3 STL Cardinals most to blame for historically terrible April

Cardinals to blame for April slump: No. 1, Nolan Arenado

Nolan Arenado might have the second-most hits on this year’s Cardinals, but he has slumped like no other as of late. Arenado hasn’t had a multi-hit game since April 16th and has just one RBI since April 12.

The last time he had a multi-base hit was also April 12th.

Simply, he’s been stuck in a slump the entire last half of April, and he’s been a big contributor to the tough sledding STL has faced.

The good news with Arenado is his hot start was very real. Up through April 16, he went 22-for-66, slashing .333/.384/.470. Since then, he’s at .106/.125/.106. Put another way, base-out runs added (which uses 0 as a league average) he had an average of 2.24 through April 16th according to Baseball Reference. Since then, he’s dropped to an average of -9.24. Yikes.

Had he been batting the low numbers since the start of the season, this would be a much bigger issue. Starting hot and then going cold is indicative of a slump rather than Arenado just suddenly becoming bad. If he entered the season this way, there would be warranted speculation about a major step-back and possibly a tweak with swing mechanics that isn’t working carrying over from the offseason and spring training.

Arenado will get back, but for now, we have to have him on this list.