ST. LOUIS – It’s early, but the St. Louis Cardinals are in a very unfamiliar spot. The Cardinals have the worst record in the National League just 10 games into the 2023 season.
After Monday’s road loss, the St. Louis Cardinals stand at 3-7 in the new campaign. St. Louis won two of three games in its opening series, though has dropped six of its last seven games since then.
With a 3-7 record, the St. Louis Cardinals matched their worst 10-game start in nearly half a century. For context…
- The last time the Cardinals started 3-7 was in 2017.
- The last time the Cardinals started 3-7 before that was 1997, the only other time that has happened under the ownership of the DeWitt family.
- The last time the Cardinals started worse than 3-7 was in 1973, when the team started 1-9.
Of those aforementioned teams, none of them ended up making playoffs. History shows the Cardinals will need to pick up their play soon to avoid a similar trend this year.
It’s hard to pinpoint one source of the slow start, but it’s fair to say that pitching has not quite met the bill of recent years. The Cardinals pitching staff sports a 4.97 ERA, nearly 1.2 runs worse than all of last year. Starting pitchers have only made it through the sixth inning once in ten turns, oftentimes departing with deficits for a taxed bullpen to work around.
Timely hitting has not been there since the first series either. The Cardinals have been shut out twice and limited to two runs or fewer four times over the past week. Bringing home runners in scoring position consistently has been a challenge, and some baserunning mistakes have had head coach Oli Marmol questioning effort early into the year.
The Cardinals play two more road games against the Colorado Rockies through Wednesday before returning for their second homestand Thursday, starting with a four-game series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
