3 STL Cardinals most to blame for historically terrible April

The St. Louis Cardinals have had a historically bad start to the season. Blame is due virtually everywhere, but on these three the most.

The St. Louis Cardinals have to hate where they’re at as they head into a new month and desperately hope that this page of the calendar contains more sunshine than the last. The start to the season, and pretty much all of April, have been disastrous, especially compared to the bountiful expectations St. Louis had for itself this season.

The Cardinals want to be a player deep in the season among the National League contenders, but right now they can’t even prove they’re a competitor in their own division.

It’s the first time the Cardinals find themselves in last place in the NL Central at the start of May since the division’s inception in 1994. Put simply: A historically bad start.

There is definitely reason to panic. While virtually everyone in the organization needs to shoulder at least some blame right now, these four stand out as some of the biggest reasons why St. Louis is struggling so much.

Cardinals to blame for April slump: No. 4, Jordan Hicks

Oh boy, where to begin here? Jordan Hicks has been so bad this year that the Cardinals have had no option with him but to use him in the most low-leverage situations possible. Had it been feasible, they would have certainly sent him down to the minor leagues to work out his demons.

Hicks has the highest WHIP (2.206) on a team struggling badly with that stat. You never want to be last in that metric on your team, and you definitely don’t want to be last on this team.

Right now, Hicks is a complete liability. The good news, at least, is that four of his last six appearances have come without an earned run. The bar is on the floor here.

Cardinals to blame for April slump: No. 3, Willson Contreras

Willson Contreras was the big win of the Cardinals’ offseason, with St. Louis luring him away from the division-rival Chicago Cubs. So far, that has not really panned out how they might have hoped.

Contreras’s bat has been pretty much the same as it was in Chicago, and in the second half of the month, he has gotten a lot better offensively than he had been.

But, defensively, he already has three errors — two of which came in the last five days of April — which is on the higher end for catchers, and his framing has been atrocious. So far this year, he’s above the league average in just three zones of the plate, with zero catcher framing runs accrued this year. His strike rate comes in below the league average.

Last season, Contreras was above or right on the cusp of league average for six of eight zones, comparatively.

The pitching has been atrociously bad, with a fifth-worst WHIP. It’s easy to critique the guys on the mound, but remember that that part of the game is dictated by the catcher. Catchers arguably get more say into what pitches are thrown in the pitch clock era because pitchers have less time to shake off pitches they don’t like.

Both parts of the battery have a responsibility for the results driven.

Let’s give Contreras some grace here, too, though. He has already had to deal with 13 wild pitches this season. In all of 2022, he only had 22 such instances.

Cardinals to blame for April slump: No. 2, Miles Mikolas

Miles Mikolas is putting up a 1.705 WHIP so far this season, which, if it held up for the year, would be the worst career year for him. He has the second-highest ERA among the starting rotation that has struggled mightily as a collective. He’s also given up the most hits and most runs of anyone on the starting staff.

Even worse, his 45 hits so far this year lead the MLB. Not a stat you want to be the league leader in by any means.

The most troublesome pitch for Mikolas has been his fastball this year. He’s leaving it out over the dead-center of the plate more (9.5% of the time in the middle zone, compared to a league average of 8.4%) while also throwing it slower than last year at about the same spin rate. Batters are hitting it at a .400 clip, and Statcast has it as +3 in run value, his worst pitch.

Mikolas may need to feature that fastball less. While starting pitchers frequently go to the fastball as their money maker, mixing in the breaking ball at a higher frequency could be the solution for Mikolas to get his game back on track.

In fact, that’s pretty much what he did in his most recent start, which was a good one. He got the win with six strikeouts, didn’t allow a run, and only gave up four hits

Here is his pitch type split compared to his season average:

• Fastball: 24.21% (-2.19%)
• Curveball: 24.21% (+3.6%)
• Sinker: 25.26% (+0.46%)
• Slider: 26.32% (+0.32%)
• Changeup: 0.00% (-2.22%)

Throwing the curve more seemed to help.

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.