The pandemic has been rough on all of baseball across the country, doesn’t matter if you are playing recreational or travel baseball, High School or College Baseball, everyone has had a rough start to the year no matter what level you play at. Once the MLB Season started, there was a COVID-19 outbreak with the Miami Marlins that put their season on pause briefly but not to the extent of the St. Louis Cardinals.
The St. Louis Cardinals were forced to put their season on pause after their loss to the Minnesota Twins on July 29, 2020, due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Over this past weekend, the Cardinals were able to restart their season for a second time and took 2 out of 3 games from the Chicago White Sox, but that is not the story here. Before this weekend, there was a month and a half left of the regular season, and the Cardinals have a massive amount of games to make up.
Let’s just start with the rest of this month. From August 15th through August 31st, the Cardinals will play 21 in 16 days, with no days off. Now this is what they need to do to get their season back on track but anyone that has ever played on a travel baseball team or any kind of tournament team knows that the weekend grind of a 3-4 day baseball tournament is growling, painful, stressful, exhausting mentally and physically. The Cardinals schedule looks like they are playing a weekend youth tournament that never seems to end.
Even once they get through the rest of August, September is not any better. During the entire month of September, the Cardinals have two off-days early, September 3rd and 9th. The month of September has 27 total days of baseball to be played and the Cardinals even with their much-needed couple days off, will play 32 games in 27 days. So they will get their much-needed couple days break, but they will start the entire process over again for the rest of their season feeling like they are in a never-ending weekend youth tournament.
The Cardinals do not have to double headers on back to back days, because that would be insanity. There are two separate occasions they have to play three double headers over the course of five days with single games in between those double headers. These are the five days where not only are the Cardinals going to get tested on their health and depth of their roster but so will the teams they have to play during these times.
Now I know MLB expanded the teams roster sizes for this season, but it does not change the fact that 55 games in 43 days is a daunting task and will test the health and depth of the entire Cardinals roster day in and day out. This will also be a big test for the Cardinals Coaching staff and Front Office to ensure that they put the best team possible on the field everyday, while at the same time trying to push their players to the limit so they can make that playoff push to the end. It would be a great story if the Cardinals come out of this marathon of a schedule with a winning record and are making a run at the playoffs, but you will have to wonder how much the team has left in the gas tank to make that last push once it is all said and done. Baseball is a funny game, and only time will tell how all of this plays out, but the St. Cardinals have by far the largest uphill of any team in baseball for the rest of the year.
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