Hochman: It's unacceptable. Cardinals back to .500 days of summer, season slipping away (2024)

This was the one. This’ll be the game we look back to, the one that cooked the Cardinals.

They lost Wednesday at Cincinnati. Were swept at Cincinnati. Outscored 19-4 at Cincinnati. The Cardinals are now under .500 (60-61) and 4 ½ out of the final wild card spot— which they’re battling five other teams to nab.

This game was the mortal wound of the 2024 season, which was supposed to be a resuscitation season after the deflating 2023 campaign. Sure, of course, there are 41 more games. We live in St. Louis, so we know that “2011 can happen” or “2006 can happen.” But this sure feels like the beginning of the end. And if the Cards miss the playoffs, chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. needs to truly reevaluate. He must consider giving Chaim Bloom a larger role in the front office, as John Mozeliak enters the final year of a contract. Because if the Cards are to miss the 2024 playoffs, that’s five of the last nine years. And in the other four, they won a total of only four playoff games. It’s been a decade of “just you wait.” The Cardinal Way has been The Cardinal Wait.

Over-dramatic?

For fans’ sake, I hope in a couple months you can laugh at that paragraph and say it was. But I don’t think it’s over-dramatic. I feel like this is the fork in the season and the fork in the road. The Cardinals are playing unacceptable baseball. And St. Louis fans are too invested— both with their hearts and their money— to have to experience this.

After all, when DeWitt and Mozeliak fired manager Mike Matheny, back in the summer of 2018, DeWitt said: “In some places a winning record, or even .500, is even acceptable. Not with this city, not with this franchise, not with its history, and not with the fans."

What happened in 2024? Really, you could simplify it and say: they didn’t get what they thought they’d get out of Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Gorman and Nolan Arenado. Three big bats basically missing from the lineup. Goldschmidt has a .680 OPS and 138 strikeouts; Gorman has a .680 OPS and 148 strikeouts. And Arenado has been reduced to a singles hitter. The probable Hall of Fame third baseman has a .717 OPS and just 12 homers and 17 doubles.

But there is so much more to why the 2024 Cardinals have fallen. The starting pitching has come back to earth— in the Reds series, Nos. 1-2-3 Sonny Gray, Erick Fedde and Kyle Gibson all got rocked; With runners in scoring position, only the Chicago White Sox have a worse OPS than the Cardinals (.633); Against the division, the Cards are 17-22; Overall, the Cards’ run differential is minus-63, third-worst in the National League; They seldom hit lefties; And in many major stat categories, as covered in my column Monday, the Cards are just average.

And while this isn’t a stat, the Cardinals surely lead the league in “crappy pop ups caught by the catcher or an infielder.” There were three ill-timed ones in Wednesday’s loss.

“Roller-coaster” is an overused term in sports, but the season has had a distinct down, up and down again.

First 39 games: 15-24.

Next 51 games, starting on May 12 (Mother’s Day): 33-18

Next 31 games (through Wednesday’s loss at Cincy): 12-19

And thus, the Cardinals are 60-61. And their next SIX series are against the Dodgers, Brewers, Twins, Padres, Yankees and Brewers again.

As for the trade deadline, Look, I admit I wrote that Fedde was a great get. Maybe he will be, but in his first three St. Louis starts, his ERA is 5.63. But I also wrote that they could’ve done better with bullpen enhancement than Shawn Armstrong, which seems to ring true.

Welcome to the .500 days of summer. Man, remember when it was “which wild card spot will they get?” Now the odds are bad that they’ll even make the playoffs at all. Oh, and the last time the Cards finished under .500 in back-to-back seasons? It was 1958 and 1959.

Heading into Tuesday’s game— Tuesday’s, not Wednesday’s— I wrote on Twitter/X: “Gosh I feel like tonight’s Cardinals game has huge implications. If they lose, they’ve thus lost a series to Cincinnati. And after last night latest lackluster loss, they need to do something to show they still have offensive oomph.”

Well, they lost that one. Only four hits and a lone run. And then came Wednesday’s 9-2 debacle.

They say they have urgency— but they aren’t showcasing it on the field. They didn’t just lose the past three games, they were throttled.

The St. Louis Cardinals are faltering when it matters most.

CINCINNATI— Although they now shared the same address in the standings and the same distance away from a playoff berth, the viewpoints were completely opposite late Wednesday in the two clubhouses at Great American Ball Park.

Rarely has 60-61 looked so different on the same night.

After a 9-2 victory Wednesday night, the Cincinnati Reds, like their hits that decided the series, were rising up, up and all the way into a tie for second place in the National League Central, prompting buoyant infielder Jonathan India to proclaim they “are a playoff team. I think it’s the perfect time to get hot.” The Cardinals, on the other side of the ballpark and completely other side of the sensation, tumbled down, down, down into a quiet clubhouse and a losing record, which sent a familiar chill through the fan base.

The Cardinals have gone a long way since last year only to allow a complete and utter sweep by the Reds to put them back one step behind where they started.

“This series is not going to define our season,” outfielder Tommy Pham said. “There are still plenty of games left. We’re going to have to start winning.”

One day after they returned to .500 for the first time in around 50 days, the Cardinals slipped officially into the muck of a losing record. They’ve lost nine of their past 13 games and are now as far out of the division race as they’ve been since early May. The next time they face the Reds will be after 22 consecutive games against winning clubs. After going 1-4 on the two-city road trip, the Cardinals return to Busch Stadium to face the first-place Dodgers and the first-place Brewers in back-to-back three-game series.

They are playing some of their least-effective ball as the most-demanding stretch of their season arrives. They were outscored 19-4 by the Reds and they led only once in the series – for grand total of six batters. They mustered one homer as a team and zero quality starts, and during a frayed fifth inning Wednesday night they committed four misplays.

The Reds felt invigorated at 60-61.

The Cardinals had other words for being 60-61.

“It’s human nature to constantly feel frustrated when it’s like you’re fighting from behind,” said starter Kyle Gibson. “It’s human nature when you’re struggling to not play as confident and maybe have your mind wander. It happens to me on the mound from time to time when it’s not going the way you want it to go, and you’ve got to try and stay focused. It’s hard to play this game frustrated. It’s hard to play when things aren’t going your way and you’re not playing confidently. That’s also something that getting back home, having an off day, taking a breather, hitting a reset – I think can be really good for a team in our position.”

Here is a countdown of how this 3 Nights in August got them back to square minus-1:

10. The Reds hit 10 home runs in the series, including five in Wednesday’s jubilee. They overpowered the Cardinals, 10-1, in home runs for the series at a time when India remarked postgame that it’s August, it’s warm, and it’s the time of year the ball flies in Cincinnati. Just not for the Cardinals. At a ballpark famous for games flipflopping in wild swings of runs because of its size and invitation to hit home runs, the Reds got 16 of their 19 runs on homers.

The Cardinals got one.

They had two players, India and TJ Friedl, each hit two home runs Wednesday, becoming the first Reds’ tandem since 2017 with two homers (or more) in the same game.

Four of the homers came against Gibson two days after the Reds hit three off starter Sonny Gray. The first three homers hit off Gibson were on three different pitches – a cutter, a changeup, and a sweeping slider. India’s first homer seized an early 3-0 lead for the Reds and Friedl’s second homer punctuated the game by expanding the Reds’ lead in the seventh inning.

“They took some really good swings,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “They hit the ball hard. They did damage. They made us pay. We didn’t. We sprayed a couple of hits out there. Outside of that just kind of sprayed a couple of singles in there. Look at their line: five homers, double, lots of damage. Look at yesterday, damage. Day before: Damage. They outslugged us.”

9. The inning that ended Gibson’s evening and got uglier from there brought nine Reds to the plate when it could have been as few as four and definitely no more than six.

A pair of solo home runs against Gibson upped the Reds’ lead to 5-0 – a gulch for a team struggling to score like the Cardinals but an inconvenience for a team ready to take advantage of Great American Ball Park’s welcoming dimensions. The last batter Gibson faced lined a single to left field that kicked off Tommy Pham’s glove for an error and a runner at second.

With two outs, reliever John King entered the game and got all of the groundballs he wanted and none of the plays to turn them into the third out.

Brendan Donovan committed an error on a groundball. Paul Goldschmidt said he “should have picked that ball (from Donovan’s throw), and that inning would be over.” Masyn Winn had a grounder go off his glove on a tough play that he didn’t get a chance to make as a result. The errors only led to one run, but the inning had the unspooling feel of a team that had just been stunned by another deep deficit and was pushing to make the play to get back out of the latest crevice.

“That inning didn’t make the game,” Pham said.

It seemed to at least capture a moment.

8. The Cardinals had their chances in multiple innings to either get ahead of the Reds’ early or chomp into the lead late, and all of that stalled with eight at-bats with runners in scoring position that did not produce a hit or run.

Two double plays in the first two innings allowed Reds’ opener Emilio Pagan to complete two innings and setup the preferred matchup for lefty Sam Moll in the third inning. In the fifth, Donovan led off with a double.

Four batters and three outs later he had not budged from second.

Immediately after the fraught fifth inning, the Reds gave the Cardinals a chance to reduce the gap on the scoreboard. The first four Cardinals of the inning had base hits. Two of them had RBIs, and the back half of the lineup would get a chance with two runners on base. Donovan and Goldschmidt both struck out to tilt the inning back to the Reds.

“We tried to come back, tried to get some runners on we weren’t able to get that momentum going, and they did,” Goldschmidt said. “We’re fighting to come back when you’re in it, and you strike out with guys on like I did there. Obviously frustrating in the moment. You can’t let that carry over.”

The Cardinals finished 4 for 20 in the series with runners in scoring position.

All four of those hits were singles; one did not score a run.

7. The Cardinals struck out seven times, including twice in the sixth with runners in scoring position, while facing a parade of relievers from the Reds to cover innings. Cincinnati had a classic bullpen game, and six different pitchers kept the Cardinals to two runs. Five of them kept the Cardinals scoreless in their innings.

In the series, Cardinals hitters had more strikeouts (27) than hits (19).

6. No. 6 on his jersey and No. 1 in Cincinnati’s lineup, India entered Wednesday’s game in a 0 for 22 spiral that dipped down to 0 for 23 with his leadoff flyout in the first inning. That dropped the former National League Rookie of the Year into a 1 for 29 stretch that would be familiar to some of the Cardinals who have not “felt right” about their swing for the past several weeks or months. All India needed to snap out of it was a home run-friendly day at the ballpark and a couple of pitches he could drive from Gibson (7-5).

India’s homer in the third and homer in the fifth gave him in the fourth multi-homer game of his career. Tyler Stephenson and Friedl also homered off Gibson.

“Bad time to throw really bad pitches,” Gibson said. “And they put good swings on them. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”

5. The Reds woke up Sunday morning alone in fifth place in the five-team NL Central. The Brewers lost a couple of games to the Dodgers, and the Reds kept the Cardinals from taking advantage and closing the gap on Milwaukee. Pittsburgh is foundering, the Cubs are Cubs, and in a clear sign of how congested the division is – and perhaps how volatile it still could be – the Reds leapfrogged from fifth on Sunday to a tie for second by Wednesday.

4. The Cardinals doubled their total offense in the series to four runs with two in Wednesday’s loss. The four runs scored by the Cardinals total in the series were the same as the fewest the Reds scored in any single game. Reds outfielder Spencer Steer had five RBIs in Monday’s game. He had only two hits the rest of the series and yet produced more runs on two swings than the Cardinals did in their 27 innings.

“They outslugged us,” Marmol said. “That’s where the game was.”

That’s how the series went.

3. Nolan Arenado drove in three of the Cardinals’ runs in the series. He hit the only home run with a ferocious swing in Tuesday’s game that momentarily jolted the Cardinals. Arenado also had RBI singles in the bookend games, and during the rising potential of Wednesday’s sixth inning, Arenado threaded a hard groundball past the reach of Elly De La Cruz for an RBI.

The only other swing in the entire series that produced a run by a Cardinal hitter came two batters earlier Wednesday in the sixth inning when Alec Burleson lined an RBI single for the Cardinals’ first run.

Cardinals not named Arenado had 86 at-bats and one RBI hit.

2. What helped make Wednesday’s bullpen start possible and not turbulent was two quality starts by the Reds’ starters in the first two games. Lefty Andrew Abbott continued the troubles the Cardinals have had against southpaws this season by holding them to one run through 6 2/3 innings. That left seven outs for one reliever to get without dipping into or stretching the bullpen ahead of Wednesday’s game.

On Tuesday, Reds rising ace Hunter Greene struck out eight and held the Cardinals to Arenado’s solo homer in seven innings. That left two innings for the bullpen to cover on the eve of having to throw all nine. The Reds’ starters covered enough innings for the bullpen not to be thinned or unstable or vulnerable going into a game the bullpen had to cover the whole evening.

The Cardinals, meanwhile, did not have one quality start.

1. Back from Class AAA Memphis and riding a solid streak of powerful production there, Jordan Walker started one game in the series in Cincinnati. Marmol explained that Walker will be used in a “platoon” role and targeted against lefties, whether that’s in the starting lineup or coming off the bench. On Wednesday, Walker was part of what the Cardinals saw as a matchup trap they wanted to set for one of the Reds’ two lefty relievers. They sprang it in that defining sixth inning and Walker popped out.

He finished the game in right field with a single, and he also had a walk earlier in the series when he started Monday’s game against a lefty.

0. While the home runs (10) and the quality starts (2) illustrated how the Reds swept the series, how much they overwhelmed the Cardinals and never flinched the series is best described by the number zero.

That is the number of appearances, combined, by the three relievers who make up the strength of the Cardinals and the reason they’ve thrived in so many close games. Andrew Kittredge, JoJo Romero, and All-Star closer Ryan Hensley combined for zero appearances, zero innings, and zero pitches thrown in the three-day visit to Cincinnati.

Zero.

The reeling Redbirds are nearing the end of the line for appearing on national networks.

Fox is set to televise the Cardinals-Dodgers game in 91% of the nation Saturday night, a contest that has been locked onto its schedule since last spring (Cleveland-Milwaukee goes to the rest of the country).

Former Cards pitcher Adam Wainwright will be the analyst, working with play-by-play announcer Jason Benetti and reporter Ken Rosenthal for the game at Busch Stadium that’s to begin at 6:15 p.m., shown locally on KTVI (Channel 2). It’s their final scheduled appearance of the season on Fox’s Saturday night package.

St. Louis has been a ratings success for that network. Through last weekend, the Gateway City has had the nation's best rating for Fox's telecasts. An average of 2.6% of the market has been tuning in, according to viewership-tracking company Nielsen, a figure that includes non-Cardinals games. Philadelphia and Hartford, Conn., are tied for the runner-up slot (1.9 rating each).

But while Fox is back Saturday with the Cardinals, other networks that are picking up games on the fly are shying away from the free-falling Redbirds as the season winds down.

ESPN had them on its showcase “Sunday Night Baseball” game two weekends ago for their third appearance this year, and Rick Mace, the network’s director of programming and acquisitions, was talking about there being a good chance of them returning this season.

But the Cards have tanked since then, losing that night to start a stretch in which they have gone 3-7 with their playoff hopes sinking by the day. Since that night, ESPN has filled all but two of its remaining Sunday night slots without picking the Cardinals. And given their slide, ESPN would seem to have little reason to be likely to add them, although there is an outside chance when they face American League postseason contenders Seattle (Sept. 8) and Cleveland (Sept. 22).

Meanwhile, Apple TV+ streams MLB doubleheaders on Fridays throughout the season, but the Cards are not on its recently released September schedule. So their final appearance on that package will be next Friday night, when they play the Twins in Minneapolis.

Coming attractions

“Media Views” is off the next couple weeks, and there are a couple things of interest to some readers that will be airing in that span.

At 10 p.m. Aug. 24, a week from Saturday, KPLR (Channel 11) will show the St. Louis Derby — the season’s showcase race at FanDuel Sportsbook and Horse Racing, what most people still call Fairmount Park, in Collinsville.

The next day, Channel 11 is set to show “American Underdog” at 8 p.m. That’s the film that chronicles the rags-to-riches story of former St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner.

City SC makes its final appearance of the MLS season on a “conventional” TV channel on Sept. 1, a Sunday, for its 1:45 p.m. match at home with the Los Angeles Galaxy. Most MLS games are exclusively streamed by Apple, but this one also will be on Fox (Channel 2 locally).

Making his fourth start after a month-long gap between outings, Cardinals prospect Tink Hence completed four scoreless innings on Wednesday and struck out six batters for Class AA Springfield. Hence allowed one hit — a broken bat line drive single to right field — and didn’t walk a batter in the outing.

Hence’s four innings of work during Springfield’s 7-6 win over Frisco were the most he’s completed in an outing since he completed six innings on 97 pitches on May 30. Hence, 22, made two starts and totaled three innings from June 5 to June 23. The righty experienced cramps, fatigue, and back discomfort which limited him and led him to forgo participating in the Futures Game during MLB’s All-Star weekend. After Hence’s June 23 start, he did not pitch in a game until July 27.

Since returning to Springfield’s rotation, Hence has completed 12 innings over four starts. He’s collected 19 strikeouts, walked three batters, and maintained a 0.75 ERA in that span.

Hence, who has a 2.84 ERA in 66 2/3 innings this season, has not thrown more than 54 pitches in any of the four starts he’s made upon his return.

Here are other Cardinals prospect performances:

Catcher Jimmy Crooks, Class AA Springfield: Crooks continued his breakout year with a two-for-four performance that included a home run and two RBIs. The former fourth-round pick from the 2022 MLB draft belted a solo home run in the fourth inning to break a scoreless tie between Springfield and Frisco. As part of Springfield’s four-run ninth inning, Crooks drove in the game-tying run with a sacrifice fly that scored Bryan Torres from third base and advanced Nathan Church to third base with two outs in the inning. Church scored the go-ahead run in Springfield’s comeback win when R.J. Yeager singled Church home in the at-bat after Crooks’ sacrifice fly. The two-hit game was Crooks’ 23rd multi-hit performance this season. Through 79 Class AA games, Crooks, 23, has a .318 average, a .406 on-base percentage, and a .511 slugging percentage. The 23-year-old’s solo homer on Wednesday was his 11th homer of the season, putting him one shy of matching a career-high 12 he hit in 115 games a season ago.

Right-handed pitcher Sem Robberse, Class Low-A Palm Beach (minor league rehab assignment): Robberse made his first pitching appearance in a game since June 12 when he threw a scoreless inning of relief during Palm Beach’s 3-1 win over Jupiter. The Class AAA righty needed 10 pitches to complete the outing. He recorded one strikeout and allowed one hit. Robberse has been on the injured list with an elbow strain. The 22-year-old former trade deadline acquisition went 5-4 with a 4.65 ERA in 13 games (11 starts) for Memphis before the elbow injury sidelined him.

Catcher Ryan Campos, Class Low-A Palm Beach: The Cardinals’ fourth-round pick in this year’s draft went three-for-four and drove in one RBI in Palm Beach’s win. Campos’s three-hit game, which included three singles, was his third multi-hit performance in his last seven games. Since making his professional debut on July 30, the left-handed-hitting 21-year-old is batting .289 with a .386 on-base percentage. Campos, a product of Arizona State University, has driven in six runs in 11 games.

Outfielder Bryan Torres, Class AA Springfield: Hitting from the leadoff spot as Springfield’s designated hitter, Torres set a career-high in hits as he went five-for-five with four singles and a double. Torres led off Springfield’s comeback road win by doubling in the first inning and followed that with singles in the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth innings. Torres’s ninth-inning single loaded the bases with no outs to set the stage for Church, Cooks, and Yeager to push across the runs Springfield needed to claim its 62nd win of the season. With the five-hit game, Torres improved to a .318 batting average and a .406 on-base percentage. Through 41 at-bats in August, Torres is 17-for-41 (.415). He’s produced a .479 on-base percentage since August began.

CINCINNATI — The Cardinals did more with their misspent weekdays in Cincinnati than struggle to score runs, get utterly swept by the Reds and plunge back into the murky depths of a losing record.

They were also able to cram into their visit one of the ugliest innings of the season.

To complete an emphatic three-game sweep that knotted the two teams in the standings, Cincinnati thumped the Cardinals with five home runs on the way to a 9-2 victory Wednesday night at Great American Ball Park. Jonathan India and TJ Friedl each hit a pair of home runs to power the rout and punctuate a three-day shellacking of the formerly second-place Cardinals. They were outscored 19-4 in the series.

The Cardinals’ ninth loss in their past 13 games dropped them back into a losing record at 60-61. With the sweep, the Reds are now tied with the Cardinals in National League Central standings.

And if the results weren’t ugly enough, the fifth inning was.

After starter Kyle Gibson allowed the third and fourth homer of his start and left the game to the bullpen, the Cardinals defense came unraveled. They committed two errors and two other misplays to give what the Reds had no problem taking for themselves all series: more runs. A brief flicker of a rally for the Cardinals was extinguished in the sixth as the Reds got through a bullpen game by continuing to add on runs and rout the Cardinals.

The Cardinals now begin a stretch of 22 consecutive games against winning teams, beginning with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ visit to Busch Stadium this weekend.

The ugliest of innings

As if the two home runs allowed by their starter to chase him from the game weren’t enough to curdle an inning on the Cardinals, they tossed in a few errors, too.

In one of the uglier innings of the season, the Cardinals fell further behind on the scoreboard and came undone for a stretch in the field. After Gibson allowed solo homers to India and Friedl, the final batter he faced started what became a slow unraveling of the defense and a one-run bigger lead for the Reds. Spencer Steer singled to left, and when trying to field the ball, Tommy Pham had the ball kick off his glove.

That was the first error for the Cardinals.

The second came on the next play.

With lefty John King tagging in for Gibson to get a ground ball, the reliever got exactly that and what would have been a third out. A ground ball straight to second baseman Brendan Donovan and — right off his glove for an error. He scrambled to try and make the play, and his throw to first skipped and Paul Goldschmidt could not glove it cleanly. The play only resulted in one error, but it left two runners on base. King got another grounder, and it bounded out of reach for him and into the dead zone between fielders for an RBI single.

That’s two ground balls, one error, one run and no outs with only an out to get.

King got a third ground ball from the next batter, Will Benson, but it also did not yield an out. Masyn Winn went to his backhand, and the ball caromed off his glove for what was ruled a base hit by the official scorer.

In the end, the Cardinals had four balls ricochet off gloves or feet, and the Reds scored three runs to widen their lead to 7-0.

Cardinals rally sparks, sputters

After losing their grip on defense, the Cardinals momentarily found their footing in the batter’s box.

Immediately after the porous fifth inning, the Cardinals responded with four consecutive hits to open the top of the sixth inning. Leadoff hitter Winn doubled. Alec Burleson followed with an RBI single for the Cardinals’ first run, and in the hitter-friendly confines of GABP, the potential for a much larger rally unfolded from there. Willson Contreras and Nolan Arenado followed with singles, and Arenado’s grounder slipped past the reach of Elly De La Cruz for an RBI.

Arenado drove in three of the Cardinals’ first four runs in the series.

(They just came over three days.)

The inning reached the back half of the Cardinals lineup with no outs and two runners on base. Reds reliever Carson Spiers struck out Donovan and Goldschmidt with runners in scoring position to regain control of the inning. Goldschmidt’s K came on Spiers’ final pitch, and when lefty Justin Wilson entered, the Cardinals had the counter they planned: Jordan Walker.

Manager Oliver Marmol explained before Wednesday’s game that Walker was promoted to be a right-handed bat to help the Cardinals’ performance against lefties. In his career, Walker has hit right-handers better, but the Cardinals are looking for any edge against an area where they’ve struggled. Walker pinch-hit to face Wilson and popped up to end the inning and its potential.

Slumping Red leads latest barrage

Former NL Rookie of the Year India entered Wednesday’s game on a 0-for-22 nosedive. He had one hit in his previous 29 at-bats. He had one home run in his previous 104 plate appearances.

He slugged two in the span of three innings.

India’s skid reached 0 for 22 before he faced Gibson in the third inning. During the Cardinals’ downturn in the past few weeks, a small thread tying together the games has been production from the back third of an opponent’s lineup. The Nos. 8 and 9 hitters walked and singled against Gibson to turn the lineup back around to India. On a 2-2 pitch, India drilled a three-run homer that gave the Reds their first runs.

Two innings later, he hit a solo homer off Gibson for the fourth multi-homer game of his career.

Home is where the homers are

While the Cardinals had a difficult time breaking through the cozy dimensions of Great American Ball Park, Cincinnati made the most of their home launchpad. The scoreboard did its best to reflect the gap between the two teams in the series, but no statistic did it better than the simple, accessible home run totals.

Going into the eighth inning Wednesday, the Reds had hit 10.

The Cardinals had hit one.

Home runs provided all of the Reds’ runs in their victory Monday and three of the four runs in their win Tuesday, and on Wednesday, it was a home run from a struggling, slumping, scuffling leadoff hitter that vaulted Cincinnati to a quick lead. Gibson became the second Cardinals starter in the series to allow at least three homers to the Reds, and the season-high four they hit off him came on three different pitches.

India’s first homer was on an 81.2 mph sweeper that India sent over the wall. His second homer was on an 84.6 mph change-up.

In the third inning, Tyler Stephenson tagged an 88.4 mph cutter to right field that plumped the Reds lead to 4-0. And in the fifth, Friedl lifted an 89.3 mph cutter into the right-field seats. All that changed between Friedl’s two home runs was the Cardinals pitcher and the Cardinals right fielder watching them soar out of reach.

CINCINNATI — When it comes to assuring playing time during this current promotion for prized prospect Jordan Walker, the Cardinals aren’t promising as much as they usually would, looking instead to at-bats they need in the present rather than at-bats he may need for his future.

The Cardinals’ struggles against left-handed pitching and an opening on the active roster have combined to bring Walker back to the majors for what appears to be specific “platoon” assignment, even if there are only a few lefties on the horizon.

“The big league team has a need, and it’s a right-handed bat,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “So that’s the simplest way to look at it. It’s not May. It’s the end of the year. You have a limited amount of games left, and our biggest struggle has been against left-handed pitchers.

“We have a need, and it has to be someone who can play an outfield position.”

For the second time since his Monday return to the majors, Walker was not in the lineup against Cincinnati on Tuesday. If onrushing opponents Los Angeles and Milwaukee maintain their current pitching rotations, the Cardinals have a stretch where they’ll face one left-handed starter in eight games. That’s a lot of idle time for a top prospect the front office has often said would play when he returned.

John Mozeliak, president of baseball operations, said at the trade deadline that “you’re not going to bring somebody up just to bring somebody up. He’s young. If he comes up, he’s got to play.”

Walker, 22, hit his way into consideration for the promotion with a strong August at Class AAA Memphis. When the Cardinals had a streak of games against lefty starters, they did not promote Walker because they wanted to see “more consistency” from him, and they could not guarantee starts.They acquired Tommy Pham at the trade deadline for those starts.

An injury to Matt Carpenter (back) altered the look of the roster and gave the Cardinals a spot on the roster for Walker.

A spot in the lineup is a different conversation.

“There are also left-handed relievers,” Marmol reminded.

In several ways, Marmol geared Wednesday’s lineup with a few spots to use Walker or trap the choices Cincinnati could make. The Reds used an opener in right-hander Emilio Pagan. When the Reds started the parade of relievers in the third inning with lefty Sam Moll to face left-handed hitter Lars Nootbaar, the Cardinals lineup had right-handed Tommy Pham on deck to assure a look at Moll. Marmol wanted to set up the lineup so that later in the game, depending on the direction manager David Bell went with his bullpen, the Cardinals would have Walker to face those aforementioned left-handed relievers and Nolan Gorman to hit against a right-hander.

In his career, Walker has reverse splits — uncommon for a platoon choice. This season at Triple-A and the majors combined, he’s hit .246 vs. right-handers and .228 against lefties with a .368 slug and .670 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) vs. lefties. Against right-handed pitchers, he slugs .410 and has a .721 OPS. He had similar reverse splits in his rookie year with the Cardinals when he slugged .465 vs. right-handed pitchers with a .823 OPS and had a .389 slug and .683 OPS vs. lefties. The Cardinals are comparing his numbers against other hitters available, and where he offers an uptick is vs. lefties, not replacing one of the left-handed bats vs. a right-handed pitcher.

As a team, the Cardinals are near the bottom in both slugging and OPS against lefties this season, and it has contributed to their offensive struggles and their search for how to generate runs as the calendar runs out. The club’s preference to add a player who can play an outfielder position is why they have not brought up slugging Luken Baker, the team explained. A first baseman and designated hitter, Baker has hit 31 homers for the Triple-A Redbirds, and this season, he’s slugging .403 with a .711 OPS vs. lefties in Class AAA.

Fedde’s cut above

An otherwise steady start by the right-hander Erick Fedde got out of reach Tuesday night for the Cardinals when he allowed a two-run homer on a cut fastball that doubled the Reds lead. In the clubhouse after the game, Fedde said he would rethink the use of the cut fastball Jeimer Candelario hit for a home run.

It wasn’t the quality of the pitch but the quantity.

“Overexposed it today,” he said of his cutter.

One of the shifts Fedde made in his return the majors from a dynamic season in the KBO was an increased use of his cutter to play off a sweeping slider and new change-up. This season, which he started with the White Sox before the July trade to the Cardinals, Fedde pocketed his four-seam fastball in favor of the cutter, which he throws 32% of the time. About 40% of his pitches in 16 innings as a Cardinal have been cutters.

In his Cardinals debut, he talked about how the pitch wasn’t sharp but he still had to trust it, trust that it would tighten on the go. He leans on the pitch when there are runners on base, just as he did three times against Candelario.

In their first at-bat against each other, Fedde threw him five consecutive cutters. Candelario flew out on the first one he saw in his second at-bat, and when Fedde went back to it twice in the sixth inning, Candelario hammered the second one. Of the 11 pitches Candelario saw from Fedde while going 1 for 3, eight were cutters.

“That’s part of my game and one of my biggest pitches,” Fedde said.

In three starts for the Cardinals, Fedde is 1-2 with a 5.63 ERA and four homers allowed. He completed six innings for the first time for the Cardinals on Tuesday, but the homer kept that outing from being a quality start.

“Every time I go out there, I’m looking to dominate, honestly,” he said. “I haven’t been as sharp in all three of the outings. It’s my job to not let that pile up and not think about it going into a start. First impressions are important. I want to keep getting better.”

Pitching roulette, etc.

With a day off Thursday and a series against Milwaukee looming, the Cardinals have the option of adjusting their rotation to gear it toward that series. Or they could just delay revealing their starters vs. the sometimes cagey Dodgers. Both teams currently have TBA listed as their probable pitchers for the weekend series. In recent turns, the Cardinals have preferred to score their starters an added day off when possible to avoid late-season fatigue.

• Lance Lynn (knee) will throw a bullpen session Friday afternoon at Busch before determining if his next session is higher intensity and geared toward having him move into a start.
• Steven Matz (back) remains on track to start Friday for Class AAA Memphis and push his pitch count toward 80 and his innings to five.

CINCINNATI— If it wasn’t clear before they stared into the 99 mph blowtorch coming at them from the mound Tuesday night, it took one of the best pitchers in the division to underscore what will dictate where the Cardinals go from here, stuck in a rut back at .500.

They’ll go only as far as their offense awakes to drive them.

“There is no doubt about that,” manager Oliver Marmol said when presented the theory the Cardinals’ postseason aspirations will be guided by the offense. “That’s why I use the word 'ownership.' We’ve got to take ownership over this, needs to get right or it’s going to be more difficult to get to where we want to get to. It’s frustrating. But it’s not for lack of effort or something you can point to that’s not up to par other than in game (it’s not) coming to fruition. That’s been the part that is frustration.”

Cincinnati Reds ascending ace Hunter Greene became the latest pitcher to quell the Cardinals lineup, but few have done it as swiftly or as fast.

It took on Tuesday night at Great American Ball Park. The one run came on Nolan Arenado’s solo homer. Greene blitzed the Cardinals with a fastball that touched 100 mph and was on cruise control at 99 mph. He struck out eight, got 16 swings and misses, and when the Cardinals opened the sixth inning with a leadoff double, Greene struck out two batters at the top of the lineup, each of them on sliders that whisked away from their bats.

For a team struggling to find its rhythm offensively for 120 games and counting now, it was the opposite of what they needed— like a rock climber losing grip being handed a stick of butter.

“You don’t get right against Greene,” Marmol said.

They need to get right— now.

The loss dropped the Cardinals to 60-60 with 42 games remaining. For the first time in 46 games, they’re back at even, back on the brink of a losing record. Cincinnati can tie them in the standings with a series sweep and root them closer to last place in the National League Central than they are to a National League playoff berth. Since the All-Star break, the second-place Cardinals have lost seven of nine games to the three division foes directly beneath them in the standings.

They’ve yet to play the first-place Brewers in the second half. They’re due in town next week after the 71-win Dodgers but before the hard-charging Padres.

“There is no doubt it’s not going to get any easier from here probably,” Arenado said. “We have to find a way to keep pushing.”

That way, increasingly, appears to be jump-starting the offense.

An issue all season long, what could have been the Cardinals’ strength has been a drag on their consistency and a grind on their bullpen. With 120 games chronicled, the tell-tale traits of the 2024 Cardinals are well known. They play an absurdly high amount of close games (80 decided by three runs or fewer). They have the lowest slugging percentage and fewest home runs hit with runners in scoring position of any team in the majors. Their cornerstone hitters have struggled; two of their rising young power prospects have not blossomed.

Since the trade deadline, when the Cardinals acquired starter Erick Fedde and reunited with outfielder Tommy Pham, the Cardinals have lost eight of 13.

It’s the offense.

In August, against a run of solid pitchers, they’re batting .233 with a .371 slugging percentage. They’re averaging 3.33 runs per game and eight strikeouts per game. Greene (9-4) held them to one run through his seven innings and handled those eight strikeouts on his own. They struck out 11 times total on Tuesday. The Cardinals finished Tuesday’s game 0 for 5 against Greene with runners in scoring position and dropped to 13 for 89 in their past 12 games with runners in scoring position.

That’s a .146 average.

“We just have to own it,” Marmol said. “At the end of the day, no one is going to feel sorry for us. We’ve got to own the fact that we haven’t come through in certain situations, and today is a tough pitcher. You have to grind out at-bats. Moving forward, we just have to be better. That’s the bottom line.”

Marmol sided with platoon splits over specific hitters against Greene. That meant starting Nolan Gorman as a left-handed hitter vs. Greene instead of Jordan Walker, who has limited looks at Greene but some success. Back from Class AAA Memphis on Monday, Walker is 4 for 7 in his career against Greene with three singles and a well-struck double. Gorman entered the game 1 for 11 with eight strikeouts vs. Greene, and Paul Goldschmidt entered 2 for 15 with six strikeouts against Greene.

Those trends persisted.

In the fifth inning, Greene vomited into his glove after a walk to Lars Nootbaar. He then threw two wild pitches to put Nootbaar at third base and fell behind 3-0 to Gorman. Greene regained his stomach for the moment and promptly struck out Gorman out. The left-handed batter slipped to 1 for 14 against Greene with 10 strikeouts. Goldschmidt went 0 for 3 against right-hander.

Asked about his lineup choices before the game, Marmol explained the commitment to platoons, the importance of digging into individual success and sending a message of confidence in the bats that will have to provide for them. He also mentioned taking note of who is feeling sharp at the plate.

Both Goldschmidt and Gorman have been searching through stretches this season— and their challenge was dealing with a right-hander who has a 1.03 ERA in his past 43⅔ innings.

“When you don’t feel right and then you’ve got a guy like Hunter Greene on the mound, it makes it tougher because there’s not a whole lot of mistakes that are going to be made today,” Arenado said. “But that’s the league now. It is what it is. We know what we’re up against. We’ve beat good pitchers before. We’ve just got to continue to grind it out.

“When a guy like him is on, those times he makes mistakes, you’ve got to make him pay.”

Arenado spoke from experience.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Cardinals could not turn a double play to end the inning and set up starter Fedde to face Jeimer Candelario with a runner on base for the third time in the game. In past at-bats, Fedde relied on his cutter— his best pitch— to challenge Candelario in that same spot. He went back to the cutter maybe one too many times, Fedde said after the game, and Candelario drilled one for a two-run homer that doubled the Reds lead.

“A two-run lead feels very unsafe,” Fedde said. “We joke in here about a bloop and a blast— one of those things (and it’s) 2-2. It hurt even more after Nado was able to hit the home run and got us closer. Frustrating to give up the extra run there.”

In the inning immediately after that frustration ...

Immediately after the frustration of not turning a double play ...

Immediately after the frustration of a misplaced cutter to Candelario ...

Immediately after the frustration of the Reds’ widening lead ...

Arenado appeared to channel some of it into the next immediate pitch.

Greene’s first pitch of the seventh inning was a slider that Arenado drilled for a solo homer. His bolt traveled 400 feet and clanged into the advertising board along the lip of left field’s upper deck. Arenado’s 12th homer of the season was a spark that didn’t carry elsewhere in the lineup.

Marmol was asked what would rev the lineup.

“Depends on the guy,” Marmol said. “Some guys, they start to feel it when they start taking their walks. They take their walks and start controlling the strike zone better, therefore they start swinging at pitches they can do more with. Nado— when he takes a swing like he took today, it just gets him on track with the direction he wants to go from a swing-plane standpoint. There are other guys who are still trying to grind it out and not getting a reward.”

Of that group, the one who produced a run was Arenado.

Idling at .500, if the Cardinals are going to go only as far as the offense takes them, maybe how far Arenado sent his homer is instructive. He let some of his frustration out.

“We know as an offense we’re better than what we’re doing,” Arenado said. “We’ve just got to continue to push. Guys are obviously not happy. That can be a good thing also.”