Ex-Cardinal Pitchers

The St. Louis Cardinals have faced two of the three starting pitchers that they lost to free agency this past winter a total of 4 times this year and have very little to show for it. Last night, as Justin pointed out, Supp went the distance for his second win against his former team in as many tries. Total Supp has thrown 15 1\3 innings, allowing 3 ER, striking out 10 while only walking 1 and allowing 14 hits. Now I think most Cardinal fans were sorry to see Supp go, and aren't TOO surprised to see him doing so well. And if it was just him doing so well against us it wouldn't be THAT bad. We knew he was a solid pitcher, just didn't want to over pay for him.
However, Marquis has done almost as well against us. He too has two wins against us. He's thrown 13 2\3's innings, allowing 3 ER, 5 K's, 3 walks and 12 hits. And over all he's having a great year so far. Most Cardinal fans will also agree that we knew Jason was a solid pitcher whose main problem was between the ears but nobody expects him to keep this up...even the most faithful Cub fan.
This will be one of, if not THE most difficult week of the year. So in many ways we, as fans, need to give the boys a pass this week. As been said by many bloggers already, the players can say all they want that things change when they step on the field, or that they still have to play like any other day all they want. It's not that easy to move on when you lose a close friend or family member like this. These guys are human.
With that said, something has to change, and soon. This team has struggled all year with creating runs (except a few offensive outbursts here and there) so this is not a knee jerk reaction after last night's loss. Again, that was a tough game to play in so close the Hancock's death. And if the struggles we're seeing were limited we wouldn't have that much to complain about. But, like I said, they're just not creating runs. If you take out the three double digit Sunday's, the Cardinals have scored 50 runs through 21 games in April (again taking out those three blow out games). That's only an average of 2.3 runs a game. That's just ridiculous. Last April they scored 99 runs in April (taking out the one double digit outburst on opening day). That's an average of 4.1 runs a game, almost DOUBLE what the Cardinals are doing this year!!! I don't know if we're missing Encarnacion THAT much or what but something has to give. Pujols is starting to come around like we all knew he would. But aside from those two games last week where it looked like the old Rolen was back, not much else has changed in the starting lineup.
The good news is that even struggling this much, the Cardinals are only 5.5 games back in a poor division. Most will agree that there's little chance of any team running away with the NL Central this year. This team is too good to continue to struggle like this. Hopefully sometime soon they'll kick it into gear and run off a nice winning streak. They've got the talent...and hopefully Carp will be back soon to help!!!