How the Cardinals turned things around in May and no longer look like a potential calamity

Tribune Content Agency

ST. LOUIS — After posting a winning record in May, the Cardinals seemed to have successfully pulled themselves out of the MLB doldrums and now look more like the competitive club they were forecast to be heading into spring training.

They’ve still got strides to make in terms of performance as well as the National League Central Division standings, but the Cardinals turned around a ship that had veered wildly off course and into rocky, choppy waters.

The Cardinals sailed into their two-day break with a 2-1 win over their I-70 rivals the Kansas City Royals and their veteran right-hander with a Hall of Fame resume Zack Greinke at Busch Stadium. The win secured a series split in the two-game interleague set but the Cardinals’ first winning month of the season.

The Cardinals (25-32) entered May in a tailspin that included a 10-19 record, 10 games back in their division, no series-opening wins, uncertainty about their outfield mix, their superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado in an extending hitting funk, young slugger Nolan Gorman still serving as a platoon player and apparent distrust of the club’s new starting catcher Willson Contreras bubbling beneath the surface.

A month later, they’re within five games of the division lead with four months of the season remaining, they’ve got more clarity on their outfield situation though injuries have clouded recently, Arenado posted an OPS of .902 with seven homers in the month, Gorman worked his way into everyday at-bats and looks like a bona fide big-time run producer, and Contreras was behind the plate for Miles Mikolas’ gem on Tuesday night.

“We were in a deep dark place early in the month,” Mikolas said. “We were in a team meeting kind of place where we had to get together and assess things and kind of decide who we wanted to be as a team, what we wanted to do and where we were going. We’ve definitely turned around, but I think we still have a lot better ball to come our way. We’ve got some guys starting to swing the bats. We’re playing great defense. Our pitching is coming around. I think our best ball is still to come.”

Mikolas (4-1) pitched a season-high eight innings, didn’t allow a run, held the Royals to just three hits and just one walk and matched a career high with 10 strikeouts.

Mikolas outshined Greinke and led his team to a win after they’d lost back-to-back games as they got to the end of a stretch of 19 consecutive days without a day off.

Tuesday’s win meant the Cardinals finished that 19-game stretch with a 12-7 record, and they’ve won 15 of their past 23 games.

They’ve got back-to-back scheduled days off for the first time — excluding All-Star breaks — since Sept. 27-28, 1978, when they had a two-day break in the schedule in New York City due to Shea Stadium being used as dual purpose stadium for both the NFL’s Jets and MLB’s Mets. The stadium transition necessitated the gap in the schedule.

“There’s a lot of this season left, but we needed to improve on how we started,” Cardinals first baseman and last year’s NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt said. “We were able to do that. Like I said, there’s a lot to go. We’ll just take it game by game, try to play and see what happens.”

The Cardinals scored three runs or fewer in each of their past seven games, seemingly a sign that they exhausted a lot of energy digging out of the hole they’d made for themselves at the start of the season.

Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol admitted prior to the game that he’d likely have played things differently — given more days off — had the club not been in such a hole. Instead, they pushed through and their potent offense looked a bit diluted in recent days.

After the two days off, the Cardinals will reshuffle their starting rotation and bolster their bullpen. They’d gone with six starters and the bullpen had been a man down because of that change. With a five-man rotation — the five have not officially been announced yet, though Steven Matz is a candidate to move into a full-time relief role — the bullpen will again return to full strength.

They’ve still got bodies that need to mend. Tommy Edman started in center field for the first time in the majors on Tuesday night, and none of the club’s projected starting outfielders at the start of the season were healthy enough to play in the game. Two of them, Dylan Carlson and Tyler O’Neill, are currently on the injured list.

Even with some lingering question marks, the Cardinals are undoubtedly in a better place heading into June than they were heading into May.

“We’ve got more ground to make up,” Marmol said. “We’re just getting started. We did a nice job of taking a step back and taking a deep breath and knowing that we had a lot of work to do, but May was good. We’ve got to keep going.”