The St. Louis Cardinals remain hopeful that they could somehow sneak into the playoffs despite being a few games out of a wild card spot entering Monday night. Games against below .500 teams, such as the Cincinnati Reds, should be the Cardinals' to lose, as they have every incentive to give it their all to keep up in the playoff race. However, they couldn't muster much of anything on offense in their series opener against the Reds, suffering a 6-1 defeat in the process.
But it wasn't as if the Reds' pitching staff simply had its way with the Cardinals' lineup. Andrew Abbott ended up allowing just one run, but eight Cardinals did manage to make it on base. Alas, St. Louis simply could not drive in more than one run, with manager Oliver Marmol ruing his team's missed opportunities to give ace Sonny Gray some run support.
“We're going to have to do a better job of executing with runners in scoring position. It's going to be the key to our success moving forward. We put ourselves in a situation where we could've changed the game a couple times and weren't able to,” Marmol told reporters, via Bally Sports Midwest on X.
There were a couple times during the game when the Cardinals loaded the bases. The first instance came in the top of the second inning; after Nolan Arenado struck out to begin the frame, Paul Goldschmidt, Brendan Donovan, and Jordan Walker all reached base, setting the stage for Pedro Pages to be a hero and break the 0-0 deadlock at the time. The Cardinals catcher, however, ended up grounding into a double play to end the inning.
The very next inning, the Cardinals went out and loaded the bases once more; this time, all they needed was to keep the line moving after Arenado drove in a run with a single and Goldschmidt extended the inning with an infield single. With a golden opportunity to increase their lead, Donovan came up to the plate and struck out, stopping the Cardinals' rally in its tracks once more.
The next innings ended up being an offensive disaster for the Cardinals. Credit must go to the Reds' pitching crew for going three-up, three-down in five of the last six half-innings. But the Cardinals may not have needed to tally a hit from the fourth inning onwards anyway had they cashed in on their earlier scoring opportunities.
Cardinals must get it together soon ahead of a difficult run of games
The Reds are no pushovers; but compared to the games that await the Cardinals, Cincinnati may pose the least alarming level of threat. Following the series against the Reds, the Cardinals will be facing the Los Angeles Dodgers, Milwaukee Brewers, Minnesota Twins, San Diego Padres, New York Yankees, Brewers (again), and Seattle Mariners in successive series. All of those teams are comfortably above .500, with the Mariners being the only team among those six mentioned that aren't currently sitting in a playoff spot.
That will be a stretch that dictates whether or not the Cardinals are able to make the playoffs or not. They need to perform at a much better level in the clutch for them to remain in the wild card hunt, as they will be underdogs in the next seven series they'll be facing.
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