Commish’s Offerings 4-25-2023

Rick Hummel is presented by:

Fast Eddie’s Bon Air

in Alton, Illinois

Digging in to the Problems

St Louis-

The Cardinals' keystone combinations have been myriad and productive to a relatively high degree when second baseman Nolan Gorman, who has six homers and 22 RBIs, has been involved.

The initial pairing of Tommy Edman at shortstop and Brendan Donovan was 4-7. Edman at short and Gorman at second has produced an 0-5 won-lost number although Gorman contributed off the bench one day. Edman and Taylor Motter, since let go, were 3-1 and shortstop Donovan and Gorman are 1-0.

And in the last couple of games, newly summoned Paul DeJong and Gorman at short and second, respectively, both homered and DeJong paired with Edman last night in San Francisco in a game that featured a costly late error by Edman.

So you can see the ups and downs.

But the Cardinals aren't going anywhere until the stars start to shine and that doesn't mean improving their awful night game record of 3-11.

It means that the star players have to take over whenever everybody else but Gorman is not doing much more than finding his way. Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog always said there was a reason why those players were making all those millions, although back then that million was mostly one or two.

Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado have two home runs. Miles Mikolas has no victories. Those Cardinals are the ones counted on to lead the charge at some point and, defensively, the corner infielders have as always.

But they haven't done much else but get on base reasonably regularly so far and Arenado quietly has been piling up a ton of strikeouts.

He has has a four-strikeout game and a three-strikeout game in the past 10 days before sitting out entirely on Monday when the Cardinals' offense did absolutely nothing against the Giant' Alex Cobb.

The Cardinals' offense seems to have hit enough home runs in that they have 27 in 23 games. But that number is just six more than the 21 compiled by former Cardinals farmhands Patrick Wisdom of the Chicago Cubs (nine), Adolis Garcia of Texas (seven, including three in one game) and Tampa Bay's Randy Arozarena (five), who probably is the Most Valuable Player for the first month in baseball.

The respective OPS figures for those are .989 for Wisdom, .837 for American League RBI leader Garcia (28) and a whopping 1.018 for Arozarena, also hitting .353.

What the Cardinals have for those transactions that sent those players away: are for Wisdom, utilityman Drew Robinson who twice tried to commit suicide before straightening his life, if not his baseball career; for Garcia, cash from Texas but not nearly the $2.6 million bonus the Cardinals gave him, and for Arozarena, left-hander Matthew Liberatore, still promising but he would have to be Steve Carlton to make this trade even.

Arozarena made only a few outfield starts for the Cardinals in 2019. Garcia famously fell down as a pinch runner between third and home carrying a key run in the final week of 2018 and Wisdom hit four homers and had an .882 OPS as a part-timer for the Cardinals in 2018.

But those stories all are for another day. Maybe.