The Cardinals got a much-needed day to breathe after Sunday’s nightmare against the Phillies, but the conversation around that loss hasn’t gone away. Riley O’Brien’s rough ninth inning, which ended with six runs crossing in the bottom of the frame, put manager Oli Marmol in the crosshairs for plenty of fans after he stayed with his closer through the damage.
Kyle Gibson, though, wasn’t having the blame game.
“Your closer is one strike away multiple times from finishing the game,” Gibson said. “Oli doesn't catch flack there.
Yeah, the bullpen gave up some runs late the last five games, but why do you think that is? This is what we talk about, why starting pitching is important.
It just was a long stretch where the bullpen finally caught up to them a little bit.”
That’s the heart of it for the Cardinals right now: the bullpen has been carrying too much for too long. The club had already burned through its higher-leverage arms by the time O’Brien was still on the mound, leaving Marmol with few real options in a game that had already gone sideways.
The situation got even tighter over the weekend when two starting pitchers landed on the injured list, which only added to the strain on the relief corps. The off-day on Monday gives St. Louis a chance to reset before opening its next homestand against the Baltimore Orioles.
There’s also the larger picture. The Cardinals still need to find someone to handle the fifth rotation spot with Andre Pallante and Hunter Dobbins sidelined, and they’re trying to navigate the rest of the season in year one of their rebuild. In that context, the loss on Sunday looks less like a managerial failure and more like the product of a staff being stretched thin in too many places at once.
For a team that isn’t contending, the focus has to stay on the future. That means building up the farm system and getting through the present with what’s available, even when the bullpen runs out of gas late.
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Just as important, the evaluation process has also started to draw lines elsewhere, and not every young Cardinal is being viewed the same way. Liberatore, Gorman and Crooks have been mentioned as players who may not fit into the long-term picture, which gives this reset a harder edge than a simple youth movement. For a franchise that has long prided itself on reloading rather than rebuilding, the challenge now is not just developing talent, but deciding which prospects are truly worth keeping around when the next competitive window opens. [Read more 🡒]
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What makes the project especially intriguing is that the hardest part appears to be done. The organization says it has already picked the new name, though it is not ready to reveal it publicly, and it has framed the process around finding something that reflects Springfield while also clearing trademark hurdles. For fans, that leaves the important question hanging in the air a little longer, even as the path to the next identity is already set. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals Suddenly Face A Masyn Winn Problem They Can't Ignore
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Nolan Gorman was brought back to help cover the gap, yet his first game back did little to calm the concern around the lineup. The Cardinals are third in the NL Central and five games back in the wild-card race, which means every day without Winn has a little more weight than it did a week ago. For a club trying to stay relevant into September, the issue is no longer just replacing one player for a homestand. It is whether the rest of the roster can avoid letting a temporary injury turn into a much larger problem. [Read more 🡒]