Stuck In The Mire

When your offense gets crippled and your pitching staff decides to reverse its early season goodness, chances are there's going to be a lot of losses in your future.  Right now, the Cardinals are stuck in a situation that doesn't have a lot of hope in it.

We talked a lot about this on the UCB Radio Hour last night.  With Ryan Ludwick, Rick Ankiel and Troy Glaus out, a lot of the pop expected out of this year's squad is sitting in drydock.  The offense now is Albert Pujols (assuming he's not walked) and Chris Duncan, with Colby Rasmus potentially joining that group but still not exactly a threat in the minds of opposing pitchers yet.

Then you have a pitching staff that has put up a 5.40 ERA in the month of May.  That sits 13th in the NL in that span and could easily slip to 14th tonight as Pittsburgh has a 5.42.  You hope that Adam Wainwright has figured out his problem and that Chris Carpenter will be back at full force next week, but is Todd Wellemeyer ever going to make fans comfortable this year?  Will Joel Pineiro keep the ball down or are his latest struggles an indication of an adjustment by the league?

Of course, this Cardinal Nation angst is nothing two or three solid wins in a row won't solve.  Hopefully that starts tonight, but right now it's hard to point to why you'd think so.

Skip Schumaker gets the Hero tag from last night's game.  Two for four with a home run, the only run of the game until the ninth.  If Pujols had been able to keep that ball a couple more feet fair in the ninth, he'd have taken it and there might have been a different result as well.

I hate to keep giving the Goat tag to the starting pitchers, but when you give up five runs and 11 hits in six innings, odds are you aren't helping the team, especially an offense as depleted as this one.  Joel Pineiro has had better games this year, though as (I believe) Matthew Leach Twittered, this is why he's not going to continue to be successful unless he misses more bats.

Tonight's matchup of Mitchell Boggs and Jeff Karstens could go either way.  Karstens has never faced the Cardinals, which has at times caused problems with the Redbirds.  That said, they've faced Zach Duke and Ross Ohlendorf for the third time the last couple of nights and experience hasn't helped there.  Boggs was OK against the Pirates last week, but walked too many and didn't make it through the fifth, even though the Cards won the game.  Better control (and an early lead) would help matters immensely tonight.

I got this e-mailed to me earlier in the week but forgot to put it up.  It's a comparison of the Molina brothers, in which Yadier gets the most favored son treatment.

Most of you have seen this by now, but Bill DeWitt placed third in the "best owners in baseball" list at SI.com.  People may complain about him in St. Louis, but overall, he's been good for the club.

Cards really need to take one tonight before heading home to face the Brewers.  Hopefully Boggs can keep them in the game and the offense can score enough to win!


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