Where does the buck stop for teetering Cardinals? Players are as frustrated as fans

Casting around a dejected visitors’ clubhouse on Thursday night in Milwaukee generated some disparate reactions to a flat, lifeless 7-1 loss.

St. Louis Cardinals manager Oli Marmol: “At some point you’ve just got to score. You get punched in the face? Punch back.”

Third baseman Nolan Arenado: “We want to get a rally going so bad, and maybe we want it too much, and then we don’t do it, and it’s, like, frustrating.”

Starter Sonny Gray: “All I can focus on, to be completely honest with you, is I’ve just got to stay focused on myself right now and get myself back right. Get myself to have a good week, and get myself back on the right track.”

Gray was knocked around by the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday night for the first time as a Cardinal, and he took ownership of a poor performance. Allowing three home runs in his sixth start bumped his earned run average from sub-1 to a still-sparkling 2.29, so it’s difficult to hammer Gray too badly over a bad night which came after only a day of preparation against his opponent, owing to a rain out.

The issue was the offense, is the offense, will remain the offense – for now, at least, as long as the pitching holds out. Steven Matz is on the injured list with no clear return date and the team has gone full cloak and dagger in naming his rotation replacement.

Whether that’s because they don’t like their options or don’t want to give the preparation advantage back to the Brewers (or perhaps the Los Angeles Angels) is largely irrelevant. Whether Matthew Liberatore, Andre Pallante or a mystery third option slots into the rotation, they’ll be forced to carry heavier water than normal thanks to the pressure which hasn’t let up on the pitching in the season’s first six weeks.

The Cardinals, losers of five straight entering Friday, are teetering. It is perhaps generous to say they haven’t already toppled. The high point of the week, excluding the heartwarming story of longshot reliever Chris Roycroft, was Kyle Gibson’s attempt to stand up straight and fortify spirits in the aftermath of Monday night’s loss to the New York Mets, the third of the five.

“Sometimes you go through a stretch where you give up one or two [runs], and you seem like you can’t buy a win,” said Gibson, who spoke for nearly 12 minutes, 11 and a half of which were about the team’s funk rather than his own pitching. “That’s baseball, unfortunately. I know it maybe gets tired hearing that, but that’s just how it is.”

Criticized – mocked, perhaps – throughout the game for centering their offseason on elder starters Gibson, Gray and Lance Lynn, the Cardinals have gotten everything they could’ve possibly asked for from the pitching, only to see the offensive group totally collapse.

Paul Goldschmidt’s struggles have been well documented. So have Nolan Gorman’s, and Jordan Walker’s, and Lars Nootbaar’s, and Brendan Donovan’s. Dylan Carlson’s are seemingly next in line, but given the warp speed of his rehab, seemingly driven by desperation, it seems unfair to pile on a player who described himself upon his return as, “able to decipher the difference between what’s pain and what’s some rust and inactivity.”

Oh, and check back in after the Fourth of July for the next time Willson Contreras will be healthy enough to make a mark on game action.

As the chorus of angry fans still embittered by last summer’s failures begins to shriek “fire everyone” at a louder and louder volume, there comes a point where explanations are insufficient. Of course they’re working hard. Of course they’re frustrated. Of course they believe they have time to turn things around. But behind Marmol’s desk, where some of the bucks stop, he’s facing the grim and unpleasant reality of the consequences of another lost summer.

The contract extension that he signed at the close of spring training was designed in part to provide assurances to both the clubhouse and the fanbase that the team’s front office leadership had faith in its on field leadership. What it was not designed to do is provide a pass, and nor did he receive it in that spirit.

On the list of problems bedeviling what seems to be a lost organization, coaching is so far down the list as to barely be on the first page. Waste, however, rolls downhill. If John Mozeliak’s tenure running the club has been highlighted by one defining characteristic, it has been his ability to hold on to his control and authority while usurping that of others. Everyone who knows the organization knows where the bucks really stop, and that Bill DeWitt Jr.’s accounting of them is the singular relevant variable in determining the future of everyone else on the organizational chart.

If ever a tomorrow is promised in baseball, that promise can be revoked with lightning speed. Goldschmidt, these days, knows a lot about that. In the coming weeks and months, Marmol may as well. That’s not due to lack of caring, or lack of pride, or an urge to surrender. Sometimes, to paraphrase Gibson, that’s just how it is.

However tired fans may be of the product on the field, there’s not a person wearing red inside the clubhouse walls whose exhaustion isn’t several orders of magnitude beyond that. It’s palpable, a cloud in the air, an endless anticipation with an uncertain payoff.

“If I could sit down with each one of them, or they could sit down and do whatever, have whatever meeting, however you want to look at it,” Gibson said, “you’ve just got to keep trusting yourself and understand that these guys are so good. It really is only a matter of time until they just string together however many hits in however many games where the other pitching staff knows they don’t have a chance.”

Time, it seems, is almost up.