It’s no longer `too early’ in the season to call Cardinals’ hitting woes a trend

It’s one thing for a struggling offense to allow itself to be frustrated by hard contact and smart swing decisions that are being swallowed up by bad batted ball luck and the whims of baseball.

It’s something else entirely when a team is being chewed up by pitches right over the heart of the plate, which is why the early season offensive woes of the St. Louis Cardinals are as vexing and troubling as they are.

In truth, with the schedule nearly 25% complete, you can’t continue to write-off a trend as being too early. Monday night’s loss to the New York Mets brought with it three runs – a veritable outbreak – and yet all of the damage was contained to the sixth inning, reached in less than 90 minutes as St. Louis hitters went quickly and quietly against opposing starter Sean Manaea.

“I thought early on, at bats weren’t great,” manager Oli Marmol said following the loss. “I felt like we competed better, but it still wasn’t what was needed tonight.

“You’re always looking for progress,” he added, “but we gotta go.”

Following play Monday, the Cardinals find themselves 27th in baseball in percentage of balls barreled, 26th in hard hit percentage, and 28th in weighted on base average. Sorting by traditional counting stats tells the same story. The reason that launch angle and exit velocity have swept into the language of how hitting is discussed across the game is that balls that are hit hard are more likely to go for hits, period, and the Cardinals are not hitting the ball hard.

The flashing warning sign: the lack of production on balls left over the heart of the plate. Among hitters who have seen at least ten pitches down central, only Alec Burleson – with one – has generated positive run value. Nolan Arenado and Iván Herrera are at a neutral zero, fading all the way out to Paul Goldschmidt’s -6 and Brendan Donovan and Lars Nootbaar bringing up the rear at -9.

This is what it looks like when most of a roster is caught in between, struggling with confidence and pitch recognition. Opposing pitchers can see and smell the blood in the water, and they’re feasting. It’s hard enough not to get chewed up in the big leagues when weaknesses are far less apparent than they are for the Cardinals at the moment.

“I think the main thing is being in between pitches and not feeling one thing or another,” Nootbaar said. “Whether it’s being out front, or deep, or whatever it is. I think that’s the best way to describe it.”

“For me, it’s being on time with the fastball,” said infielder José Fermín, who turned in two hits and scored a run Monday in his first crack at hitting leadoff. “Sometimes when I’m not on the fastball, that’s when I get in trouble because I didn’t put the barrel on the ball, I started maybe chasing a little bit. But when I’m on time with the fastball, trying to hit it out in front, that’s when I get more success.”

“When it comes to overall damage when it comes to pulling the ball in the air, that obviously comes to mind [as a concern],” Marmol said before Monday’s game. “That’s where damage is done. We haven’t done enough of that. That goes hand in hand with swinging at pitches where you can do that.

“It’s not a matter of reinventing anything. When you feel in between, you end up taking pitches you should swing at and you end up swinging at pitches that you wish you’d laid off of, and you don’t take your ‘A’ swing as often as you’d like. That’s just currently where we’re at. Frustrating as can be, but it’s just where we’re at.”

Cardinals starter Kyle Gibson faced many of his current teammates last season as a Baltimore Oriole, taking a hard luck loss in a 1-0 game in September. Despite his success then, and the success of opponents now, his description of the lineup was not of one without the ability for things to click, but rather one which pitchers fear will click against them.

“It wasn’t a fun report to put together [last season] because you have so many hitters that can do damage at any given time,” Gibson explained. “You just know that there’s some guys on this team that are one AB, one swing, one game away from being unable to get out.”

Gibson, perhaps first among equals in his ability to remain cool under pressure and keep the season in perspective, referred several times to the more than 100 games remaining on the schedule as he preached confidence and calm. That message from the hitting side, and from the manager, has given way in recent days to more pronounced urgency, firmer exhortations.

There’s a whole lot of time left to get things right, but there’s really not much left at all to get things right and remain relevant in the race.

“Sometimes a hit here and there breeds confidence and you build off of that and you get going,” Marmol said. “Sometimes you have to fake the confidence until you have some success.”

They’ve faked it enough. The time to make it has long since arrived.