NL Central Discussion

[Frisbee Slider]

Will Oliver Marmol still be managing the Cardinals in July?

https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/baseball/news-st-louis-cardinals-fans-bewildered-disconnect-manager-oliver-marmol-team-does-oli-ever-talk-team-oli-s-oblivious

[Jake McKibbin]

I don't think he will be, but that's likely less to do with him, and more to do with Contreras at the plate, Arenado not being MVP calibre again, the young guys like Donovan, Burleson, etc not being .300 hitters, Walker not being EDLC level of talent, and a rotation that to be fair has righted the ship recently but did get them into this mess i the first place by being god awful.

[kestrel79]

I'm not buying it, the Cards are the Cards and they will somehow be in it at the end. They will get some new gritty manager that plays the game the "right way" and go on a run.

[Frisbee Slider]

3 minutes ago, kestrel79 said:

I'm not buying it, the Cards are the Cards and they will somehow be in it at the end. They will get some new gritty manager that plays the game the "right way" and go on a run.

Do you think the Cardinals fire their current manager soon? Adam Wainwright saying the clubhouse is frustrated does not seem like a good sign for job security.

[Jake McKibbin]

3 minutes ago, Frisbee Slider said:

Do you think the Cardinals fire their current manager soon? Adam Wainwright saying the clubhouse is frustrated does not seem like a good sign for job security.

In all sports they usually sack the manager as if he's the driving force, but sometimes players just aren't performing. the cardinals need to go on a run soon, is that them 12 games below a .500 record?

Anything can happen in sports, and thing didn't start well for Marmol with the O'Neill incident, but they've not been good enough and that's the long and short of it

[Jake McKibbin]

The A's are unloading right now

Five runs, seven base runners no outs in the first inning against the pirates

[wiguy94]

11 minutes ago, Jake McKibbin said:

The A's are unloading right now

Five runs, seven base runners no outs in the first inning against the pirates

Good. Get all of their runs out of the way against Pittsburgh before they play us.

[Underachiever]

23 minutes ago, Jake McKibbin said:

The A's are unloading right now

Five runs, seven base runners no outs in the first inning against the pirates

On Base Jace is on a tear! 5 for 5 with two homers yesterday, starts today with a 2-run double.

[sveumrules]

Brewers MLB best bullpen Win Probability Added is now up to +5.04.

Defense has fallen off a little bit, but still strong at +18 DRS (4th).

Assume instead the Brewers had an average bullpen by leverage and average team defense, put those seven wins in the loss column...and they are still a game and a half up on the Cardinals.

[Brewcrew82]

29 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Brewers MLB best bullpen Win Probability Added is now up to +5.04.

Defense has fallen off a little bit, but still strong at +18 DRS (4th).

Assume instead the Brewers had an average bullpen by leverage and average team defense, put those seven wins in the loss column...and they are still a game and a half up on the Cardinals.

If we can get the rotation back in line with expectations as the season goes on, then I think we've got the Central division pretty well solidified. 

[homer]

On 6/6/2023 at 12:25 PM, DR28 said:

Reds have called up #1 prospect in Baseball and legit future superstar Elly De La Cruz... Reds youth movement is in full swing now.

Won't be long and CES will be up as well.

He just hit a 458 foot dinger

[Thurston Fluff]

The Cardinals have the worst record in the NL and the top three teams in the division are the Pirates, Reds and Brewers. How much fun would it be if the next five or so years the competition in the central would be between those three teams while the Cubs and Cards scraped the bottom?

[Brock Beauchamp]

On 6/4/2023 at 10:42 AM, brewers888 said:

I would say 83 wins takes this division for sure and it really could be won with as few as 78 wins. 

With this many teams hanging out .500, I think it's more likely than not one of them makes a small run and wins the division with no fewer than ~86 wins.

[Frisbee Slider]

1 hour ago, Thurston Fluff said:

The Cardinals have the worst record in the NL

At some point, Saint Louis needs to fire someone?

[Jopal78]

6 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

At some point, Saint Louis needs to fire someone?

Why? They’re a hot streak away from first place. Do you have that much confidence n the Reds, Pirates, Brewers and Cubs?

[Frisbee Slider]

1 minute ago, Jopal78 said:

Why?

Being 15 games under .500 is beneath the Cardinals organization.

If the hot streak comes in June, that’s one thing. A hot streak in August is too late. 
30-15 record over next 45 games gets them to 500. 

[Frisbee Slider]

I also think firing the manager could be a catalyst for a winning streak.

[Lathund]

8 hours ago, Jopal78 said:

Why? They’re a hot streak away from first place. Do you have that much confidence n the Reds, Pirates, Brewers and Cubs?

It still takes one hell of a hot streak. But even that is missing the point, it isn't just 8.5 games out, it's 4 teams they need to pass. They don't just need to gain 8.5 games on the Brewers, but also 8 games on the Reds, 7 on the Pirates and 5.5 games on the Cubs. And that's just to tie. Any one of these isn't impossible, some are even somewhat likely, but it still needs *all* of them to happen to get to first. 

There's also the fact that they're 10.5 games out of the WC, where there's 8 teams they need to leapfrog to get there. 28-43 is *bad*. They need to play at basically a 100-win pace just to get to .500. And even optimistic pre-season projections and predictions had them quite far below that. 

Now will any individual firing change a lot? Probably not IMO. But let's not kid ourselves about how bad the situation they're in is. It's happened despite being one of the least injured teams. It's happened in the expected way too; their pitching was always going to be bad, even if not quite *this* bad. So it's not a matter of a really talanted group underperforming (Like with the Padres early-season offensive struggles, that was always going to change), meaning it's hard to find the upside. Even if they play like the team the pundits predicted pre-season, or like the most optimistic projections, that still sees them far off the playoffs due to the hole they dug for themselves. And that's not taking into account that if things don't very rapidly improve, Cardinals will be sellers (Even if it's just some of the impending FAs, and not some big sell-off) and other teams will be buyers, making the gaps even bigger. 

[Jopal78]

14 minutes ago, Lathund said:

It still takes one hell of a hot streak. But even that is missing the point, it isn't just 8.5 games out, it's 4 teams they need to pass. They don't just need to gain 8.5 games on the Brewers, but also 8 games on the Reds, 7 on the Pirates and 5.5 games on the Cubs. And that's just to tie. Any one of these isn't impossible, some are even somewhat likely, but it still needs *all* of them to happen to get to first. 

There's also the fact that they're 10.5 games out of the WC, where there's 8 teams they need to leapfrog to get there. 28-43 is *bad*. They need to play at basically a 100-win pace just to get to .500. And even optimistic pre-season projections and predictions had them quite far below that. 

My point is: until one of the four teams ahead of them knocks them out; they’re still a hot streak away from being in the thick of it. 
 

The Brewers and Pirates have been playing losing baseball since mid-April, The Cubs can’t ever seem to get over .500, and the Reds nice young hitters are doomed by their pitching which allows more runs than anyone in the division. 
 

Don’t get me wrong the Cardinals have been bad, but the rest of the NL Central is letting them hang around and there’s a lot of talented hitters in St. Louis, and they have the prospect capital to greatly improve their roster via trade. 

[Lathund]

5 minutes ago, Jopal78 said:

My point is: until one of the four teams ahead of them knocks them out; they’re still a hot streak away from being in the thick of it. 

Again, they need to be really, really good to even get to .500 (Close to a 100-win pace), and they need *all four* of the other teams to be really bad to get to first. Just using pure probability misses some nuance, but it's a good way to illustrate how there being multiple teams to catch influences things. Even if you were to be very generous and give them a 70% chance of catching each one of the four teams ahead of them, that's still only ~24% chance of catching all of them. And even the most optimistic projection system doesn't give them much above 50% chance for even the most likely team to catch. The difference between being 8.5 out but in second place, and 8.5 games out but 5th is massive. It's what makes it so hard for them win win the division even if they were to be by far the best team.

Even just one of the Brewers, Reds or Pirates playing .500 ball rest of the season makes the Cardinals winning the division extremely unlikely. And this is before even considering that the Cardinals, despite being one of the healthiest teams in MLB so far, has shown absolutely nothing suggesting they're even capable of a 100-win type pace to begin with.n 

[Thurston Fluff]

3 hours ago, Jopal78 said:

My point is: until one of the four teams ahead of them knocks them out; they’re still a hot streak away from being in the thick of it. 
 

The Brewers and Pirates have been playing losing baseball since mid-April, The Cubs can’t ever seem to get over .500, and the Reds nice young hitters are doomed by their pitching which allows more runs than anyone in the division. 
 

Don’t get me wrong the Cardinals have been bad, but the rest of the NL Central is letting them hang around and there’s a lot of talented hitters in St. Louis, and they have the prospect capital to greatly improve their roster via trade. 

There is a far better chance the Brewers get on a hot streak than the Cards. The Brewers have been the most injury riddled team in the division, are still above .500 and are starting to get healthy. Not only did they ride the injury wave and play better baseball than the Cards during that time but they're returning players are going to be fresh during the dog days of August.

As far as the prospect capital to greatly improve their roster goes: if they had that much prospect capital why haven't they used it to improve the team before it got this bad? If their close to the majors talent was any good they'd be on the roster. If their best players are further away it'd take more players to get anyone decent and they'd be trading their future on the hopes a hot streak and four teams collapsing ahead of them. I don't see that happening. If it does all the better as it's probably going to be too little too late either way.

[82brewcrew82]

14 hours ago, Jopal78 said:

Why? They’re a hot streak away from first place. Do you have that much confidence n the Reds, Pirates, Brewers and Cubs?

Why would anyone have that much confidence in the Cardinals?  All four teams you mentioned have been better teams all year.

[StearnsFTW]

15 hours ago, Jopal78 said:

Why? They’re a hot streak away from first place. Do you have that much confidence n the Reds, Pirates, Brewers and Cubs?

I have a lot of confidence that the Cardinals suck, as I have all year.

[RWeeksFan23]

When I was sports betting at Potawatomi the other day, they had the Brewers at +100 to win the divison; that seems like a good bet to make right? Might pull the trigger on that.

[nate82]

The Cardinals are 4-11 in the month of June.  They have 9 games remaining this month and have to go 8-1 just to be .500 for the month of June.  They have 3 @ Nationals, 2 vs Cubs in London, 3 vs Astros and 1 vs Yankees.  Will the Cardinals be able to go 8-1 versus those teams?  Maybe they get 5 wins versus the Cubs and Nationals but that means they can only lose one of the final 4 against the Astros and Yankees.  That is asking a lot. 

In comparison the Brewers already have double the wins the Cardinals have in June.  The Reds have a recent winning streak that is double the Cardinals win total in June.  Are the Cardinals out of it?  No they are not out of it yet but if they don't start winning and soon they will be out of it.  For the Cardinals to catch the Reds, Brewers and Pirates they would have to hope for those teams to lose the rest of their games. 

The Brewers have 11 games left in June, Reds 10, and Pirates 11.  So far the Brewers are 8-8 in the month of June.  If they continue to play like they have they probably finish 5-6 or 4-7 in their final 11 games in June.  The Reds if they continue playing how they have been playing probably go 7-3 or 6-4.  Then you have the Pirates who are not really playing all that well either lets say they match the Brewers at 5-6 or 4-7.  If we take the worst for each that is 6-4, 4-7 and 4-7.  The Reds would be up by about 2 games at the end of June.  If the Cardinals go 8-1 they only pick up two games and are still 8 games back.  They are currently 10 games back as of today (6/18). 

Going into July the Cardinals would have to go 22-4 or something like that to be back in the race for the NL Central.  I just don't see this as probable for the Cardinals.