Just over 24 hours to go before the trade deadline. The Brewers have added Eduardo Escobar, and the Reds have added three relievers, Luis Cessa, Justin Wilson, and Mychal Givens.
Nothing yet from the St. Louis Cardinals.
With two teams ahead of them in the NL Central making moves to improve their clubs, the Cardinals continue to sit on their hands and do nothing.
The last thing Cards fans want to hear right now is the saying “Stand Pat.” That is precisely what they’ve done the past few years at the trade deadline, causing turmoil within the fanbase.
There’s really no reason to “Stand Pat.” Though the Cardinals rotation has improved over the last month, there are too many unknowns. They’re banking a lot on the returns of Miles Mikolas and Jack Flaherty, neither of whom will be back until Mid-August at the earliest. It’s a dangerous game they’ve been playing for too long.
While the team has continued to get quality starts out of Kwang-Hyun Kim and Adam Wainwright, the same can’t be said for the rest of the rotation. Though Jake Woodford has done well so far, there’s no way of knowing how long he’ll keep it up. Wade LeBlanc and Johan Oviedo are too hit or miss. There are plenty of starters still available that they can plug into the rotation and get them through the early part of August until the returns of Flaherty and Mikolas.
We won’t go through all of the options. We’ve discussed that before, but everyone knows St. Louis is desperate for somebody to come in and cover some innings; take some pressure off a taxed bullpen.
Doing nothing is not an option. They’ve sat out the trade deadline too many times. Not only that, but they’ve come up with the same excuses every time they do, that they like what they have and didn’t want to deal off players from the Major League roster, and now with the Reds and Brewers being active, the Cardinals need to get something done.
Friday begins a long stretch of games against teams under .500. We all saw how the Cardinals fared the last time they had a stretch like that. If they don’t do something, it’s hard to imagine them getting much better than .500, if at all.
The fanbase is restless. They’re tired of nothing being done. If that is indeed the case this trade deadline, it’ll send a bad message to the team and the fans. It essentially shows us that there’s no plan in place, and as the saying goes, if you fail to plan, you’re ultimately planning to fail.
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