The Cardinals just lost their first series of the season, getting beat by the Pirates 2 of 3 games over the weekend. Here are 5 things that not a single fan feels good about this Monday morning:
1) Matt Carpenter couldn’t play due to ‘extreme fatigue‘.
I’m going to file this one under ‘more details to come’ and hope that those details are fairly innocuous. Mike Matheny has a very hard time giving his go-to guys (Holliday, Molina, Marp, Peralta) days off. So to keep a player from even traveling to Pittsburgh seems, at best, a new managerial strategy.
Here’s hoping we’re all overly cynical and the All-Star 3B is going to back on the hot corner Tuesday feeling better than ever. Maybe in-season breaks are the new thing? But something tells me that we’re not getting the whole story here.
2) Carlos Martinez has had two duds in a row.
Axioms are axioms because most of the time, they’re true.
Good starting pitchers can get out of the 6th inning. Good starting pitchers have the ability to get guys out 3 times in the same game. Good starting pitchers have more than 2 pitches they feel comfortable throwing at any point in the count.
Carlos Martinez can be a good starting pitcher. But he’s not there yet.
His last two starts have lasted 5.1 and 3.2 innings respectively, surrendering 7 earned runs in each. He’s only worked past the 6th inning in 1 of 6 starts (MIL) and his ERA has ballooned to 4.89.
In the 15 games since @UncleCharlie50 went down, Cards' starters have 5.06 ERA and lasted fewer than 6 innings seven times. (1/2)
— @X (@HELPXLIVE) May 10, 2015
3) That triple play.
It hurt when it happened. Hurt even more when the Cardinals ended up losing by just 2 runs. Hurt even more when it was reported that that particular triple play had never been executed by any defense ever in the history of baseball.
That’s over 200,000 games and 135 years, BTW. Yadi’s expression pretty much sums up the whole weekend, no?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhHkT4fP-rg
4) Don’t look now, but Shelby Miller is on fire.
He’s 4-1 with a 1.66 ERA and a complete game shutout under his belt so far with Atlanta. Meanwhile, Jason Heyward has been OK. Not bad by any means. Hasn’t gone on any sort of a tear either, though.
Trouble is, a big decision looms for the Cardinals after the season when Heyward becomes a free agent after this season. He’s going to ask for big money. Will the Cardinals give him big money?
You couldn’t have used some of that off-speed stuff in STL? Could you Shelby?
+++++
OK, OK – the Cardinals are still in first place. They’re still 22-9. They’re still 6.5 games up on the NL Central and we’re not close to Memorial Day.
We’d all have taken it in a heartbeat on April 1st.
But it’s Monday. And you didn’t want to read all of that on a Monday.
Photo: Fansided
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