Cardinals manager Oli Marmol admittedly frustrated by offensive woes

St. Louis Cardinals manager Oli Marmol wasn’t happy with the team’s offensive woes, especially as they enter the final stretch of the season.

Albert Pujols can and should be excluded from this conversation, of course.

St. Louis has scored just once in the past 20 innings of baseball, which is concerning to say the least for Marmol down the stretch. The first-year skipper made a radical change on Saturday, in which he moved the future Hall of Famer up to second in the lineup. While the Cardinals won 1-0 in 11 innings, it didn’t necessarily spark the offense.

So, where does Marmol go from here? The Cards did take three of five games from the Reds, so the series wasn’t a failure. But, offensive woes speak to a greater issue come playoff time — the Cardinals are beatable.

Cardinals: Oli Marmol frustrated with offense against Reds

“If it was good pitching, we’d probably not sit here and question the offense,” Marmol said, per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Like you’re not supposed to deliver a ton of runs against them. There’s no real answer for it other than to get some rest (on Monday) and go right back at it.”

The Reds rank 13th out of 15 teams in the National League in staff ERA. They weren’t going against Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, here. Or any playoff equivalent to those two.

Cincinnati had nothing to play for, yet they still shut down a lineup featuring NL MVP candidate Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Pujols and more.

“(Lars) Nootbaar was super hot. (Corey) Dickerson was super hot. ‘Goldy’ (Paul Goldschmidt and (Nolan) Arenado were super hot all at the same time. And they were producing a lot of runs. And now you have a hole with those four guys,” Marmol added.

So, what comes next? The Cardinals have two weeks to fix whatever is ailing their offensive output. Odds are, they will figure it out at home. But it’s a reason to be worried for fans.