I don't know if any recent Cardinals team has underachieved more or not. But in my 38 seasons of covering Cardinals baseball, in one form or another, there never has been a more perplexing team.
How is it that a team can have a Most Valuable Player candidate (Albert Pujols), a Cy Young Award candidate (Adam Wainwright), a Rookie of the Year candidate (Jaime Garcia), another .300 hitter and potential 100-RBI man in Matt Holliday and a pitcher with an outside shot at winning 20 games in Chris Carpenter ... and start the weekend just seven games over .500?
There have been other Cardinals teams to have fallen short the year after either winning a division, pennant or World Series. But none had as many players having marquee years as this team.
In 1965, after the Cardinals had won the World Series the year before, the club finished 80-81 with only Bob Gibson really having an outstanding year at 20-12.
In 1969, after the Cardinals had won two National League pennants in succession, Gibson was 20-13 with a 2.18 earned-run average and Steve Carlton was 17-11 and 2.17. But, offensively, there was no real awards contender as the Cardinals wound up at 87-75 and the Vada Pinson-Bobby Tolan trade did not work out.
The demise of the 1983 team, one year removed from winning the world title, can be traced in large part to Joaquin Andujar going 6-16 and Bruce Sutter having only 21 saves and a 4.23 ERA.
In 1986, a year after winning the National League pennant, manager Whitey Herzog raised the white flag in May as the New York Mets ran off to a huge lead. The Cardinals finished 28½ games out as they played more than half the season without slugger Jack Clark (.237), injured in a slide. They did have a Rookie of the Year in reliever Todd Worrell, who had 36 saves.
In 1988, Clark was gone to the New York Yankees and the Cardinals were 25 games behind the Mets one year after winning the NL pennant.
Tony La Russa's second team here in 1997 finished 73-89 after the Cardinals had played in the league championship series the year before. Brian Jordan was limited to 40 games by injury although Matt Morris made an impressive debut by winning 12 games.
In 2003, the Cardinals finished just three games out at 85-77 although they had no bullpen. Albert Pujols won the batting title at .359 and both Scott Rolen and Edgar Renteria drove in 100 runs. But, after Woody Williams' staff-leading 18 wins, next in line was Brett Tomko at 13.
In 2007, a year after winning the World Series, the Cardinals finished under .500 at 77-85 via a late-season collapse. But they had no real individual pitching stars, with Carpenter missing most all but the season opener because of arm problems.
And now, with four weeks of games left, the Cardinals are caught looking up a very long staircase and wondering what has happened, although surely an unbalanced offense has been a contributor. For instance, the Cardinals are only 12-21 when Pujols doesn't get a hit in a game.
"I can't make sense of it. I have no idea," said former Cardinals star Tim McCarver, the noted Fox television analyst who was in town this weekend to do the Cardinals-Reds game Saturday.
"It's shocking. I don't think that's too strong a word.
"They showed no signs earlier in the year of going into a free-fall like this."
Then, McCarver, a member of the 1964 Cardinals who rallied from 6½ games back with 13 to play to win the league title and then the World Series, said, "The comparison to '64 is apt."
On Sept. 5 of that year, the Cardinals trailed Philadelphia by 8½ games. In the Cardinals' 23 championship seasons, only five times had they not been in first place on that date and won either a division title, pennant or wild-card berth. But that year marked their farthest deficit on that date.
And, yes, admitted McCarver, there was a point when he gave up hope. With 11 games remaining, the Cardinals trailed by five games after losing, 2-1, to the woeful Mets and Galen Cisco (6-17) before a crowd of 3,941 at new Shea Stadium.
"To a man," said McCarver, "we thought there was no way we could lose this game and come back from this loss.
"Well, everybody but (shortstop) Dick Groat. I'm sitting next to Groat on the bus to the airport where we were going to Pittsburgh for five games.
"He says, 'You know Bob Friend doesn't want to lose 20 games, so he's probably not going to pitch. And (18-game winner) Bob Veale has a bad shoulder and may not pitch.' Sure enough, Friend missed his start," said McCarver.
Veale did pitch but lasted just five innings in his game and the Cardinals won all five contests, then came home to beat the fading Phillies three in a row to thrust themselves into the pennant race for the last weekend.
And here came the Mets again. Little Al Jackson outdueled Gibson, 1-0, here on Friday night and New York beat the Cardinals and 20-game winner Ray Sadecki 15-5 the next day before Gibson, with just one day of rest, worked four innings of relief to win the final game and the pennant on the last Sunday, 11-5.
"Do you think anybody would do that in today's game?" said McCarver.
Bringing 1964 to the Cardinals' travail of the present, McCarver stressed the lessons of teams and fans taking every opponent seriously and not assuming too much.
"The people who follow the game would have thought the Cardinals would be the ones to break this open, not the Reds. That's the shocking part," he said.
"Not shocking that the Reds would be two or three games in front. But (eight)? That's what shocks the system.
"It makes you shake your head and I'm sure Tony has been going through a lot of that."
NEWS ITEM: In the last couple weeks of the season, Cardinals Hall of Famer Sutter has been tutoring hard-throwing Philadelphia Class AAA prospect Scott Mathieson on the art of throwing the split-fingered pitch.
HUMMEL'S TAKE: This doesn't mean that Sutter is turning his back on the Cardinals, for whom he does not work. It's just that he really wasn't doing anything at home in the Atlanta area and when the Phillies called for his help, he answered.
Sutter, who also was available to help some other pitchers in the Phils' system, said, "I'm not doing it to put any pressure on the Cardinals.''
He said he wouldn't have gone away for even these couple of weeks if it hadn't been all right with his wife, Jayme, who has had health concerns but is better now. And he has no long-term assurances from the Phillies and doesn't really want a full-time job anyhow.
"I was bored," said Sutter, driving in Pennsylvania at the time. "There was nothing to do. I'm watching baseball on TV, so why don't I go do something and let some people know I'm interested in helping?"
NEWS ITEM: Washington's Nyjer Morgan ran into another catcher, Florida's Brett Hayes, on Tuesday night, and Hayes suffered a separated shoulder, putting him out for the season. The next night, Morgan had two pitches thrown close to him (the first one hit him) by Florida's Chris Volstad and Morgan charged the mound,.
HUMMEL'S TAKE: Morgan got the payback from the Marlins that fans had expected the next day after Morgan had run into unsuspecting Cardinals rookie catcher Bryan Anderson. But Washington manager Jim Riggleman already had defused that situation, benching Morgan for the final game of the series after apologizing to La Russa.
The difference in the dustup with Florida came when Morgan, after being hit, stole second and then took third without a throw when the Nationals trailed 14-3. Volstad then threw behind Morgan the next time.
Morgan already was appealing a seven-game suspension for throwing a ball into the stands in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago and now he has had eight more games tacked on. Asked if he's worried about his reputation, Morgan told Washngton reporters, "People are going to have their own opinions. I know what kind of player I am.''
