St. Louis Cardinals: reasons of 2017 struggle

After years of excellence, the St. Louis Cardinals have come to live a season start VERY below standard standards and their potential since with a record of 33-37 are third in NL Central 4 races behind the Milwaukee Brewers. The reasons for this collapse in the results are three: the first is that since 2011 the Cardinals do not make up to the results they would like to get satisfied with mediocre players like Mark Ellis, Brett Cecil, Johnatan Broxton and Johnny Peralta. Management continues to support this choice with the desire to develop young people but in my opinion some well-established players should be taken if you want to win the World Series, let's look at the lineup of 2011 and compare it with this year's jump immediately to ' Eye like 2-3-4-5 there were Holliday, Pujols, Berkman and Freese now there are Fowler, Gyorko, Piscotty and Pham. With all respect there is no comparison between the two lineups and the Cardinals wage situation that is great would not preclude any improvement of it, but the front office seems to be different. As for purchases, it was preferred to invest in medium-level players such as Mike Leake and Brett Cecil rather than targeting high-level free agents such as Scherzer, Chapman, Lester and others. But in my opinion here the front office has the excuse that players like Wainwright (5.75 ERA), Wacha (4.76 ERA) and Rosenthal (3.36 ERA) are not doing as everyone expected they could make. The starter package, though with poor performance in some games, was solid, however, with good reliability, especially with Martinez and Lynn, but the bad performance bullpen often compromised the Cardinals race that after the sixth inning always struggled Keep the result. The second motivation is a lack of coaching stuff, first of all the inability of Matheny to make the changes at the right time and to mistake many times in the key moments. Then Derek Lilliquist the pitching coach with which he spins in the bullpen have made the most of despite having a plate there is Yadier Molina, probably the best defensive catcher of all time able to infuse peace and call the right launches at key moments. Third motivation is the defense, one of the worst in the MLB and partly responsible for the bad performance of certain launchers. Defense has always been one of the strong points of the Cardinals who made few mistakes and created a good chemistry with most pitchers that were ground ball pitchers, or pitchers that throw low in the strikezone that prefer quick outbreaks with bouncing balls over pitchers that They prefer more throws and out via strikeouts. The chance to go to the playoffs is still there, but the Cardinals must make good-looking exchanges before the dead line, bringing home a good level close-up and at least one or two beaters able to beat at around $ .300 that would give continuity to A lineup that lives mostly homeruns in the last two years.