Winners of 13 of their last 15 games, things are pretty good for the St. Louis Cardinals right now — well, at least most of the St. Louis Cardinals. While St. Louis has been getting offensive contributions from everyone from Lars Nootbaar to Masyn Winn to Ivan Herrera right now, arguably the team's biggest name has been mired in a miserable slump: veteran third baseman Nolan Arenado.
Arenado started the season red-hot, but things have completely fallen apart since. Over his last 29 games, he's slashing just .204/.266/.292 with six extra-base hits, and his batted-ball metrics are all near the bottom of the barrel. It's gotten so bad that the eight-time All-Star asked to be dropped out of the cleanup spot for the series opener against the Detroit Tigers on Monday, hitting sixth for the first time all season.
"The guys are hitting behind me, and they should move up," Arenado told reporters, per The Athletic's Katie Woo. "There's really nothing more to it than that."
Arenado's self-awareness and willingness to put the team first should obviously be commended; it's not every $275 million future Hall of Famer who would recognize that other players are outhitting him right now, much less volunteer to give up his place at the heart of the order. Arenado has been nothing but a pro throughout his Cardinals tenure — yes, even through all those trade rumors — and his veteran presence is undoubtedly helping St. Louis' young talent excel.
But there's a flip side to this story, too, one that Cardinals fans were all too happy to give voice to on social media. While Arenado deserves credit for swallowing his pride, why wasn't Oli Marmol the one getting out in front of this move to begin with?
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Nolan Arenado was willing to do what Oli Marmol wouldn't
Again, Arenado has been very bad at the plate for an extended period of time now, going all the way back to the end of last season. Father Time is undefeated, and it appears to have come for him in a major way.
All that said, why did it take so long for the Cardinals to make this change, and why was Arenado the one who had to suggest it? St. Louis isn't exactly hurting for hot hitters at the moment; insisting on putting Arenado in the No. 4 spot amounts to shooting yourself in the foot in the midst of a tight division race. In an ideal world, the manager would be putting his team's best nine on the field and in the right order on a daily basis.
Instead, Marmol sat back and let his players do the hard work for him. Showing deference to a veteran star is one thing; being unwilling to do a difficult thing is another, and this whole saga feels like it's tipped over into the latter. St. Louis went out and blasted Detroit for 11 runs in a win on Monday night, and Arenado was the only starter who failed to record a hit. Credit to him for putting his team first, but this doesn't instill a ton of confidence in Marmol's ability to navigate the rest of the season.