Monday, July 10, 2023

Newsletter Excerpt, July 10, 2023 -- "Thinking Inside the Box"

This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.

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Cardinals 4, White Sox 3 (10 inn.)

E: Gorman (5), Contreras (4), Goldschmidt (2)
PB: Contreras 2 (4)
CS: Goldschmidt (2), DeJong (3)


The Cardinals won this game.

There are a lot of reasons why the Cardinals are having their first lost year since 1999, and high on the list is a shocking amount of sloppiness in the team’s second season under Oli Marmol. The Cardinals are last in the majors in Defensive Efficiency by nine points, 22nd in Outs Above Average, sixth in times caught stealing, dead last in stolen-base success rate, 28th in baserunning value. These numbers only scratch the surface of what it’s like to watch them play this year. They’re the most mistake-prone Cardinals team since Joe Torre was running the show.

It helped, yesterday, to be playing the AL’s version of the Cardinals. Kendall Graveman hit two batters in the ninth inning as part of a blown save, and the Cardinals got the stupid runner home in the tenth. The Cardinals have to fix their pitching, and they have to settle on an outfield. Those are the big things. Once those are in place, though, they have to find a way back to playing a more crisp, less mistake-prone version of baseball.