Cardinals at the Break

As promised here is my take on the Cardinals at the MLB All-Star Break:

My take on the Cardinals changes every 2 weeks; they win 5 or 6 games in a row then go on a terrible losing streak and lose 7 or 8 in a row. They are an extremely tough team to gauge and I have flipped flopped on what I think they should do in the second half after a weird first half of the season. Part of me wants to say blow the team up except for a few core guys and go into a rebuild mode, while the other part of me says we are 41-44 and only 5.5 games back of the NL Central lead. The NL Central has been extremely bad this year, but I still believe the Cubs are the team to beat even with how bad they have played lately. They have dealt with a lot of injuries and a lot of guys not playing the way they should, which usually evens out in the course of 162 games.

I really like what the Cardinals have done lately however, they called up a few of the players from Memphis who have been dominating in AAA. Now I am not sure if these call-ups had to do with guys like Dexter Fowler, Kolten Wong, and Kevin Siegrist getting hurt and going to the disabled list. This opens up a roster spot for Luke Voit, Alex Mejia, John Brebbia, and Tommy Pham but all of these players have had solid contributions for the big league club. The Cardinals finally got rid of Jhonny Peralta and sent Aledmys Diaz down to the minors after his struggles which opened the door for some of this younger talent to emerge. The real question is what happens when Wong, Fowler, and Siegrist all get healthy? Or when Diaz starts hitting again in the minors? The front office is going to have some extremely tough decisions to make regarding who gets sent back down until rosters expand in September.

I am not a fan of the Cardinals coaching staff and believe this is some of the reason for the up and down season we are having. Our hitters and pitchers have struggled with a few exceptions but when they get sent down they start excelling again. We bring them back up they do well for a few weeks then they fall right back in the same problems they had before. For me this falls on the coaching staff not being properly prepared and willing to work with some of the younger talent the Cardinals have. In my opinion the Cards need to shop some of their guys around and see what they can get from other teams looking to bolster their roster. We have always been a team of aging, proven players that does not like to give roster spots to some of our younger talent. In  my opinion, the Cardinals have a decent farm system but nothing that jumps off the screen. Why not see what guys like Jedd Gyorko, Lance Lynn, or even Matt Carpenter are worth? If you can get a haul of some decent prospects for these guys it would definitely intrigue me. However I am sure the Cardinals will stand pat at the deadline and try to make the playoffs with the team they have and see what happens. Once you get in the playoffs anything is possible.