I don’t know what to say about the St. Louis bullpen. OK, I’m bringing in the online thesaurus from my laptop to give this word play a go. I’m in a jam.
The St. Louis bullpen is combustible, flammable, ignitable, burnable and incendiary. And damn, it’s a little scary.
Cardinals president of baseball operations must answer this urgent question: how can you possibly rebuild this team when “relief pitchers” will provide the opposite of relief and by brazenly leveling the playing field … as in demolishing everything and leaving just a scorched, flat-surface lawn where a major-league baseball franchise once existed?
(Bloom needn’t worry; he knows full well that the noisiest dissidents identified within the BFIB will blame manager Oli Marmol for every bullpen meltdown and massacre. Bloom, you see, is a smart man.)
The STL bullpen was responsible for the team’s worst loss of the season (to date) on Monday evening in Washington. A 6-3 lead in the bottom of the eighth inning perished in the inferno. The feisty Redbirds suffered a 9-6 defeat to a horrendous team that employs Miles Mikolas for chrissake. This is how it goes.
In fairness to the bullpen firehouse, this was the first blown-lead loss of the season. The St. Louis hitters have detonated opposition bullpens to wrest four comeback victories. So if our side can burn pies, then their side can burn pies. Embers exist for a reason: to remind the baseball people of the need to reinforce the bullpen before it deteriorates into the rubble.
Before the Nats and Cards enter Tuesday’s rematch, here’s a bullet-point summary of the Cardinals bullpen through Monday:
* Their 6.15 ERA ranks 26th in the majors.
* Their adjusted ERA ranks 27th.
* The Cardinal relievers rank 29th in walks-and-hits per inning.
* And they are 29th in strikeout rate (14.9%), and 27th in walk rate (14.4%).
* That adds up to the worst strikeout-walk ratio (1.30) in the majors.
* It could be worse; the home-run rate yielded by the Cards bullpen (1.10 per 9 IP) ranks 16th.
* The St. Louis firehoses have been sliced up by opponents for a .289 average, .344 OBP and .415 slug.
That was just the warmup. Pun intended? Hell if I know.
Here’s the true damage report.
– In STL’s five losses this season through Monday, the Cards’ relievers had been blasted for a 7.65 ERA.
– That’s 17 earned runs in 20 innings.
– And 26 hits, 15 walks, two hit batters, five home runs, two doubles, two sac flies and five home runs in 20 innings during the five losses.
– And only 13 strikeouts in 20 innings. The ball is in play way too much.
– In the five burn-baby-burn defeats, the Cardinal relievers have been smoked for a .321 batting average, .426 OBP, .556 slug and .982 OPS. My goodness. The horror.
– I feel crummy for singling out individuals; it’s not as if these men are looking to wipe out their own team. They aim to do well.
– But in the five flame-shooting losses, here are the combined stats of Matt Svanson, Chris Roycroft, Ryne Stanek, lefty Justin Bruihl, and rookie Matt Pushard:
14.1 innings
16 ER
10.00 ERA
22 Hits
5 HR
2 Doubles
.386 BA allowed
.684 slug allowed
13 strikeouts, 15 walks
Kyle Leahy was moved to the STL starting rotation. Phil Maton is long gone, having signed a free-agent deal with the Cubs. (Current ERA, 10.80.) Gone. Ryan Helsley is in better form after signing a generous free-agent deal with Baltimore; his ERA (5.40) is misleadingly high. Steven Matz is pitching for Tampa Bay and doing fine.
Cards reliever Ryan Fernandez was sent to Triple A Memphis near the end of spring training. Andre Granillo was traded to Washington for reliever George Soriano. The Cardinals did not offer lefty John King a contract for 2026. He resurfaces in Miami and hasn’t been dinged for a run in four appearances.
Lefty Jared Shuster is up with the big club for a look. There are other options for relief work down in Memphis including Fernandez, Tink Hence, Luis Gastelum, Skylar Hales, Scott Blewett and Packy Naughton. (The 40-man roster figures into these type decisions, but I’m not going to get into all of that.)
So, who can Marmol trust?
Thoughts:
Most trustworthy by a wide margin: lefty JoJo Romero and right-hander Riley O’Brien.
Will continue to be entrusted: Ryne Stanek, who signed for $2.5 million last offseason. Stanek was clobbered for three earned runs and a homer during Monday’s bullpen implosion. Before that, in five appearances, the high-velocity righty faced 24 batters and worked around five walks and four hits to escape with a 1.80 ERA. The walks are a problem that must be fixed. But at least Stanek has a 27.5% strikeout rate next to his name.
Probably trustworthy: RH Gordon Graceffo, who should receive a more prominent opportunity with the Cards. He looks good.
Must reestablish trust: Matt Svanson, who was utterly brilliant in relief as a Cards rookie last season. Last season MLB hitters batted only .157 and slugged .250 against Svanson’s sinker. Early this season opponents have mashed the Svanson sinkerball for an .467 average and .733 slug. What happened? A little of it is bad luck, but let’s not make an excuse. Is he tipping that pitch? I dunno. But his ERA is a ghastly 15.0. And he worked in three of the five games lost by the Cardinals through Monday. It was hideous, man. Five innings, four earned runs, three homers, three walks and a hit batter. Something ain’t right. In 2025 Svanson struck out 27 percent of batters faced. Early this season his strikeout rate is a wan 14.7%.
(Big mouth here was adamant before the 2026 season: Svanson must be the STL closer this season! That was a sharp assessment. On the money! Shaddup Bernie!).
Could this dude earn more trust? George Soriano. But the righty has faced 19 hitters without striking any of them out, and his fielding independent ERA (FIP) is a bloated 6.18.
I think better days are ahead for the St. Louis bullpen. Just don’t ask me when the flames will subside. And this group has taken a lot of punches, even when working as part of a winning effort.
Moving On …
NEED MORE OFFENSE FROM YA
Pedro Pages: per wRC+, is 18 percent below league average offensively going into Tuesday’s game at D.C. But I don’t point this out to side-swipe the catcher. I don’t expect much offense from Pages, and the Cardinals play him because of his defense. And that’s backed by a Statcast fielding run value that puts Pages in the top 25 percent of all position players.
I mention Pages for a different reason. He’s setting a baseline for us to assess other hitters. Accordingly, these St. Louis hitters did worse than Pages over the team’s first 10 games.
Thomas Saggese: 19% below league average offensively. He had a terrific game at Washington in the first of a three-game series, rapping two hits in three at-bats with a double and a run scored. And he made a great throw from left field to extinguish a runner trying to score on a sac fly. He’s looking better at the plate, but his tendency to swing for the fences is working against him. Saggese’s early 25% strikeout rate is too much.
Nolan Gorman: 29% below league average offensively. The left-handed power source looked calm and confident as he opened the season with at least a in the first four games. And two of Gorman’s hits were home-run rides. At that point he had a .286 batting average, .714 slug percentage and a reasonable strikeout rate of 21.4%. It didn’t last. In his past six games through Monday, Gorman went 2 for 19 (both singles) and slipped into a 34.7% strikeout rate. He’s got to find a way back to the good old days of March.
Victor Scott II: 31% below league average offensively. I sincerely appreciate his improved bunting skill which has boosted the Cardinals’ attempts at playing “small ball.” Scott leads the majors with five successful sacrifice bunts, and also added a bunt single. But other than that there isn’t much going on. His batting average (.281) contains only one extra-base hit. As a two-strike hitter, Scott is 1 for 15 with nine strikeouts. After posting a decent 9% walk rate last season, Scott hadn’t drawn a walk this season through Monday. He hasn’t reached base enough and this explains why Scott has only two stolen bases and four runs scored.
Masyn Winn: 50% below league average offensively: among the 31 MLB shortstops that had at least 20 plate appearances through Monday, Winn ranked 23rd with a .507 OPS. Winn is 1 for 11 (.091) with runners in scoring position. In 27 plate appearances as the Cards No. 4 hitter, Winn has batted .160 with a .462 OPS and has one RBI.
Nathan Church: 123% below league average offensively. In 27 plate appearances this season Church was batting .115 through Monday and had a pitiful 29.6 percent strikeout rate. The speedy Church, who can be used anywhere in the outfield, is 0 for 22 after a three-hit afternoon on Opening Day.
In 160 plate appearances over the first 10 games, this group of five hitters combined for a .196 average, six extra-base hits, 12 RBIs, 40 strikeouts, and 11 walks.
YO, I’M NOT FINISHED YET …
We have confidence that Alec Burleson and Ivan Herrera will amp it up soon. But they were both on the quiet side offensively as the first 10 games played out. The good part: a combined 15 walks that helped fashion a .344 on-base percentage and the No. 2 (Herrera) and No. 3 (Burleson) hitters struck out only 11 percent of the time. The bad part: the two key pieces of the lineup collectively batted .208, mustered one homer, and whispered to a faint .319 slugging percentage.
The St. Louis offense faces an imposing list of challenges in 2026. Burleson and Herrera can’t be part of the problem. Entering Monday’s scuffle with the Nationals, the Cardinals as a team ranked 20th in wRC+ at 11 percent below league average offensively. They were also hanging at No. 20 with a .353 slugging percentage.
After punching through Tampa Bay’s pitching staff in the first three games of the season, the Cardinals proceeded to hit .188 with a .287 slugging percentage over the next seven games. (Which includes Monday’s spat in Washington.) In the seven games the Cards averaged 3.4 runs per squabble and popped just five home runs in 223 at-bats. That’s one bomb every 44.6 at-bats.
Ramon Urias is a nice hitter, but here on this lovely afternoon of April 7 he shouldn’t have more homers and a higher slugging percentage than Herrera, Burleson and Gorman.
THE CURSE OF MATT HOLLIDAY
Offensively the Cardinals’ left field spot has turned into a Wasteland. Nothing personal against the dudes who are trying to fill in for the injured Lars Nootbaar – Church, Saggese and (briefly) Jose Fermin.
I’m just referring to an area where offense is incredibly difficult to spot and identify. In the early days of the 2026 campaign, St. Louis left fielders have collectively generated a .171 average, .237 OBP, .200 slug, .437 OPS, no home runs, two RBIs and a 26.3 percent strikeout rate.
Since Church had 3 hits on Opening Day, the STL left-field collective has turned in an .097 average, .176 OBP, .129 slug, no RBIs, a 29.4% strikeout rate and a minus 5 wRC+ that's 105 percent below league average offensively.
I have concluded that this is the Curse of Matt Holliday, who ruled over left field for the Cardinals from 2009 through 2016. Across those seasons the STL left-field domain, primarily handled by Holliday ranked either first or second in the majors in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, home runs, RBIs, OPS and wRC+. Led by Holliday, the left-field slot in St. Louis delivered a MLB-best wRC+ that was 33 percent above league average offensively.
I vividly remember when the BFIB would viciously downgrade Holliday for his failure to be a good “clutch” hitter – yeah, even though Holliday the Cardinal hit .313 with a .408 OBP and .497 slug when batting with runners in scoring position. That probably didn’t count.
I had many, many hostile email exchanges about this. No matter how many big hits Holliday delivered for the Cards, every time he grounded out with a runner or two on base, the hater emails would flood in about his worthlessness in the “clutch.” This fan base has had its share of some strange factions through the years, but the Holliday Deniers were the most bizarre sect of them all. There was no statistical evidence that these weirdos would accept as fact.
Hey, I’m just remembering the good times.
OUT of words …
Thanks for reading…
Pardo my typos …
-Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.