How far can the Car­di­nals go in the 2020 Post­sea­son?

The St. Louis Car­di­nals are back in the post­sea­son. They fin­ished just a few games be­hind the first-place Cubs, se­cur­ing the No. 5 seed and a trip to San Diego for the in­au­gural Wild Card Se­ries, where yes­ter­day, they took Game one over the Padres by a fi­nal of 7-4. This year, the post­sea­son is ex­panded to 16 teams, eight per league with the first round be­ing a best of three se­ries, and the higher seed host­ing each of the first two games and the third if nec­es­sary. The Cards hope to go far­ther af­ter falling short in the NLCS a year ago to the even­tual World Cham­pion Wash­ing­ton Na­tion­als. But how far can they go is the ques­tion.

As men­tioned above, the Car­di­nals made it all the way to the NLCS last year af­ter cap­tur­ing their first di­vi­sion ti­tle and play­off berth since 2015. In­con­sis­tency with the of­fense is what led to their down­fall against the Nats. Slug­ger Mar­cell Ozuna also de­parted via free agency. In­stead of re­plac­ing him, the Car­di­nals put a lot of stock in their group of young out­field­ers, (Tyler O’Neill, Lane Thomas, Har­ri­son Bader, and top prospect Dy­lan Carl­son) hop­ing that at least one of them would break out and solve the team’s of­fen­sive woes. But each one of them with the ex­cep­tion of Carl­son, who has been on a tear since his re­turn from the team’s al­ter­nate site in Spring­field, has se­verely un­der­per­formed. The of­fense has shown its ca­pa­bil­ity to pro­duce runs, but has not been con­sis­tent, and could pose a ma­jor prob­lem for the Cards in the post­sea­son. Off­sea­son ac­qui­si­tion Brad Miller has been most pro­duc­tive, lead­ing the team in Home Runs with seven and mak­ing him­self right at home as the team’s Des­ig­nated Hit­ter, along with Paul Gold­schmidt, who looks much more like he did dur­ing his Ari­zona Di­a­mond­backs days.

An­other fac­tor is the pan­demic. Af­ter a 17-day lay­off due to the team’s COVID-19 out­break, the sched­ule was stacked with dou­ble­head­ers, leav­ing only two off days for the rest of the sea­son. With the short­ened sched­ule due to COVID, the Car­di­nals played 53 games to play in 44 days, which amounted to 11 dou­ble­head­ers. The team has had to rely heav­ily on its pitch­ing staff, es­pe­cially the bullpen, which has been a strength, de­spite the losses of John Breb­bia, John Gant, and Jor­dan Hicks. But due to in­juries and the in­con­sis­ten­cies of starters like Jack Fla­herty, Jo­han Oviedo, and Car­los Mar­tinez, the bullpen has been used ex­ten­sively, with some of the games even be­ing pitched al­most en­tirely by the pen. Now, with Mar­tinez and Dakota Hud­son out, the ro­ta­tion is with­out two of its ma­jor pieces. And with COVID still spread­ing at a rapid rate across the world, they aren’t safe from an­other pos­i­tive test, let alone an­other out­break.

As pre­vi­ously men­tioned, the team’s strength has been its pitch­ing, with vet­eran Adam Wain­wright pac­ing the ro­ta­tion with a 5-3 record and a 3.15 ERA. For a while, he seemed to be the only starter who was able to go deep into games, with each of his starts last­ing at least six in­nings. Wain­wright has been the most con­sis­tent of them all and is al­most cer­tainly go­ing to be their Game one starter, but lately, starters such as Daniel Ponce De Leon and Kwang-Hyun Kim have found their groove, and have been able to go deeper into games, tak­ing some pres­sure off of the bullpen. If the starters can con­tinue to im­prove and the bullpen re­mains solid, the Car­di­nals could have an­other deep run into Oc­to­ber this year.

The Car­di­nals will need to have a lot go right for them if they are to go deep into the post­sea­son. The of­fense will need to be­come more con­sis­tent. Play­ers such as O’Neill, Bader, Thomas, and Matt Car­pen­ter, will need to step up. Carl­son will need to stay hot. Staff ace Jack Fla­herty will have to find a way to go deeper into games so that the bullpen can be saved. They will need strong per­for­mances from Wain­wright, Kim, Ponce De Leon, and Austin Gomber (who took over Hud­son’s spot in the ro­ta­tion) as well. They also need to make sure that COVID does­n’t come back to bite them again. The Car­di­nals will al­most cer­tainly be heavy un­der­dogs this post­sea­son and will not be ex­pected to go deep. But this is base­ball and cra­zier things have hap­pened. It’s pos­si­ble that we could see an­other im­prob­a­ble run to a cham­pi­onship. As we saw in 2006 and 2011, any­thing is pos­si­ble.