Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - The Cardinals Continue To Do This And It's Costing Them Games

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

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In a snooze fest of a performance, the Cardinals lose the final game and the series to the Arizona Diamondbacks. Let's go ahead and break out the smelling salts and wake up a little bit and try to figure out what the heck went wrong on today's episode of 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. Hafford and I'm a national radio sports anchor. You're born and raised in the Louvre and a lifetime Cardinals, and I'm your host for Locked on Cardinals, part of the Lockedon Podcast Network covering your team every day. You can follow me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio. You can follow the podcast at LO underscore Cardinals.

I want to make those of you who do make Locked on Cardinals your first listen every day. We're free and available wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube. Be sure to like, subscribe, and comment and interact with us. Hit the notification button so you know when new episodes are posted. This is a show serving Cardle Nation and giving the best fans in baseball. All of the info about the birds on the bat. Today's episode being brought to you by eBay Motors from brakes to exhaust kits and beyond.

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That's how boring this one got on Sunday. Yes, today is tax day, by the way, in case you were wondering, don't give me a hard time for waiting until the last minute. And for those of you who haven't done your taxes, you better get cracking because Uncle Sam is expecting some payback. Anyway, back to the game that was on Sunday. Honestly, until the fifth inning, things were at least a little bit entertaining. Very disappointing could be a very good way to describe how it was early on, but at least entertaining. And the same things that have plagued the Cardinals throughout the first 16 games of the season. It's something that plagued them all year last year, situational hitting, driving in guys

who are in scoring position, having trouble doing it, and it's causing losses to start to add up. And for some reason, the Cardinals can't help themselves, but they're really bad at scoring runs when Miles Michaelis is on the mound. It was brought up during the telecast, how little they score when he's the starter, and for the second consecutive start, and for the 33rd time and 154 career starts,

since Michaelis joined the Cardinals, the team didn't score any runs. none. It's an unbelievable staff that happens that often when Miles Michaelis is on the mound. I don't have the stats in front of me, but I'm going to go out of a limb and say that when a team doesn't score any runs, they probably don't win many games either. And the Cardinals didn't scored he runs on Sunday. And guess what? They didn't win either. And the frustrating part was that they had some really good chances to put some runs on the board early on against Zach Gowan, former prospect of the organization and just they just failed to capitalize on the

situations first inning they went down without even a whimper like it was just boom all a sudden two strikeouts and they're gone it's like wait what did the inning happen uh but in the second they get a lead off double by nolan aranato wilsa contraris then strikes out but newt works a walk followed by a single by yvonne herrera the bases are loaded with one out now we got something going to bring up not mason win not mason win but instead brandy Crawford comes to the plate. He got to start at shortstop today, and I have fielded seemingly endless questions about why Mason Wynn is not in the lineup. Who is Mason Wynn leading the team in hitting right now? 22 years old, hitting, I think 349 is what he's at. They want to know

why Mason Wynn needs so many days off. And the simple answer, the best way I can describe it to you, is a term that was made famous by the NBA, load management. That's what the cardinals are going with. The cardinals have a plan in place to give Mason wins certain days off to keep him fresh throughout the season. That's what they're trying to do, even though he didn't start on Wednesday. They had an off day on Thursday. Manager Ali Marmel said Mason needs a day. We talked about it and his body can use it. He's swinging it well, playing good defense and running the bases. He's doing everything you would want him to do. But in conversation with him, today would be a good day for him to have it off.

This is going to be a long season for him, and keeping him fresh will be important. Our conversation has been good, and we agreed that today would be a good day for him to rest. That's it. That's it. It's not Ollie saying, hey, we got a good matchup here with Brandon Crawford against Zach Gallen. Let's get Crawford some of bets.

That's not what's happening. But this is why you saw Brandon Crawford in the game instead of Mason win, and that's something that you will see continue to happen, that Brandon Crawford is going to get some spot starts here and there throughout the season. And the idea is just to keep Mason win healthy, to keep them fresh because he's never had to play this many games, at least to the amount that they're hoping he plays in one season before. That's the idea. So with one out and the base is loaded, it's Brandon Crawford instead of Mason win at the plate.

And I'll give Crawford some credit. All right. Again, we're not going to be super negative on everything that it goes on with the Cardinals. There's ups and downs throughout the season. But I do want to give Brandon Crawford some credit. He had a really good at bat against that Gallen. The results, not what you wanted, but the bat itself pretty good. He falls behind quickly 0 and 2, works it back, foul some balls off, takes some tough pitches, gets the count back to 3 and 2. And then Gallin throws an absolute dot at the bottom of the strike zone for the punchout. like just a perfect pitch. It was not right down the middle or anything like.

It was the very bottom of the zone. Half the baseball was actually under the zone, but the top part hits the bottom portion of the strike zone. It's a good call by the hump. It's a strikeout. Zach Allen's good. It's stuff like this that makes Zach Allen one of the best in baseball. And unfortunately, for the Cardinals,

it was another strikeout in a key spot where putting the ball in play It was a necessity right there. And then Siani grounds out two pitches later and just like that, threats over. Fast forward. Let's go to the fourth inning. Wilson Contreras, guess what? Lead off double. Lars Newpark grounds out weekly to the second basement,

but because he put the ball in play, which apparently is very difficult for the Cardinals so far this year. But he puts the ball in play and it moves Contreras over to third base. And now you've got a runner at third, one out. Rookie Yvonne Herrera comes to the play. We're not going to knock Herrera. much. He swung the bat very, very well so far this season. You like what you see out of the young rookie catcher. Works another full count against Gallen, but say it with me now. Unfortunately,

for the Cardinals, it was another strikeout in a key spot where just putting the ball in play likely scores a run there. Crawford comes up next, pops out on the first pitch, she sees, and then the inning is over once again. And that was really about it for the offense on Sunday. They go into a shell the rest of the game is that Evax pitchers retire 18 of the final 19 Cardinals hitters and the guys get shut out for the first time this season and a 5 to nothing

loss. The five run inning that the Diamondbacks put together in the fifth, we're going to talk about that. We'll talk about Miles Michaelis's part and all of this all coming up next on Locked on Cardinals. Passion driving patience, what brings home the winning trophy is also what keeps your ride or die

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Maybe you get to the fifth inning. The scoreboard's not looking so good. Feeling low, not sure you or your team can pull out a win. That's when you dig deep, you lift your head up and say to yourself, time to get back in the game, pull off some bank heist and take as much of my friend's money as I possibly can. You might be a little confused right now. That's right. The smash hit mobile game.

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and climb the leaderboard. So get back out there, put on your game face, download Monopoly Go, now free on the app store or Google Play. Are you watching Fox Sports or ESPN on your TV all day? And you got to turn down the volume because you can't stand all of the shouting that goes on on those shows. Well, if that's the case, make your switch to Locked on Sports Today. It's a free 24-7 sports streaming channel and it's program for you every day

to bring you the biggest stories without all of the screaming. Locked on Sports Today brings you can't miss analysis, opinions, and news. streaming 24-7 on YouTube or the free Amazon Fire TV channels app. It's part of the Locktown Podcast Network, your team every day. And thanks for making Lockdown Cardinals, your first listen every day. I know we're going to get a lot of comments about a lot of different topics today. So drop them in the comment section on YouTube. Hit me up on Twitter X.

And just know that your feedback is always welcome and encouraged. Even if we disagree, even if you don't like what I'm saying and you think I'm full of crap, that's fine. Let me know if that's what you think. It's okay. we can have a discussion about this stuff because not a lot of things went right for the Cardinals on Sunday and people are upset about it. For four innings on Sunday, Miles Michaels was pretty darn good. It was out dueling Zach Gallin, if we want to be honest about things. He looked better than Gallin did.

Outside of that first inning, Gallen had runners on base threatening to score the whole time, while Michaelis was just going through the guy, through the Diamondbacks lineup like a knife through warm butter, had faced the minimum of 12 batters had only allowed one hit. Everything looked like. It looked like they were starting to work Zach Gallen, and they were going to finally push some runs across, and with the way Michaelis was throwing. Maybe the Cardinals were able to steal one here,

but it didn't happen. He was doing what he normally does when he does throw well. He's pumping strikes. He's keeping headers off balance. He's using his defense to his advantage. Simple formula, but in the fifth inning, things unraveled rather quickly for my, Miles, Michaelis, and the Cardinals, gives up a single, then a double.

So he's got second and third and nobody out. This is the bottom of the fifth any, by the way. This is a situation where the Cardinals have sucked. They've had trouble scoring in these types of situations, specifically in the last two days. But good teams normally cash in when this type of scenario pops up, and that's what the Diamondbacks did. Unlike the Cardinals, they didn't strike out.

They put it in play, they get a sack fly, then another double. and all of a sudden it's two to nothing, which is not like, you know, you can't come back from that. Two to nothing, not bad. So you're like, okay, maybe if we stop the bleeding here, everything's going to be fine. Michaelis gets the next hitter to ground out,

but then back to back walks to the number nine hitter, Tucker Barnhart, and then the leadoff hitter, Coutel Marte, but walking Tucker Barnhart at this point of his career, you just cannot do that. You can't. Very unlike Miles. And after the second walk to Marte, we got the bases loaded and Ali makes the move to the bullpen. And that's how quickly things changed, you know, from facing the minimum of 12 to all of a sudden, you got bases loaded and we got one out.

And two runs are across the plate and your starter is out of the game. He summons Andre Palanti from the pen. And here's where people are going to begin the whole, you know, fire-a-li chance, which is fine if you want to, although the idea here was because Corbyn Carroll was coming up to the play. Left-handed hitter, Palante's got good splits against left-handers. They didn't have Matthew Libertor, who was out this weekend. He's dealing with an illness of some sort of sort of should be joining the team in Oakland. But that was one of the things that the bullpen was short-handed. Why not Zach Thompson? I don't know. But he goes with

Palante, and he does everything but diffuse the situation. Like everything. but defuse it. Carol, singles, drives home two, ground ball in the hole between first and second, then a wild pitch brings home another, and it's five to nothing. Now you're looking at crap. We're facing Zach Gallen, and we're down five runs. We're in big trouble. All of these runs, charged Miles Michaelis, by the way, making his line look rather gross, considering how it started. Four and two thirds, five runs, four hits, two walks, three strikeouts, the ERA balloons to 5.82 after four starts. he gives up three heads, but no runs are charged to him. But I think everyone can agree that his appearance was a failure as far as trying to limit

the damage because he didn't limit anything. He let them all come in. So not a very good job. Ryan Fernandez got in for the final two and a third innings, allows no hit, strikes out two, walks one. Look pretty good. Look pretty good. I don't know how disinterested Arizona was by the time Ryan Fernandez came in the game.

I mean, it's five to nothing. Again, not an unsurmount. honorable run total that good teams can't come back on, but the Cardinals just never threatened after the top of the fifth inning. There was just nothing. There was nothing there. So here comes some stats, courtesy of Rob Raines over at STL Sportspage.com. Always a good read. The Cardinals had only one hit and seven at bats with a runner in scoring position on Sunday. And in the last two games, which they lost, they were a combined two of 17 with a man on second or third, dropping their average in those situations for the season to 224, 28 of 125 so far this year.

It's got to be better. Cardinals were shut out for the first time this season, but in their 16 games, the offense continues to have problems. They have scored three runs or less 10 times. And after assembling this starting rotation, my everydayers can back me up on this one. I repeatedly, repeatedly said that if the Cardinals, are going to win games this season with this kind of rotation, their offense has got to be able to keep up with scoring four, five runs game.

They're going to need to because the pitching staff outside of Sunny Gray and probably a couple of starts here or there are not built to shut out other teams. They're built to eat innings and go as long as they can. I know you guys are tired of hearing that phrase gets thrown in my face all the time on Twitter. But that's the idea is for them to go five, six innings and probably give up three or four runs. And then the Cardinals' offense is supposed to be able to out swing the competition. And so far this year, they have not. Scoring three or less runs than 63% of your games is not going to get it done.

It's just not how this team has been assembled. So there are a couple ways that you might be looking at this team right now. I've kind of split it up where there's two types of Cardinal fans right now. There's one on this side. There's one on the other side. I will describe each one of them for you. You can decide which side you think you belong in. We will be doing that next on Locked on Cardinals.

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So, and I know that there's different layers to fans of any team, right? But if I have to split the fan base right now, this is kind of how I'm going off of what I'm getting on social media, what I'm reading in the comments sections for not just my show, but everybody else as well. There's kind of like two groups right now when it comes to St. Louis Cardinals fans. Neither of you are wrong, by the way. Now one is right and the other one is wrong. But here's how it seems to me. You've got a group over here that has got their pitchforks. They're out.

And they believe that the Cardinals, 16 games into the season, are failures, that they're failing, that they're not any good. Everyone is overrated. The hitting coach, Turner Ward, pitching coach, Dusty Blake, although we haven't had as many complaints about him this year. I wonder why. And manager Ali Marmal, they should all be fired. They don't deserve their jobs.

They need to go and they need to be sent. packing along with John Moseilock. All right. I've gotten so many people because as the offense continues to struggle, they want Turner Ward fired. They want him gone. And I say this to you pretty much everybody who writes that to me. The hitting coach can't hit for the guys. They can give you the data.

They can tell you what another pitcher does. They can give you advice on what they think you should be doing at the plate. But that hitter has got to go up to the plate at execute. Simple as that. The greatest hitting coach in the world can't make you hit the ball. He can only provide you the information to make it easier for you. You've still got to go do it. So firing Turner Ward is not going to happen.

None of these guys are going to get fired right now, okay? Ali Marble just signed an extension as obviously. You're not getting fired right now. Now the Mosaic argument is what I struggle with a lot, because he drives me bonkers with some of the stuff he does. I mean, this is a guy who fired a manager of the year winner and Mike Schilt and did it after a season where he was up for the award again, philosophical differences made the split unavoidable.

Not that we could do about that, but that sucked because people liked Mike Schilt. He has traded away a number of players for different reasons at different times, but some of the names that he's shipped out pretty big. Saw Young Winner and Sandy Alcantra, who is out for the year, Tommy John's surgery, the guy that beat the Cardinals today, or I should say Sunday, Zach Gallen, Jordan Hicks is now thriving as a starter with the San Francisco Giants. Jordan Montgomery is going to be with the Diamondbacks here real soon.

Had to trade him. Tyler O'Neill currently leads the league at home runs with seven, and leads the league in OPS. Randy O'Rosa Rana, Lane Thomas, Adoles Garcia, heck, Marcelo Zuna, who cost them Al-Contra and Galin. That's the guy they got in return for that big trade with the Braves now. Tied with Tyler O'Neill for the home run lead with seven. He leads Major League Baseball and RBIs with 21. He's first and slugging, second in OPS. And this is after a 40 home run 100 RBI season last year. So I get it when you guys are mad at John Moseil. Like, trust me, I get it.

It's very frustrating. It's very annoying. It's hard to believe that number of guys who are just crushing it with other teams. Used to wear the Cardinals uniform. And for totally different reasons for everybody involved, don't anymore. They're helping other teams. And while you're at it, these people also say that they should sell the team to someone who wants to win, they feel like that the Cardinals organization is not in it to win anymore. They just want to make money.

And they want them to go buy all the players from all the other teams and make a super team. So that's one side. That's one side. Where everything the Cardinals are doing, it's wrong. There's nothing you can do to change your mind. Then there's the other side of it where instead of living in the past, which isn't easy. when you see all those names that they have shipped out where, you know, you realize that this roster is what it is. You try to see what you have now and what they possibly could eventually become here in 2024.

The one thing the Cardinals thought they could count on coming into this year, the one thing that they didn't think was going to be a question mark was the office. And that's been the source of most of the problems so far. So yet to break out from their slumber. And despite the struggles of Paul Goldschmidt, still hitting under 200. Jordan Walker hitting under 200, no home runs. No one Aronado's really struggles, although he seems to be coming out of it, look pretty darn good in the series against the diamond backs.

Victor Scott, I mean, what do we expect? But he's hitting under 100. You know, we're not getting anything offensively from the center field position right now. You know, even when Siani plays, you're not doing anything. Great defensively, both of them, but nothing coming from the, offensive side of things for the center fielders so far. There's been injuries. Lars Newpar just came back.

Tommy Edmund, Dylan Carlson, Sunny Gray, who will start Monday night. Keena Middleton, Riley O'Brien, Matt Carpenter, Wilson Contreras was down for a little bit with the hand. We lost Donnie for a game because he was beat up. Libertor was ill this weekend, unavailable. You can look at all these things that I'm listing on this side of the line and say, well, you're just making excuses. everybody's got problems.

And you can say that and that's fine. Or we put this spin on it. You could say, wow, despite all of that that I just listed, that has gone wrong so far, the team is still seven and nine. And mind you, that's against some pretty good competition. It's not like they've been playing a bunch of cream puffs early on this season. They haven't been getting the nationals and the White Sox and any of the other teams like that have been struggling.

You know, it's been some pretty good team so far. Outside of what, the Miami Marlins, who've had a dreadful start due to all the injuries to their team. But outside of them, everybody they've played has been pretty good. I mean, the Phillies have underachieved so far, but that's still a pretty good team. And you had to face Wheeler and Nola, their two top pitchers in that series.

Beat one of them. But what I'm trying to say here is that, glass half empty, glass half full. You decide on which way you want to view it, but there's two ways to look at it. And we're only 16 games into a very long, and I mean a very long, 162 game season.

I'm not here to tell you what to do, but if your expectation for this team, I just want to throw this out there, if your expectation for this team was to win around 85 games, which is what most people predicted. Around 85 games is where they would be. Then the cartels aren't really that far off from being that team all things considered.

Add a couple of players who haven't been healthy, put them back in the lineups. That way you're not using people like John King. You're not using people like Andre Palante. I mean, injuries suck and every team goes through it. But when this team is fully healthy, they are capable of, being that 85 win team, in my opinion. And I think you've seen glimpses of how good they can be. And they've had some tough losses here.

And if the offense gets going and we all think it will, at least most of us think it well. We think some of these games that they're losing by one run, two run, they're going to win those instead. And hopefully the starting pitching continues to be a brighter spot than it was last year. I mean, I get it, Michaelis's line at the end of the day. not great, but pretty awesome for about four innings. And then it kind of fell apart. So same thing with Gibson the other day. You know, Gibson's doing fine until the home run,

the three run bomb to Gurriel on a pitch that was low and in. He hit a bad pitch. Like it wasn't even a strike, not even close. And he hit it out of the park. The Oakland days are next. Oakland days are next. Now, they've got their own drama going on in case you haven't heard with their ownership, city of Oakland, city of Las Vegas. They're going to be playing in Sacramento next year.

Like, it's bonkers. How much stuff is going on with them. But many predicted that the Oakland A's would be the worst team in baseball because of all of the outside issues. And yet somehow, here they are at seven and nine to start the year and have won six of their last eight. So the cardals aren't going to get just the push over Oakland days that we thought we were going to get. They've got a team that's actually kind of believing in themselves right now. So they better be ready because this isn't going to just be some walk in the park or some walk in the Coliseum in front of like 800, 900 people, because nobody goes there games anymore. But we'll see.

These are the types of teams, though. The Oakland age are the types of teas that you got to win two of three from. You can't be losing series to them. And if that happens, the pitch for it group is going to get really loud real fast. Sunny Gravers, Ross Stripling in game one tonight in Oakland. First pitch will be at 840 St. Louis time. Hey, thanks for making a lot. It's your first listen every day.

If you haven't already, please give us a follow. on Twitter X at L.O. underscore Cardinals and at J.D. Sports Radio. Like and subscribe on YouTube to help our channel and love for the Cardinals grow. You guys are the best fans in baseball for a reason, no matter which side you're on. You're all great in your own ways. And I'll see you next time on Lockdown Cardinals.