The offense isnt the issue with this team. It's piching.

We have a new batting coach. Dont know if that is a difference maker or not. They seem to be working the counts and being patient in laying off that outside slider. That seemed to give us fits last year, especially our young players.
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lol. Hjerpe blew out his elbow. It's almost like human beings aren't designed to throw baseballs at a velocity that reaches the maximum tensile strength of their elbow ligaments or something.
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Of course he did.

Because Pitchers break -- all of 'em.

So after he gets his 50 innings pitched in 2026 he'll end up with maybe 150 IPs over 4 seasons as a professional and he'll enter his age 26 season in AA having never thrown over 55 innings in a professional season. So they'll slow play him in AA hoping to have him throw 125 innings on the year with maybe 50 of those in AAA at age 27.

Looking forward to the spring training puff pieces about our 28 year old rookie with fewer than 300 professional innings coming into spring training with a shot at the 4 slot and being 'In the best shape of his life'.

Write another one off, fellas. He done.

A month into the season and our best pitching prospect can't find the zone and our 2 and 3 prospects have broken down and can probably be written off altogether now. At best you get a swingman sort out of Hjerpe for a few years. Maybe Hence can work himself back to prospect status but you can't consider it unless/until he actually does.

We keep slow-playing these pitchers and they keep breaking down anyway. Something is seriously wrong in our pitching development pipeline (and it sure doesn't seem much better for the hitters).

I still think this goes all the way back to Reyes when they let the guy shoulder-load to velocity hunt. Guys absolutely shredding guys at 20 years old in AA throwing 95. Then he shows up the next season throwing 101 without his breaking ball, the Cardinals pat themselves on the back for turning him into a triple digit reliever (because his new arm slot cost him his curveball) and proceed to watch him explode on the launching pad.

At 95 mph with 3 plus pitches and actual command, he was a top 2 starter in the making. At 101 mph with a fastball he couldn't command, a curveball that couldn't get depth anymore from the way he was throwing it (so he had to scrap it in favor of a slider he didn't know what to do with) and a change that lost its drop for the same reasons, he was novelty act that predictably exploded in their faces.

Then act all shocked when it happened. I said at the time it was going to. When all those fawning pieces came out talking about him finding 5 mph of velocity in an off-season I said "Welp, that kid is fucked because there's no way he did that without shoulder loading and it's going to break him..."

And they just whistled past the graveyard and watched it happen.
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"This doesn't even feel like the big leagues."

This was my reaction to seeing Busch Stadium nearly empty last night...

I took this photo a few minutes before the St. Louis Cardinals took the field.

This is a franchise with:

Brand Power
Rich History
Loyal Fanbase

Yet, Busch… pic.twitter.com/d0fWFOU9Hh

— Jacob Turner (@TheJacobTurner) April 16, 2025

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So, anyone got anything to say?
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Generation X doesn't care about sports. This was always going to happen. There are too many alternatives for kids to do these days.
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I'm not spending another dime on this organization until Mo and Oli are gone
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Meanwhile, other teams are pulling in huge numbers and broadcasted games are reaching higher viewership than pre-covid.

No, it's the Cardinals suck and have sucked for years and continue to not try to get better. The fans are tired of it. Cardinals fans need to spread that message to a lot of things going on right now outside of baseball. Maybe shit would change if the consumers put up a big middle finger.
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They are. Seen attendance lately? It's a ghost town and only going to get worse once the heat and lawlessness rises downtown.
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Our generation is still alive and kicking but when all of us 80's babies are gone it will be a different story.
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In my fantasy baseball group thread, a guy in the 5th inning of that game said "So how do we lose, Romero in 8th or Fernandez in the 9th?"

In my defense, my guess was actually King in the 7th which was almost right -- we blew the lead.

But when the 8th happened I get short message -- "So...both, then?"

Ollie -- when us plebes can sit there with a mid-inning lead and make bets on who's going to lose it for you late and the 3 parties named are ALL directly responsible for it....you might fucking suck at your job.

Romero putting two guys on only for Fernandez to immediately give up a bomb to clear 'em is the most Cardinals moment of the year so far and really the most Marmol thing I've seen in his tenure.

It was just so goddamn predictable.
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Yeah - franchises are still selling for record figures.

Very wealthy people are making very large bets on the long-term health of sports in general. And almost every last one of them is cashing in just fine.

'Sports' aren't the problem. "Kids these days" are not the problem.

The Dewitts, Mozeliak and Marmol are the problem. And it couldn't be more obvious.
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