With a thin bench, what moves did Cardinals’ skipper have to make in 2-1 loss to Pirates?

Over the course of a long season, all baseball teams will find a variety of ways to lose games.

Some are due to schedule challenges, some are due to bad bounces, and some, believe it or not, are due to players performing poorly. A smaller subset – smaller than perhaps many imagine – can be attributed to management, either on the field or in the front office.

In falling 2-1 to the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday night, the St. Louis Cardinals endured a defeat of the front office variety.

Without sufficient reinforcements on the bench and forced into tough decisions by a pitching duel between Miles Mikolas and Paul Skenes, manager Oli Marmol arrived at several inflection points at which there were no good choices to be made.

Those junctions in Tuesday’s action serve as a microcosm for the season’s challenges as a whole, and they serve as a continued reminder of either the inability or disinclination of the baseball operations group under John Mozeliak to seek out reinforcements without the time pressure of the July 30 trade deadline.

Situation 1

Bottom of the fifth, runners on second and third, two out, Michael Siani facing Paul Skenes, score tied 0-0

Siani has provided elite level defense thus far this season, but his limitations at the plate were a recurring theme throughout this game. After a stretch in mid-May which saw his OPS reach as high as .611, he tapered off in June, batting just 4-for-23 this month with a .384 OPS.

While the bottom of the fifth would be aggressively early to utilize a pinch hitter, especially with a thin bench, Marmol has shown a proclivity for doing so in the past when the spot in question could decisively swing the outcome of a game.

At this point, Mikolas was cruising through the Pirates and had yet to allow a hit. Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan delivered back-to-back singles to open the inning, but strikeouts by Matt Carpenter and Pedro Pagés left them waiting on base, though Donovan did move up to second on a wild pitch during Pagés’s at bat.

Siani would wrap up his plate appearance with a ground out to first baseman Rowdy Tellez. Had he been pinch hit for, the obvious alternative would have been Dylan Carlson, who is just 10-for-57 with 16 strikeouts on the season. A switch hitter, Carlson’s career numbers drop precipitously while batting left handed; his batting average is nearly 80 points lower, and his OPS drops by 150 points.

Carlson does have four of his 10 hits and all three of his RBI this season against righties, but a high-octane delivery like Skenes’s is not one which portends likely success for him. Indeed, all things considered, given the alignment of the Pittsburgh defense on the play, it’s possible that the highest ceiling outcome would have been to have Siani, a strong bunter with elite speed, attempt to push the ball past Skenes and in the direction of Tellez and second baseman Nick Gonzales.

Seriously contemplating a bunt with two outs and runners on second and third in a tie game is perhaps the biggest indicator of all of a team without obvious solutions.

“With the righty on the mound, that’s about it,” Marmol said postgame after describing places he might have chosen to use José Fermín or Iván Herrera as pinch hitters against a lefty. That implication – that neither Carlson nor Brandon Crawford amounts to a serious upgrade over the lefty-hitting Siani – weighs heavy on the game’s path.

Scenario 2

Bottom of the seventh, runner on second, two out, José Fermín pinch hitting for Matt Carpenter facing Aroldis Chapman, score tied 0-0

Here unfolds the precise scenario Marmol described, and the decision was to deploy the righty Fermín against the fireballing Chapman rather than give the at bat to Carpenter in a platoon disadvantage. Fermín flew out to right field, dropping him to 3-for-26 in the majors this season despite gaudy numbers at Triple-A.

Carpenter, for his career, is 1-for-9 with five strikeouts and a hit by pitch against Chapman, and the two haven’t faced off since 2016. The decision to go to a pinch hitter was nearly automatic, leaving only the choice between Carpenter and Carlson.

Marmol said postgame that his intent was to hold Carlson back to hit for Siani, two batters down the order, if Chapman remained on the mound. With Arenado standing on second after a one-out double, it’s possible that the game could have reached Carlson there with the bases loaded and two out, as well as lining him up to slide into center field.

Carpenter, as the designated hitter, was ironically harder to hit for, because again Marmol had to account for tough at bats coming down the pike in what was still, and would have been regardless, a close game.

Carlson has faced Chapman only once, in 2022, and lined out to left field.

Scenario 3

Bottom of the ninth, runners on first and second, two out, Siani facing David Bednar, Pirates leading 2-1

Siani struck out with the game on the line despite holding the platoon advantage against Bednar, who allowed a leadoff homer to Nolan Gorman before recording two outs. Fermín, though, drew a four-pitch walk, and the Pirates found themselves on the back foot after starting to celebrate a victory before replay revealed that Herrera (hitting for Pagés) in fact earned first base via catcher’s interference rather than striking out on a foul tip.

At this point in the game, with nothing left to hold back, most of the reasons Carlson matched up poorly with Skenes also apply to Bednar. Crawford, for his career, splits true, though while he hits righties better than lefties, the gap is not substantial. He also struggled in the early going this season, though has turned it around lately to the tune of a .162 batting average on the season.

Crawford has recorded three of his six hits in his last two appearances, though the Cardinals have not used him as a pure pinch hitter to date this season. Primarily his playing function has been as a safety blanket for Masyn Winn, taking over shortstop on days when the latter’s back is barking aggressively. It’s done so in recent weeks, and given the Cardinals’ strong reluctance to use Donovan or Fermín at shortstop defensively, it leaves Crawford sealed behind glass, save for select usage. And, while not a meaningful sample, Crawford is 0-for-3 with a strikeout in his career against Bednar.

The proper deployment of seven hitters – Carlson, Carpenter, Crawford, Fermín, Herrera, Pagés, Siani – formed the outgrowth of Tuesday’s loss. None of the seven has been even a league average hitter in 2024; only Herrera is within spitting distance, and only Herrera has a batting average north of .200.

There’s plenty of time and opportunity the day after to argue that Marmol might have had different choices. There’s no daylight to honestly assert that those choices were good, and that’s a problem that persists several levels above his head at Busch Stadium.