Cardinals face daunting make-or-break stretch as October hopes dwindle
ST. LOUIS – There’s an old adage that goes something like, “In order to be the best, you got to beat the best.” That’s essentially where things stand with the slumping St. Louis Cardinals over the next several weeks.
The Cardinals, 61-63 with less than 40 games left in the regular season and winless in seven of their last nine, will play a gauntlet of postseason contenders from now through the first full week of September.
That includes two series against the NL Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers, who the Cardinals suddenly trail 11 games back of the division lead. Tough series against the Minnesota Twins, San Diego Padres, New York Yankees and Seattle Mariners also loom ahead. Not to mention for a Cardinals team coming off a three-game series with the NL powerhouse Los Angeles Dodgers.
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Those six aforementioned opponents have a combined winning percentage of .564, a mark the Cardinals haven’t particularly come close to reaching this year.
St. Louis doesn’t have much of a reprieve in the schedule until a three-game home series with the Cincinnati Reds, who are 61-64, but also just coming off a three-game sweep of the Cardinals in Ohio last week.
Cardinals manager Oli Marmol acknowledged the pressure facing the team after Sunday’s loss to the Dodgers, but doesn’t want to treat it any different than any other time of the season.
“It’s no different for us,” said Marmol via Bally Sports Midwest. “We understand our runway. At the end of the day, it comes down to our rotation and bullpen giving us a shot. But we’re going to have to score some runs.”
“A lot of very close ballgames. At some point, we’re going to have to open that up a little bit. That will be our key to success moving forward for our last little stretch.”
Marmol also expressed the six games coming up against the Brewers are “very important games.” The Cardinals are 1-6 against Milwaukee this season leading up to this point. Winning all remaining contests with the Brewers, in theory, could move the Cardinals within five games of the division lead over the next several weeks.
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“You have to go in there and take one game at a time and take each and every one,” said Marmol. “Bottom line, that’s where we’re at. It’s the hole that we’ve dug. They’re very important. We’ll do exactly that. All you can do is focus on what leads to a win. For us, it’s playing clean baseball, pitching well, our bullpen doing what they’ve done all year, and offensively, we’re really going to have to execute.”
The Cardinals are also five games back of the final Wild Card seed with at least three teams they would need to leapfrog for a possible shot at postseason, if it doesn’t come from the division.
Last year, the cutoff for postseason was 84 wins in the National League. Usually, it’s at least 86, or 10 games above .500 at the season’s end.
In order to accomplish that, which still wouldn’t guarantee postseason, the Cardinals likely have a margin of error of only around 12 losses for the rest of their remaining 38 games, and need a lot of external factors to fall in their favor. Fan Graphs gives the Cardinals a 4.2% of making postseason and less than a 1% chance of winning the division.
The first of two remaining three-game series with the Brewers begins Tuesday. First pitch is set for 6:45 p.m.
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