Cardinals nothing but vanilla in ’21

It’s crazy that the St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs in 2019 and 2020, then traded for Nolan Arenado and somehow ended up here, a team mired in mediocrity, its fans tired of false hope.

With so much talk around St. Louis about “.500,” the upcoming Bommarito Automotive Group 500 IndyCar race should thank the Cards for the free word-of-mouth.

It’s surprising that the same front office that was so shrewd to pull off a generational trade also would miscalculate how to supplement its rotation after injuries. The starting pitching depth — or lack thereof — is the biggest storyline of how the team became a team like the Cubs.

OK, the Cards aren’t that bad — since the trade deadline, the revamped and rebuilding Cubs have an unrecognizable lineup. But the Cardinals basically are as close to the fourth-place Cubs in the National League Central Division as they are to the second-place Reds, let alone the Brewers in first place — where the Cards were supposed to be in the first place.

If MLB teams were 30 ice cream flavors, the Cardinals are vanilla. And if vanilla is the only available flavor, how many people will pass on going to the ice cream shop?

To me, a key stat for the rest of this Cards season will be the attendance. Yes, the Cardinals have the seventh-highest average attendance in Major League Baseball. And, of course, the pandemic affects attendance in so many ways in so many cities. But I think back to the game on Aug. 1 at Busch Stadium. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon, the cooperating temperature danced in the low-to-mid 80s, the giveaway was a kids Rawlings baseball glove and the attendance was 28,975. People aren’t coming, Ray. How did the Cardinals get to this point of vanilla? How is that possible for a team with Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt? Well, if you’d ask them, they’d humbly say they need to contribute even more. And while that’s true and fair, they’re still producing, just maybe like when they were a couple years younger in ballparks with higher elevations.

But since May 1, Goldschmidt is hitting .289 with a .841 OPS, as he lasers baseballs as if he’s a Pedroia droid (Goldschmidt is tied with Juan Soto for the fourth-highest average exit velocity in the National League). And Arenado has a .819 OPS overall and gobs of RBIs — 68 of them, good for eighth in the NL.

But the offense from other positions has been brutally scare. At second base, the Cardinals’ .662 OPS is 26th in baseball. Cardinals shortstops have a similar .664 OPS, which is 22nd. Catcher? Twenty-first, at .661. And right field, which suffered because of outfield injuries for some of the season, is 29th, at .638.

It sure looks like the Cards were wrong on Kolten Wong. They thought they could make a prudent financial move by replacing him with Tommy Edman at second base. It turns out Wong is exactly the type of flavor this vanilla team could use. He’s hitting .286 with a .789 OPS, compared to Edman’s .254 and .669 OPS. And while Edman fields second base with the prowess of former Cardinal Tommy Herr, Milwaukee’s Wong fields second base like … former Cardinal Kolten Wong.

But the most maddening thing from the Vanilla Factory has been the pitching staff of Mike Maddux. Yes, yes, of course, I know, we all know — Jack Flaherty and Miles Mikolas have been injured. They probably would’ve won some games the Cards lost. But there was such a drastic drop-off in depth that it killed the Cardinals’ chances.

Other teams had injured pitchers and those other teams still are in the playoff hunt. The Cardinals not only didn’t have depth, but also didn’t make an in-season move to trade for an upgrade of a pitcher. They banked on up-and-coming pitchers or over-the-hill pitchers and it backfired.

So many crooked-number innings early in a game. So many walks. So many what-ifs. And now, yet another arm is hurt — Kwang Hyun Kim is on the injured list. Daniel Ponce de Leon will take his spot. He’s had some good stints over the years, but some pretty bad ones, too. He’s average. Vanilla. He’ll fit in.

And while the bullpen often was affected by short outings from starters, the reality is that bullpen wasn’t as deep as believed, either. Lately, the Cards have had wins evaporate in the hands of reliable relievers Giovanny Gallegos and Alex Reyes. And even one from perhaps the most-reliable arm out there — that of the first baseman Goldschmidt, who made a rare, errant error late in the most-recent loss.

Jack and Miles should return soon. But it’s hard to get excited about anything with this team — even with Arenado, one of baseball’s more-exciting players — because the Cardinals’ overall product could sure use some toppings.