And so it was that the 2016 season collapsed into a ruthless parody of itself, an occasionally dramatic but mostly soul-deadening 7-9 stretch against three wild-card rivals and two NL bottom-feeders, a five-act meditation on the futility of human endeavor and the impossibility of change.
The Cardinals lost two straight to the Dodgers, needed a last-minute comeback to avoid doing the same to the Mets, blew two games to split a sweepable series in Miami, and finally dropped two straight series to Cincinnati and Atlanta clubs that might have a rough go of the International League. Somehow, now that it’s over, they find themselves exactly where they were when it started: one game back of the Marlins in the race for the second wild-card spot. But in a season of valleys and peaks, the valleys are starting to feel deeper, the peaks lower and shorter-lived.
No, it’s not just the manager, though these 16 games did offer plenty of fodder for those of us convinced that Mike Matheny is one of the team’s most obvious and solvable problems. It’s the slapstick defense and baserunning, too. It’s the spackle-and-duct-tape operation passing for a major-league bullpen. It’s the offense that has quietly declined from its early run-producing heights and seems more liable than ever to not show up at all. It’s the loss of the organization’s developmental devil magic to the tune of the worst pitching debut in major-league history and—separately, later, these are two different things—an 11-0 capitulation with Jaime Garcia on short rest because no other options were trusted. It’s the injuries, which haven’t stopped, and the mismanagement thereof, which hasn’t either.
The dream of catching the Cubs died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure. And no one who endured these last few weeks can discount the possibility that even the wild card may be too much to ask of a club playing this kind of baseball. Sure, the Cards might still manage to pull off one of their signature sprints to the finish line, and even if they don’t, the fact that the Mets are Metsing and the Marlins are Marlinsing and the Dodgers are a FEMA triage tent might be enough to hand them a playoff berth by default.
But small anxieties have a way of breeding larger ones, and even as I remain hopeful of getting the chance to watch Matheny mentally button-mash his way through a winner-take-all playoff, I’m starting to wonder if we’re missing the forest for the trees. The story of this season may be one of a sloppy, inconsistent, somewhat snakebitten club that never stood a chance against the Cubs’ juggernaut, but it seems increasingly like the story of the Cardinals, right now, is one of a franchise that’s headed for trouble. If there’s one reason I’d like to watch the Cardinals play in October this year, it’s that for the first time in a while, I’m not taking it for granted that I’ll get to do it again anytime soon.
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After what Bill DeWitt has openly admitted is a free-agent strategy of making the second-best offer failed to land David Price and (probably) Jason Heyward over the offseason, the party line offered by the team and dutifully relayed by local media was: trust us, and our vaunted scouting and development system, to keep spinning straw into gold.
“I don’t think our plan is to fade,” Chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said. “That is not in our mindset.”
Check out youth, the Cardinals suggest. By both choice and circumstance, they are siding with internal options for significant roles, perhaps as many as they ever have in a year they intend to contend. To reignite a wayward offense, they’re banking on the emergence of Piscotty (25), Grichuk (24) and Kolten Wong (25). To solidify a rotation, they need budding consistency from Michael Wacha and Carlos Martinez, both 24. To close it, Trevor Rosenthal. He’s 25. The days of counting debuts are done. It’s time for the young players to deliver.
By any reasonable standard, Piscotty and Martinez, some recent struggles for both of them aside, have indeed delivered—as has Aledmys Diaz, who didn’t even merit a mention among the above group on Opening Day. Depending on how far you had lowered your expectations for Michael Wacha since the heady days of late 2013, it’s possible that he’s met them, too.
At least half of the kids, though, are not all right. Wong has some wondering if the extension he signed in March, universally regarded as very team-friendly at the time, might end up somehow being an overpay. Grichuk—to the surprise of way too many people—does not appear to have been hiding Trout-like potential behind a career minor-league wRC+ of 113, and presently finds himself sequestered in Memphis, possibly to prevent overuse by a manger who hasn’t stopped talking about his “superstar talent.” The less said about Rosenthal, the better. The only other players aged 25 or younger to play for the Cardinals this season? Mike Mayers and Sam Tuivailala, who have combined to record 13 outs and 12 earned runs.
This was supposed to be the foundation on which the great Cardinals teams of the future would be built, the rookie classes from which the next Holliday-Molina-Wainwright triumvirate would emerge. But not even Piscotty, Martinez, and Diaz have proven themselves worthy of that comparison yet. Are you ready to trust Stephen Piscotty to put up five straight seasons of a 130 OPS+ or higher? How sure are you that Martinez will ever be a five- or six-win pitcher? What are the odds that this will be the best season of Diaz’s career?
Nothing the Cardinals did over the offseason significantly improved the club’s outlook over the next few years. An $80 million gamble that Mike Leake could become a lesser version of Lance Lynn has instead produced, well, a lesser version of Mike Leake. A pair of two-year deals given to Jonathan Broxton and Brayan Peña have been disastrous for different reasons. Sure, the Jedd Gyorko trade looks like an okay piece of business, and retaining Brandon Moss worked out better than many expected, but he’ll be 33 before the season’s over and an extension might not come cheap, which is the way DeWitt likes them. Meanwhile, Price, even in a down year, has been worth more by fWAR than any Cardinals starter and twice as much (on twice the salary) as Leake; there’s no denying that Heyward has been awful this season, but it’s still too early to say, as many have, that the Cards dodged a bullet.
The team’s best player will turn 31 in November. Holliday, Molina, and Wainwright have all looked diminished in 2016, and none of them is a lock to provide much value next year and beyond. Who’s on the way to replace them? Alex Reyes may be as close to can’t-miss as they come, the slow-walking of his MLB debut and whispers about his walk rate notwithstanding. Luke Weaver has been tremendous this season, but it’s probably best not to anoint a future ace based off of twelve starts at Double-A. Joining those two on Baseball America‘s midseason top-100 prospects list are Memphis outfielder Harrison Bader and pitcher Jack Flaherty, who’s years away from the big leagues. Even John Mozeliak concedes that his hope is that the farm system will be “in the top half of baseball by the end of this year,” and while the club did draw rave reviews for its draft class and activity in the international market this summer, the potential for a big impact from all that is even farther down the road.
The chances of making a major addition via free agency in the next couple of years are slim. The 2017 free-agent class is a wasteland, which will only make the potentially historic 2018 class that much more of a feeding frenzy; the timing will be right for a leaner, reloaded Yankees club, among plenty of others, to drive prices sky-high in a market that could include a half dozen or more bona fide superstars. And until he proves otherwise, DeWitt should be considered an unexceptional small-market owner whose commitment to winning doesn’t extend to paying market price for top free agents.
Meanwhile, the Cubs look set to be a dominant force for years to come. The Brewers just added three top-100 prospects to what was already considered one of baseball’s healthiest farm systems. The Pirates may always be limited by payroll constraints, but have a talented crop of youngsters at the big-league level and a few more on the way.
The Cardinals could deal with some underperforming young players. They could deal with a gap in their prospect pipeline, or the decline of some aging veterans, or unfavorable conditions in the free-agent market, or a highly competitive NL Central. It’s not at all clear, though, that they can deal with all or most of these things at once. For now, these are less active, tangible problems than they are speculative questions, but as the clock winds down on a strange and disappointing season, the Cardinals would do well to start searching for some answers.