West Coast Buzzkill

As you know, in my last post, i was little pessimistic, criticizing John Mozeliak for various moves he’s made, including the trade for Paul Goldschmidt.  Since then, the Cardinals have gotten hot and so has Goldschmidt. He had a streak of six games with a homer and his current total is 25, setting him up to easily pass 30 homers for the fifth time in his career.

The rest of the team is playing well also and heading into the trade deadline, we were fighting with the Cubs for first in the Central. That set up a big move at the deadline right? Wrong. The Cardinals did nothing, and honestly, I was fine with that at the time.  We finished a recent series with the Cubs by beating them 8-0 and were flying high.

Carson Kelly and Luke Weaver look good in Arizona, Luke Voit as I mentioned is a productive regular in New York, though he is now out with a sports hernia. Our farm had been thinned out by the trades for veterans. We finally made a trade that (so far anyway, thanks to his resurgence) was a win for us. I thought, at the time of my first draft right after that Cubs game, that we should quit while we’re ahead and give our farm time to reload. The last thing we needed to do was to trade more farm assets for a 2 month rental.

Then we went to California.

We lost two games to Oakland, a team that *had* been aggressive at the deadline, and the first game of our series with the Dodgers. While we suffered that 3 game losing streak, the Cubs bounced back and won 4 straight games. The result?Wwe fell out of first place and are now 2.5 games back in the Central.

As long as we turn things around quickly, this isn’t a death knell, we have a lot of games remaining against the Cubs (and for that matter, the Brewers) so if we don’t bury ourselves too deep and play those teams well.

I also think we could do that with our current team and still believe a deadline move wasn’t necessary. Matt Carpenter is back, and Yadier Molina will be back soon. Regardless of his bat, Yadi’s leadership on the field cannot be questioned and I am looking forward to having that back.

So come on Cardinals, rebound from yesterday’s loss and stop the (so far) ugly west coast trip from getting any uglier! Then head up to Pittsburgh and show the Pirates who’s boss!

 

As always, thanks for reading.

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