After suffering a 6-5 loss in extra innings last Saturday against the Chicago White Sox, the St. Louis Cardinals tasted yet another defeat versus the same team in a series finale at home on Sunday to the tune of a 5-1 score. The Cards' offense just couldn't muster significant production at the plate, while their bullpen struggled to suppress the White Sox's bats.
Cardinals' Oliver Marmol sounds off on losing series finale vs White Sox
Coupled with the Pittsburgh Pirates winning against the Colorado Rockies on Sunday, 5-3, the Cardinals' loss has St. Louis now finding itself wallowing at the bottom of the National League Central division with just a 15-9 record. Losing to a White Sox squad twice in three games in a series must be an eye-opener as much as it is a wake-up call for the Cardinals. No team has struggled more this season than the White Sox, who entered the Cardinals series with just six wins, but Chicago found a way to win the set outright against St. Louis.
Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol is very much aware of his team's brutal season that just got worse after a pair of embarrassing losses to the team with the worst record in the big leagues, and he knows that it would take great patience for St. Louis to get it together.
“You’ve got to keep working,” Marmol said after the game, per the Associated Press (h/t ESPN). “The bottom line. I know you don’t want to hear it, but that’s all we can do is continue to work.”
The White Sox series started just fine for the Cardinals, with St. Louis taking a 3-0 win in the opener. In the second leg of the series, Cardinals starter Lance Lynn struggled on the mound, allowing five earned runs on four hits with three walks in 5.0 innings of work in the aforementioned loss.
During the finale, relief pitcher Matthew Liberatore got a spot start for the Cardinals and pitched well in 3.2 innings, allowing just an earned run on three hits. It started to turn bad for the Cards when Giovanny Gallegos allowed three earned runs on three hits. St. Louis' bullpen hasn't been exactly glorious in the 2024 MLB season and it showed in Sunday's defeat at the hands of the White Sox. On the season, St. Louis is 15th in the majors with a 3.78 relief pitchers ERA, though, the team is 11th overall with a bullpen WHIP of 1.20.
Chicago is the worst in the majors with just a .597 OPS, but the White Sox did not have to make a giant leap in that area to defeat the Cardinals. After all, St. Louis is the worst non-White Sox team in the big leagues with just a .624 OPS at the time of this writing. St. Louis' only run in the final game of the series came off of a solo home run by Willson Contreras in the fourth inning.
Having lost four of their last five games, the Cardinals will look to get it together and return to the win column as soon as Monday night when St. Louis opens a three-game series, still at home, against the visiting New York Mets. That sounds like a good series for the Cardinals to begin turning things around as they defeated the Mets in a three-game series in Queens late last April.
Follow Us
Subscribe