r/Cardinals

The Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Braves, Orioles, and I think a few other teams own their own network. The Cardinals are under the MLB Local Media umbrella. Doesn’t really matter but I was just curious, why?

Am I the only one fed up with the Leahy experiment? Like it's not working. he was supposed to bring swing and miss to the rotation but he's not striking guys out and he's allowing a lot of runs. I get that the rotation is weak but it's going to be weak it's a rebuild year. the bullpen is also struggling greatly and a guy like Leahy was a big strength and a big reason why the bullpen has struggled is because it's missing that guy that can come in for almost any situation. a back end of Romero, Leahy, and O'brien is pretty solid. Just my 2 cents

I'm down in STL for work in a couple weeks, had tickets to go with my fiancee, but she canceled. Trying to decide whether to go to the game alone. One thing I'm working through is my association of baseball, Busch Stadium particularly, and alcohol as I approach 3 years sober.

Does Busch sell any decent NA beers at all? Having a fake beer in my hand would go a long way to calming anxiety I'm having about that experience solo.

Without really diving into a lot of underlying metrics, it's perplexing to me that in a season where we were told the organization was going to focus on more high-octane pitchers and pitching results, we're instead seeing a staff doing the exact opposite. The K/9 has dropped from an already-low 7.6 last year to an abysmal 6.2 this year, and BB/9 has increased from 2.9 to 4.0. This is the exact opposite of what I expected to see from the "retool" season--I figured more hittable, sure, but also improving on Ks without sacrificing control--and I'm not sure now if I believe this will be a quick retool as opposed to a longer 4+ year rebuild, if they can't identify and develop strikeout pitchers when that's their explicit goal.

The only two pitchers, 24 games into the season, with a better K rate than last year are Stanek and O'Brien (Fernandez may have also just joined the group with his 2-K inning today). Most everybody else has dropped pretty significantly, headlined by Libby dropping from 7.2 to 5.3, Graceffo from 8.4 to 5.1, Romero from 8.1 to 4.5, and Svanson from 10.1 to 7.5. Where last year's staff had 20 pitchers in double-digit innings and just 2 with a walks-per-nine of 5.0 or above, this year it's 6 of 12. Admittedly we're still early, barely 1/7 of the way through the season, but the trend is pretty rough and didn't show up early last year either.

I didn't expect Blake to unlock a pitching staff full of fireballers suddenly, but I certainly didn't think we'd be seeing this kind of regression from his staff on those two key figures.

Now, as a caveat, last year's season-long WPA from all StL pitchers was -0.3, and so far this year as a group they're at 0.8. They don't look notably worse from the perspective of hard-hit percentage, line drive rate, exit velo, HR%, OPS against.....maybe a little luckier this year on BAbip, but otherwise the metrics don't look that drastically different. Contact rate is up from 27% to 30%, and first-pitch strikes down from 64% to 57%, so basically they aren't getting ahead in counts, which means when they do throw strikes the hitters are ready for it and put the ball in play.

So are the K and BB numbers at this point in the season misleading? Do the underlying metrics look okay and we should get some positive regression if they can start getting ahead in more early counts? Or is this going to be a season of watching Cardinals pitchers not fooling hitters, and remaining near the bottom of MLB for strikeouts, walks, hits, and runs, with a big ol' question mark in the offseason regarding who's worth including in their rebuild plans (Dusty Blake included)?

Last 7 games for winn

.370 .419 .630.

10hits out of 27Ab

1HR 8RBI

How long can he stay Hot?

Hey everyone, Mariners fan here! I'll be visiting St. Louis and Busch Stadium for the first time this weekend to catch the Friday and Saturday games. I checked out the pinned "Guide to Busch Stadium" post but it looked a little outdated, so I had a couple questions I'm curious about.

- What are the best seats for a first-timer? My budget is ~$100 per game for the ticket, and my biggest concern is not having to bake in the sun 😅. For games this early in the season against a non-rival opponent, will it be pretty crowded or could I get away with moving around a bit?

- What are some good food/drink options both in and around of the park? I'll be my myself (my friend couldn't get the time off work lol) and will probably want to grab a beer and a bite before the Friday night game, but am also open to ballpark food if there are good options.

Thank you!

I feel like in St. Louis, baseball starts early. Some people have memories from before they could read of watching games with family. What's your earliest Cardinals memory and what was the moment that turned you from a kid sitting on someone's lap to an actual fan who cared about the outcome? Was it a player, a game, or just the way someone in your family reacted to something on the screen?

It has been a rough couple of years seeing our numbers go down; however, the old adage of you reap what you sow holds true in this situation (I.e. Bill Dewitt III comments, Mo’s poor GM performance, etc.). Winning always helps, and we’re on a bit of a hot streak right now. To be frank, we did the same thing last year. So at what point do we start to see attendance improve again?

Recently moved to St. Louis. Where I’m from, college sports is all we have so I’ve never much followed the MLB.

I’m thinking about diving head first into Cardinals fandom, but before I do, I gotta ask. Do the Cardinals owners care about winning baseball games? It seems to me like there are MLB owners who truly don’t give a shit and I don’t think that’s something I could deal with. Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone. I’ve been a cardinals fan since I was a kid and I’m recently really diving into baseball more and I’ve been doing my due diligence looking at the team and where we are. I know we are in rebuild mode and have some solid young players. What’s some things I should know about the team?

I feel like in St. Louis, baseball knowledge gets passed down like family recipes. Something a parent, grandparent, uncle, or older fan told you about watching the game, about the franchise, about how to appreciate baseball that shaped how you watch to this day. What's the thing someone taught you that you now carry with you every time you watch the Cards?

Not one team in the AL has a better record than the Cards!