Last Day of the Season Open Thread

So....yeah.

I had planned on writing a System Sunday post this morning, beginning a review of the Cards’ farm system level by level as we head into the offseason, as part of my own ramping up toward list-writing season. However, given that it is, in fact, the final day of the season, and the Cardinals were eliminated from postseason contention only late yesterday evening, it seemed like the wrong time to just talk about the minor leagues. Plenty of time for that later.

I’m not quite ready to write up my customary sad season-ending summary post; I’ll be back with that tomorrow. I don’t have it in me just yet this morning. And as for the future, there will be time for that too, later; we have a whole extra month again this offseason to debate and discuss what should be done, what needs to be done, and what we will riot about when it is not done to improve the Cardinals.

So rather than talk about the minors like nothing’s going on, or try to rush out a post I’m only really beginning to formulate in my head now, I thought on this last day of the 2018 season we could just open the floor up and chat. It’s the end of yet another season, after all, and I’m sure everyone has thoughts on what we all just experienced over the past six months.

I don’t know just yet what I will take away from this season, honestly; so many things went wrong on so many fronts that I’m torn in trying to sort through them all and decide what the fatal flaw was, or if it was death by a thousand cuts, or maybe death by a thousand slips and falls rounding third. I feel like the Cardinals are in a much better position now than they were at the beginning of the season, but then again there were plenty of reasons to feel that way as last September came to a close, as well, and several of those causes for optimism turned out to be fool’s gold.

We probably just saw Adam Wainwright’s final appearance wearing the Birds on the Bat, and it didn’t go all that well. Sad, but somewhat fitting. Eras do not often end happily, it seems. There’s a youth movement afoot, but the club remains in search of a center around which to build, with the two most consistently indispensable players of the past five years both either in or approaching their respective career twilights. Many of the same flaws we’ve seen the past couple seasons with this club popped up again, despite their best efforts to fix those flaws.

So just use this space for your own purposes, to discuss either the season now nearly completed (and already over in the way we care about it, other than trying to ruin the Cubs’ day, I suppose), what you’ll take away from it, what you’re looking forward to in the future, or pretty much anything else you like.

One game left, and then Cardinal baseball is gone again until February. It ended way too early this year.