00:00Let's talk St. Louis real quick.
00:02It feels like the St. Louis Cardinals are coming down to earth right now.
00:07Heading into this week, they had dropped 10 to the last 15.
00:10The starting pitching has been okay.
00:14Dustin May with, what, a complete game shutout.
00:16After that, he laid an egg, and he's just trying to work his way back to the groove.
00:22McGreevy, he was really good last time out,
00:25but the peripheral started to catch up with him over his last handful of starts.
00:30Liberator, it's finicky at points, and the offense,
00:35it just seems like Walker is starting to get figured out a teensy tiny bit,
00:38but at the end of the day, I look at that top four in the lineup,
00:42and I see Weatherholt, Herrera, Walker, and Burleson,
00:45and I think, man, that's a playoff caliber front four in a starting lineup.
00:50Yeah, 100%.
00:51And then you even look at the back, and you say, well, Mason Winfield,
00:54I know he's not heading to the best of his ability this year,
00:56but that's a pretty athletic and dynamic shortstop
00:59if he's not going to be hitting.
01:00And then you look at what – the tough part is you had a couple young guys
01:04come up and perform, and then they've hit a bit of a wall like a Blaise Jordan.
01:08I like Nathan Church as kind of like your nine-hitter,
01:11defensive-oriented player, but you're going to have ebbs and flows
01:14with the young player there.
01:15And I think the bullpen's the interesting spot, too,
01:17because Riley O'Brien is clearly disgusting,
01:19but you're going to have these ebbs and flows with him
01:22as kind of a breakout reliever.
01:23Same with Soriano.
01:24Yeah, Soriano, he's been good, but not a lot of whiff in this bullpen.
01:30Actually, if you look at it from top to bottom,
01:32the only guy striking out more than a batter per inning
01:37is Ryan Stanek, who's also walking five batters per nine.
01:42So that's a tough spot to be.
01:44And I'll tell you, that's kind of mimicked in the starting rotation as well.
01:48Leahy's a bat-to-ball guy.
01:49It's true.
01:50McGreevy's a bat-to-ball guy.
01:52They've got a whole bunch of bat-to-ball guys.
01:54The only bat-misser in there is May,
01:56and he's not really this elite bat-misser that he was with the Dodgers.
01:59Helps when you've got a superb defensive middle infield,
02:02but that's going to be the tough part.
02:04Look, I think Heim Bloom, of course he wants to see this team succeed,
02:07but I think he would like to see this go in one direction or the other.
02:11I think the worst-case scenario is you're right in this in-between spot,
02:14and you can't sell, but you also can't really buy.
02:19I think the Cardinals are going to take it all the way down to the wire,
02:22as they should.
02:23And with the expanded playoffs,
02:25it's always hard to make these predictions now with these types of teams.
02:27It's really going to come down to the final days before the deadline,
02:31and then at that point I think they'll decide exactly what they want to do.
02:34But I'd imagine if the trend kind of continues like this,
02:38odds are we'll probably see them trim a couple pieces and go from there.
02:42I know they can't really do that because it's St. Louis and you don't want to.
02:45And so maybe there's a world where they just kind of ride it out
02:48and give May the QO and just – you know Heim likes to draft,
02:52so just to get your draft capital.
02:53But I feel like that's probably a little bit of malpractice as well.
02:59So I'm fascinated to see what they do.
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