{"id":36032,"date":"2025-05-18T10:16:32","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T10:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/36032\/"},"modified":"2025-05-18T10:16:32","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T10:16:32","slug":"change-happened-slowly-for-the-2025-cardinals-and-then-all-at-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/36032\/","title":{"rendered":"Change happened slowly for the 2025 Cardinals. And then, all at once"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Easter Sunday, Oli Marmol <\/a>sat behind the visiting manager\u2019s desk at Citi Field and candidly assessed the state of his team following a four-game sweep at the hands of the New York Mets.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the [crummy] part, to be quite honest,\u201d he said that day, April 20. \u201cYou still played good baseball. It just wasn\u2019t good enough against the guys across the way. You played the game the way you wanted to play the game, you had some big spots come up, and there\u2019s some positives to take out of it.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just frustrating, and I don\u2019t want to talk in circles\u2026I mean, did you win or did you lose, right? At the end of the day, this group is playing the game the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> were 9-13, and would slip one game further back against .500 before the end of the road trip, in Atlanta. They would equal that low point two weeks later after a 9-3 loss at home to the same Mets, and even in the first week of May, it appeared that the season could be on the brink.<\/p>\n

Then the rain came and the Cardinals bloomed.<\/p>\n

A doubleheader sweep of the Mets kicked off a nine-game winning streak and was, for the first time, proof of their professed concept. After so much discussion about internal improvements and focusing on the right things, they posted results, ripping off a nine-game winning streak which ended Wednesday after the first game of yet another doubleheader in Philadelphia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Roll over? Fire back. The Cardinals smashed their way to a 14-7 victory in Wednesday\u2019s nightcap, allowing them to enter the final stop on their three-city trip in Kansas City on Friday the winners of 10 of their last 11 games, ending play Wednesday nine games better than their nadir and trailing the Chicago Cubs by only one game in the National League Central<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the style of play is the same,\u201d Marmol said Wednesday. \u201cWe lost all four in New York, but I can\u2019t fault the guys for the way they went about each game. We just were on the wrong side of playing a really good team, [but] I think the style of play has been super consistent.\u201d<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s series victory over the Phillies may not be a perfect comparison to last month\u2019s squash by the Mets, but there\u2019s easy parallels to draw. Those two teams, powerhouses in the NL East operating at the top of the payroll scale, are loaded down with star power which flourishes under the bright lights of energetic, expecting crowds. In both cases the environments were hostile; in Queens, the Cardinals fell short of the challenge, and in South Philly, they comfortably rose above.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is kind of what we believed this team could be,\u201d starter Erick Fedde said. \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to believe something. It\u2019s another to go out and do it. We\u2019re playing competitive ball. We\u2019re chasing the division. I know it\u2019s still early, but nobody wants to, at this point, be 10 games out and feel like it\u2019s a long way away. So it\u2019s perfect. That\u2019s why we want to play ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s always tests throughout the year,\u201d third baseman Nolan Arenado said on Sunday in Washington, DC. \u201cWe haven\u2019t played well on the road. Obviously this series [against the Nationals] was great, but to face good teams at their ballpark is something that, yeah, I think it\u2019s always a test. It\u2019s still very early, but it\u2019s still a test, and it\u2019s something that we\u2019d like to come through on the right edge of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young teams will ebb and flow. The Cardinals will not win 10 of every 11 games for the rest of the season; if they did, they would be in line to make more history than even the miserable Colorado Rockies.<\/p>\n

But what they could do, what they might do, is challenge the conventional wisdom that accompanies a season in which the front office has explicitly declared that short-term winning is not their most pressing goal.<\/p>\n

Talent can force the issue. Success can force the issue. Everything about these Cardinals is constructed to happen later, but in many cases, it\u2019s happening right now.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Victor Scott II is a decimal point behind Lars Nootbaar and Brendan Donovan for the team lead in wins above replacement. Masyn Winn started the season 0-for-18 and is hitting an exact .333 since, having already muscled up for five homers. Matthew Liberatore has gone from a pretty good reliever to arguably the team\u2019s best starter. Kyle Leahy is having the sort of season that starts to force questions around how good a non-closer has to be to make the All-Star team.<\/p>\n

This is a collection of improvements happening in real time, and a team building itself through individual work. They might\u2019ve played their desired style in New York a month ago, but when the lights got bright, they had to learn not to blink. That\u2019s part of the process, too.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s part of why a team that was playing to expectations is suddenly hard to recognize. Change happens slowly, and then all at once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Easter Sunday, Oli Marmol sat behind the visiting manager\u2019s desk at Citi Field and candidly assessed the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[191,5,4492,160,24,52,133,2123,4396,1179,1553,1453,4,415,61,1028,144,40,673,67,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-36032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-brendan-donovan","11":"tag-cardinals","12":"tag-chicago-cubs","13":"tag-colorado-rockies","14":"tag-erick-fedde","15":"tag-kansas-city","16":"tag-kyle-leahy","17":"tag-lars-nootbaar","18":"tag-masyn-winn","19":"tag-matthew-liberatore","20":"tag-mlb","21":"tag-nationals","22":"tag-new-york-mets","23":"tag-nolan-arenado","24":"tag-philadelphia","25":"tag-phillies","26":"tag-st-louis","27":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","28":"tag-stlouis","29":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114528320486487025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}