St. Louis Cardinals enter May in last place. Is it time to start looking toward 2024?

Stifel chairman and CEO Ron Kruszewski sat at a table on Tuesday afternoon flanked by Bill DeWitt, Jr. and Bill DeWitt III and flashed what seemed to be far and away the biggest smile of anyone at Busch Stadium around the Cardinals.

“I feel that today is a new beginning,” he said as he introduced the team’s new jersey-mounted sponsorship patch for the financial services firm. “I got a new jersey, and it’s a new beginning, and —

“A new month and hopefully a new record,” Cardinals Chairman DeWitt, Jr. chimed in with an uneasy laugh.

The tension is clearly high when even a top level sponsor has to deftly step around references to a dreadful April.

After Tuesday night’s 5-1 loss to the Los Angeles Angels, the last place Cardinals are now 10-20, 10 games back of the first place Pirates. It’s the team’s worst start to the season in five decades, and, “a real clunker,” DeWitt III, the team’s president, said.

Franchise leadership continued to express confidence in the team’s underlying process and a belief that results will follow. That, for the moment, is seemingly all they can do; without dramatic changes that shake the foundations of the franchise, all that’s left is to rearrange the pieces that exist in house.

“I do,” DeWitt, Jr. said when asked if he still has the same level of trust in his baseball operations department and coaching staff that he did when the season began. “I trust our group. I think we’ve got a really good group.”

It would be wildly out of character for this ownership group to start throwing out babies and bath water, especially during the season, so it should come as no surprise that steady progression is the order of the day.

Still, it was a difficult juxtaposition to announce a brand new, seven-year pure revenue stream on the same day that the reeling club on the field saw only one adjustment to its roster, with lefty Zack Thompson being optioned to Memphis to resume his career as a starter.

Righty fireballer Guillermo Zuñiga replaced Thompson on the roster in what is likely to be a temporary assignment, with Adam Wainwright set to be activated from the injured list to make his season debut on Saturday.

After a ten-game road trip which included only two wins, there was no move made to shore up a flagging offense. With lefty Patrick Sandoval on the mound for the Angels on Tuesday, Willson Contreras received another assignment as the designated hitter, making room in the lineup and behind the plate for Andrew Knizner, who turned in four singles and ten strikeouts in his first 26 at bats this season.

Righty sluggers Luken Baker and Juan Yepez, ideal designated hitters, remain at Memphis. There does not appear to be urgency to find them room in the majors.

“We did push each other along a little bit looking at the calendar, yes,” DeWitt III said when asked if a matchup with the Angels — and the global brand exposure which accompanies the traveling Shohei Ohtani Show — was an incentive to finalize the jersey patch deal before this week’s series began. “Not only is this a big series and a high profile one ... but we’ve got Detroit later this week and then we go on the road to some big markets.”

Urgency on the horizon

So, there is urgency being shown in some quarters.

Tuesday’s pregame energy was frenetic, owing to Ohtani’s arrival and reunion with his World Baseball Classic teammate Lars Nootbaar as well as the lengthy sponsorship announcement. President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak was not made available for his standard media conference before the first game of a homestand, owing largely to the compacted schedule and the team’s desire to highlight a high-dollar partnership.

For the moment, it certainly beats talking about baseball.

“It’s hard to really comprehend why people are reacting the way they’re reacting,” third baseman Nolan Arenado said in reference to the impenetrable cloud of negativity which lingers over the team’s rancid first month. “But I get it, you know. We’re 10 games out. That’s a big step, a big pitfall. But we have five months left, a long season left, and we feel really good about what we have in this clubhouse.”

Unthinkable to become inevitable?

What they have in the clubhouse is sure to change many times over before the year is out. In seasons past, the concept of the Cardinals circling the wagon and waiting until next year would seem unthinkable. Eventually, if the team stays anywhere close to 10 games out, unthinkable will become inevitable.

“That’s correct,” manager Oliver Marmol said when asked if Thompson’s push to return to the Memphis starting rotation was geared toward making him a live option for the Cardinals in that role for the 2024 season.

If there’s a need, Marmol explained, Thompson could very well return to the majors this year in whatever role is necessary. Despite a recent blip of struggles against lefty hitters, he remains one of the team’s top pitching prospects, and a professional whose comportment they trust.

Thompson also became — on Tuesday, May 2 — the first player this season to be discussed in terms of what next season will look like.

If the new month doesn’t bring a new record, others will follow in rapid succession.