lars Neupar was in the number three spot today. Gorman dropped all the way down to the number eight spot. and I'm sure many will say it's about time. And I'm right there with you. I don't know why they wait so long to make these adjustments. I'm a guy that I don't see what the big deal is, why you can't move dudes around every single day? Like why does somebody have to hit at number two every single time?

I don't know. You know, when there's the ups and downs of the season, let your hot hitters be at the top of the lineup, getting more of bats or the opportunity to at least get more of bats. But moving him down to number five, the idea, obviously, to take a little pressure off of them, maybe have other people come up in high-level leverage situations. And right away, it looked like it might work when Newbar came up with two one and nobody out in Milwaukee Center fielder, Blake Perkins, that son of a gun, Rob's nude of a three-run

of Homer in the first inning. Because, of course, he does. You know, this team is struggling so much offensively when it rains it pours for this Cardinals offense. And then Aronado gets the walk. Guess who's up with the bases loaded and one out. No pressure, right? Paul Goldschmidt. Paul Goldschmidt. First and bad in the number five spy. I think I've read somewhere that was the first time that he's not bad at either two, three or four since joining the St. Louis Cardinals. The first time comes up, bases loaded one out. So it doesn't matter where Ali tries to hide him in the order right now. The situations just continue to find him. And as has happened all too often already this year, Goldie is unable to come through. He pops out in shallow right field. Runners can't advance.

and then Alec Berlison grounds out to end the inning. I don't know if I like that, by the way. If you're going to put the struggling Goldsmith, why would you put him next to the guy who's kind of struggling as well, and Alec Berluson doesn't make a lot of sense, but I mean, you got to play the guys. But he grounds out, innings over, threats over.

Second inning, they get a lead off double by Mason Wend. Gorman actually doesn't strike out for once and grounds out to second base, but it moves the runner over, so he gets the job done. Good job. Siani walks, steal second base, So now you got second and third and one out,

Donovan up, and he gets posed, not once but twice in this abat on pitches that were clearly outside of the zone, get called strikes, and he gets punched out. I'm going to bring it up on YouTube to show you a picture of the graph there. So even on MLB.com, so strike number three where it says ball, that actually got called a strike. So I should say pitch number three, not strike number three, but pitch number three here. It listed as a ball on MLB.com, but the um called it a strike. And then he called him out on pitch number four as a strike as well. So by the way, that's your bozo call of the game by the umpire where, uh, you know,

Donnie, it happens to him all the time. And I don't know what it is about Britta Donovan that makes these umps call a lot of balls on him strikes. I have no idea what it is. Are they jealous of his hair? I don't know. but as much as I agree with Donnie that those are balls in that situation, you got to be protecting anyway.

You can't leave it up to the amps there and he got burned. You got to be swinging at those. You got to at least foul them off or do something with it. They weren't like egregiously out of the zone where like you're like, oh my gosh, Angel Hernandez style where you're missing by eight inches or something. Like they're still close. But it's another situation where putting the ball in play likely gets you a run. but instead you get the strikeout, second and third two outs, Contreras crowns out.

Itnings over. And the Cardinals had them on the ropes in both innings. They failed to convert, and it just kind of set the tone for the game after those two weddings. You know, you just felt like the life got sucked out of there. Despite not getting the win, Sunny Gray, he was awesome today. Can't take anything away from him. Can't blame him for what happened.

But I've got my takeaways from today's game. We'll talk a little bit more about what happened in this series. All coming up next on Locked on Cardinals. Today's episode is brought to you in part by PolicyGenius. Policy Genius is the smarter way to buy insurance. Their proprietary technology makes it easy to compare personalized quotes and policies from top-rated insurers side by side. Policy Genius's team of licensed experts is here to answer questions, handle paperwork, and help you make decisions with confidence. They work for you, not for the insurance companies, from exploring coverage options to making policy adjustments as your life changes. Policy Genius is your advocate at every step.

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PolicyGenius.com slash locked on MLB. Now, I've been told I'm a competitive person. I would imagine most sports lovers are. And I have a competitive side, and I think we all do. And my competitive side is right now a very big fan of Monopoly Go. And I'm sure you've heard of it. It's been downloaded over 150 million times already. Odds are you're one of them because we all had fun playing Monopoly,

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it's programmed for you every day to bring you the biggest stories without all of that screening. Locked on sports today brings you can't miss analysis, opinions and news. And it's streaming 24-7 on YouTube or the free Amazon Fire TV channels app. Part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, you're a team every day. NFL draft coming up this week, right? So they have got you covered big time. I know you're a football fan. Football is king, right?

You watch the Cardinals. You love the Cardinals, but the odds are you probably watch some NFL football too. And I'm telling you, the Locked-on podcast. network has got you covered when it comes to all of the NFL stuff. And if you haven't watched the Locked on Sports Today streaming channel, all sorts of NFL stuff going on right now. So check it out for yourself. And remember, you can always catch every pitch of the Cardinals hometown broadcast with Sirius XM, just download the SXM app and search the word Cardinals. So our takeaways from today's game. Let's start with the Perkins robbing of Newt Bar's home run

in the first inning, which, I mean, Such a deflator, right? Such a deflator. You've got this team who can't buy a hit in big situations. Appear to have little to no power whatsoever. I made the joke on Twitter X today, where I'm like, does somebody like turn on a huge fan every time the Cardinals hit a fly ball that looks like it might carry out of the ballpark?

And then it just dies right in front of the warning track. Have you noticed that? Like other teams, it just keeps going and it clears the wall. Cardinals, they can't get it to go that far. Like if it's a 400-foot wall, they hit it 390. Like, it just has not happened yet for them. And they finally get one that's going to go over the wall. It would be a huge, huge boost to their confidence going at the beginning of this game.

You know, it's first inning. And the centerfielder for the Brewers robs it, brings it back. And like I mentioned earlier, it just sucks the air right out of the stadium. You're just like, oh, my gosh, here we go again. Here we go again. I'm sure they were doing that in the dugout. Like, I cannot believe this keeps happening that we just can't score. Offense failed early and failed throughout the game.

I mentioned the first two winnings, but they end up going 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position. They left 10 men on base. The lack of clutch hitting, it's, frankly, it's been shocking. It's been shocking how horrible it's been this year. Like, this is not with the. the office was supposed to look like. There was nobody who took a look at this office and you saw the names of the guys that

are in that lineup and go, man, they're probably going to struggle to score some runs. And I'm not saying they were going to be like a top five, but you didn't think they were going to be like this. Like, it's shocking. If you remember last year, how annoying it was that the Cardinals would consistently lose the first game of a series. Remember that? They can't win one.

It's tough over and over and over. Like, I don't even remember what the record was, but it was bad. Well, this year, they're 0 and 7 in series finalies. They haven't won the final game of the series yet this year, which is just like an odd stat that I just wanted to pass along to you, but it's just weird. Like, how does it happen? Oh, and seven so far. And then you've got Sunny Gray.

And Sunny Gray was awesome today. Sunny Gray was fantastic. six in the third innings, 12 strikeouts. Like you can't ask for much better than that. Unfortunately, Owen Miller, who? Yeah, Owen Miller. It's a breaking ball in the seventh inning. Wasn't even a bad pitch.

It was down. It was out of the zone. He chased what probably would have been a strikeout. Goes down and gets it. Drives it into the left field, scores two runs after they stole another base off the cardals, which is another problem that they really need to work on. I don't know what it is about not being able to throw out any runners, but it's really weird, considering we had Yadi forever,

and now we can't throw anybody out. But you just can't really put the, you can't be upset at Sunny Gray for what happened today. I had someone tweet at me talking about the situation where, you know, when it was Miller at the plate and Ali came out and decided to keep him in the game. and I had got somebody tweeted me. I don't know if it's a guy or a girl, but it says,

my favorite thing is when our manager asks our starters, what he should do on the mound mid game. Like, that is such a lame take. Like managers go out to talk to their starters all the time. Pitching coaches do it all the time, especially the veterans and just kind of ask them, you know, when it gets to a later portion of the game,

and they've been pitching well, how are you feeling? How are you feeling? you think you got enough left to get this guy? What do you want to do? How do you want to attack? What are you thinking about this? And it's quite common.

Like to send that to me, it just says to me that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, whoever you are. Like people go out and ask them all the time. How we feel it? And in certain situations, obviously, they know that they're going to make a move. And they're like, well, this is going to be his last hitter.

And then they remove them. But in that situation, where Gray felt like he could get it done or he would have said, no, I'm gassed. I, you know, Ollie backed him up. It was like, all right, let's go get him. Let's do this. And it didn't work out this time.

I think you got to respect that. I respect that. You want your guy, your ace of the staff, wanting the ball in those moments saying, I can get this dude. You want that bulldog attitude. You don't want somebody who's like, I'm done, dude, let me out of here,

put it on somebody else's shoulders. I don't want that, dude. I want what happened. today and it just happened to not work out, gave up a base hit. I like somebody who competes that way. And there's no guarantee that Ali, if he goes to the pen, that, oh, doesn't mean he's automatically out, Miller could get a hit off of somebody else just as easy. That's baseball.

The hope is that those two runs aren't going to be enough to beat you, but, you know, with the way this offense is going, it almost feels like trying to get just one run is like trying to climb Mount Everest right now. Like, it's just a huge struggle. I had some other tweets today I want to bring up to you. And this is not me making fun of you guys. I'm just telling you, like, you're giving you an idea of how some of these people are thinking,

a bit of a, you know, kind of a sound off here. A.J. Sports 120 says, I know it's still early, and I know they just extended him, but I really think this team needs a new manager. Now, while it's recoverable, OLLI is the most uninspiring leader I have ever seen. Now, I don't know what's going on in the clubhouse behind doors. But I can tell you this last year, when things were as bad as we've ever seen him around here,

the players continue to stick up for Ali. And what that showed me is that it is not a leadership thing from Ali that is a problem. If Ali is guilty of anything, it might be that he sticks by his veterans and trust them too much. Instead of pulling the trigger on some moves to try to jumpstart the offense a little bit, where it took him a while to finally decide, hey, Paul, we're going to move your dad a little bit. But it took him a while. Like I would have done it much sooner than this. But as you saw today, you got the lineup adjustments to try and help improve things.

And guess what? They still came up with zeros. And I don't get a sense that there is a leadership problem on this team whatsoever. I don't think that's it. It's simply just hitting the ball is the problem. That's all it is. It's not that these guys don't like each other. It's not like they're not getting along.

It's not that, you know, they don't respect each other. or that they're not trying to win. They're just having a tough time as a team hitting the ball consistently. You lost two to one on Friday. If you want to go back to that game and say, okay, you don't pitch to Contreras, that's something maybe you would change. But when you got your best guy on the mound facing their guy,

you go roll with your dude. You expect your guy to win those battles. And it didn't happen. Dube single. Michaelis getting ripped for three home runs on Saturday after he was given a lead. It's not a managerial leadership problem. It's an execution problem by Miles Michaelis. They'll be the first to tell you that.

Like, how is that Ollie's fault? And it makes me sound like I'm an Ali apologist. And I'm not. I'm just trying to explain things to you guys where like I don't know why everybody blames Ali for everything that happens. And I've said it repeatedly, you just can't have, you know, Miles Michael. this type of stuff at this point in his career missing spots because when he does, he gets murdered. And when he's hitting his spot, you see how good the results can be.

You've seen that over a few innings here this year in a couple of starts. And then he has one bad inning or something and he's hanging sliders and he gets destroyed. It's not rocket science. He doesn't have the stuff to blow people away. He can't afford to miss spots. And when he does, it gets it hard and it gets it far. Corey N. I'm not one to overreacting to say that these guys aren't putting an effort or working their ass off to get right. It wouldn't be fair. But there needs to be some sense of urgency with this. And it seems like there's something not clicking within this organization.

I'll tell you what's not clicking in this organization. A third of your lineup. That's what's not clicking in this organization. Paul Goldschmidt's hitting 179. I'll go through the stats here. Paul Goldman, Gorman, 116. Jordan Walker 164. Victor Scott the second was hitting 85 as a starter. He was in there a lot. Brendan Donovan, your lead off guy. Everybody loves Brennan Donovan. He's batting 2-10.

Was one for 13 in the series and it's now three for his last 34. But nobody calls out Brin Donovan because y'all love him. Nobody gives him hell for it. He's struggling too. And there's not a team in this league that can get this kind of production from guys who are supposed to be big pieces of their offense and survive. Nobody could. Not the Dodgers, not the Braves, none of them.

If four of their top nine guys aren't hitting, they're all batting under 200, they're not going to win. It's just not possible. And like Ali said after the game today, it's not a lack of preparation because he was asked about this. He's like, it's not a lack of preparation. It's not a lack of effort. It's not that these guys don't care.

they are doing everything they can possibly do to figure out what is going wrong. And the results are just not there yet. I mean, how many times leading up? Because we know Arnato has kind of gotten out of his funk. He's been better. Not great, but he's been better, right? And they would show him in the batting cages hours and hours before the game, taking extra BP, trying to figure it out.

They're all doing this. Results just aren't there yet. And the only thing you can do is what Ali said. You've got to be patient and hope that they come around sooner rather than later because these guys that are struggling are the people that you built this offense around. You're not going to cut them. You're not DFAing them. You're not trading them. They just have to figure it out.

You're stuck with them. This is what you've bought into. And now they've got to produce. And that's what you're waiting on. We'll wrap it up next with some interesting stats, which includes a comparison to last year. team, which I hope you're sitting down because it might make you a little queasy. That's next on Locked on Cardinals. Baseball season is officially underway.

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That's who I'm backing during the Stanley Cup playoffs for no reason whatsoever. It just seems like a team that I want to be on board with. So one of my favorite aspects about price picks, how quick and simple it is. You can make your your picks and submit your entries. you can do it all in less than 60 seconds. And you get paid quick too. So quick withdrawals, easy gameplay, and an enormous selection of players and stat types is what makes price picks, the number one daily fantasy sports app.

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up to $100. Pick more, pick less. It's that easy with price. picks. Locked on has launched the first ever national sports 24-7 streaming channel on YouTube. It's also available on Amazon Fire TV and the free Fire TV channels app. Locked on sports today here for you 24-7 covering the top sports stories of the day and the local experts of Locked-on. Plus, you've got the national shows covering every league so you can find it now available on the free Fire TV channels app. All right, stat time. Shout out to Rob Raines

over at ShtelSportspage.com. He puts a bunch of this stuff up there. And I love it. for baseball fans and you got to be kind of a stat nerd when it comes to being a big baseball fan. You're listening to a baseball podcast, so I assume you are just like me. Sunny Gray's streak of scoreless innings to begin his Cardinals career snapped at 17 today across three starts. The only two pitchers with longer streaks to begin a season with the Cardinals since 1969. Nice. We're Woody Williams with 24 in 2003 and John Tudor with 19 back in 1988. The Cardle's streak without a home run reached eight plus games at a total of 281 at bats.

Personally, I'm not one that likes to rely on the long ball, but the power outage, a little shocking. Only the White Sox have hit less home runs. Cardinals have 13 on the season. That's it. Sox have 11, but the White Sox are a terrible baseball team and are 3 and 18 so far. Goldie, Aronado, Gorman, and Walker, your big boppers coming into the season have a combined five home runs this year together. Tyler O'Neill, who is on the IL, shocker, has seven by himself this year. Marcel O'Zuna, another former Cardinal, has got eight by himself. So those two former Cardinals

by themselves have 15. They have more than this entire Cardinals team. Kind of wild. As I mentioned earlier, the team was 0 for 9 with a runner in scoring position today during the four game losing streak that they're currently on combined four of 32 in those situations. Just awful. The Cardinals have scored 76 runs in their 22 games, an average of 3.45 runs per game. Their total is tied with the Rockies. For the fewest runs in the National League, Rockies is another bad baseball team. They've scored three runs or less in 15 of their 22 games. Like, if you want to point in a problem, that's where it is.

It's not your manager. The offense has got a hit. You can't win baseball games when you don't score. How about this one from the Great Bar. Bernie Mikkelis. In 2023, this is the stat I warned you about it, right? This is one that might make you feel a little ill. 2023, cardals were 9 and 13 after 22 games with a run differential of minus 2. Their offense was averaging 4.72 runs per game. This season, the Cardinals are now 9 and 13 after 22 games. Run differential, though, minus 19. Their offense averaging 3.45

runs per game. And this was the thing that you didn't think was going to be a problem. You didn't think the offense was going to be an issue coming into this year. You were hoping that whatever changes they made to the rotation and to the pitching staff in general, that those were going to be the right moves and that things would click offensively and everything would be fine. That's been the problem. So if there is a bright spot to this, as hard as it is, to find something bright to talk about, it would be this for me. Most people, and I'm talking about not just card I'm talking about other locked on hosts who have no interest in the cardinals being good whatsoever. In fact, they're enjoying the fact that they've been losing.

But they believe that this offense is much better than what they've shown and that they'll break out eventually. Last year, we knew the pitching was bad going into the season and that there was no real hope that they were going to get any better. We think it's going to be different for the offense here in 2024. It isn't supposed to be happening like this. Pitching last year, we knew was going to struggle. this is not something that people were prepared for, which is why people believe that eventually it'll straighten itself out. And if they continue to play defense the way they have,

which has been great, get the pitching that they have from the bullpen and for the most part from the rotation, minus a couple of ugly games from Michaelis and Kyle Gibson, that they should be able to pull themselves out of this. Just waiting on the offense. TikTok, TikTok. All right, thanks for making a lot. Tarkarkark, your first listen every day.

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