Do the Cardinals have the needed “hungry to win” mentality?

I think the problem is they only have one or two good players.

Masyn Winn is a dynamic 22 year-old who should only get better. The rest are just guys…

It’s not about mentality or leadership. There are not any impact players. They all either aged out or fizzled out. There aren’t any impact players coming from the minors and ownership is not going to buy any. That is what it is about.

KCB, fizzle is less wordy.

It is all in what period of stats you choose. Most recently, Scott was on a seven game hitting streak and batting .303. Walker also has a current seven game hitting streak and in his last 10 games, he is 15-for-42 (.357) with over half of his hits going for extra bases (five doubles and three home runs).

Does that justify being called up, no, not yet. But it is a start in the right direction.

(Not that this has anything to do with the MLB team’s mentality, which no one can assess from afar.)

Last year’s reason for underachievement was supposedly a lack of veteran leadership, despite the team having two of the top three MVP vote recipients from the year before, both of whom were well into their 30’s. That attempted fix hasn’t worked.

The new narrative with Pham coming is they need guys who play with an “edge”. But expecting Pham to save the season is going to end in disappointment. In very early returns, the Cards with Pham are 2-3, though without him, they’d be 1-4. So there’s that.

Like others have wondered, maybe it is the talent, not the desire.

I’ll remind everyone that Gorman looked good his first full year. So did Walker. Do did Carlson. So did DeJong.

So let’s look at our latest guy looking good his first full year and fit him for a red jacket? You guys can pile on that bandwagon. If the wheels aren’t getting wobbly by the end of next year. We can talk.

Another guy who looked good early on was Piscotty, and that shortstop we had around that same time – can’t think of his name. Both guys regressed to mediocrity and were traded, with neither one doing much.

It is a disturbing trend how we have guys who come up and look like they are settling in for a nice career, but then don’t progress. Flaherty was sort of that way as well. Mikolas had that bang up year in ‘18, then injuries and maybe just being fortunate early has brought his career back to earth.

After 2021 I championed O’Neill as an MVP candidate heading in to 2022, and he fizzled, although he is doing well in Beantown this year.

I think what this team lacks is the impact players that bb mentioned earlier. This team doesn’t have a Chris Carpenter or a Mark McGwire, Jim Edmunds, Albert Pujols, Scot Rolen, or even a young and healthy Adam Wainwright or Edgar Renteria. Both Arenado and Goldschmidt, like Manny Machado and Kris Bryant, seem to be over the hill in their early thirties for reasons unknown. This team needs a couple of impact players to give the team the confidence it needs to feel like a winner. It looked like Walker was going to be that kind of player, but not any more. Eventually Winn, Burleson, Wetherholt, Hence, Matthews could be impact guys, but none of them are there yet. Right now, there’s only one impact player on the whole team and he’s a reliever. I think we can forget about free agents solving the problem because of all the empty seats we are seeing at every game. Basically, the St. Louis Cardinals are now in the same boat as almost every other small market team, and the front office is going to have to work through it. IMO, if the fans would stop worrying about ‘dominating’ and just enjoy the game for what it is, and if ownership would stop issuing insane contracts to players, the whole of the game would be a better experience for everybody.

Maybe they just need to hire Tony Robbins to come in and give the team a pep talk?