Cardinals bullpen implodes after Montgomery’s exit

How much worse does it have to get for changes to be made? How long is it going to take Bill DeWitt, John Mozeliak, Oli Marmol, and everyone else to realize that what they’re doing isn’t working?

This season has been a very unpleasant flashback to the Matheny days. Bad defense, bad fundamentals, bad pitching, bad everything. The Cardinals jumped on Dylan Cease early and gave Jordan Montgomery a 5-0 lead. Ivan Herrera came through in the clutch a few times and Nolan Arenado also provided some power while Dylan Carlson picked up an RBI-hit of his own.

However, after allowing a solo homer to Jake Burger, he left the game with what appeared to be a hamstring injury. And sure enough, all hell broke loose, as it has all season. We’ll discuss that in the takeaways below.

Bullpen woes continue

How bad was the bullpen? This never ends. I’m shocked every time it happens. I shouldn’t be at this point. JoJo Romero left in the sixth after allowing a few baserunners and a run. To be fair, some bad defense from Nolan Gorman cost the Cardinals a bit.

Why Oli keeps going to Andre Pallante with runners on, I just don’t understand. I knew it was trouble when he entered the game. He allowed the White Sox to come back and take the lead.

After regaining the lead, the Cardinals gave it right back, as Kyle Leahy had an absolutely disastrous MLB debut. From there, the Cardinals couldn’t do anything else.

Arenado supplies some pop

I don’t want to keep being a debbie downer, but we’ll shift to one of the positives from tonight. Nolan Arenado was simply clutch. A two-run homer in the top of the third helped the Cardinals jump out to their early 5-0 lead.

And after the Cardinals gave up the lead, Arenado came through with another two-run bomb in the seventh to put St. Louis back in front. It didn’t last, but you can’t deny that Arenado is red-hot right now and is more than deserving of his All-Star nod.

Waiting for more on Montgomery

Jordan Montgomery was off to a fantastic start. I firmly believe that if he doesn’t get hurt, the Cardinals win the game. That’s not to blame him for what happened, as injuries happen at the worst possible times. But it sure hurt.

Montgomery walked off the mound with Oli Marmol after seemingly injuring his hamstring in the bottom of the fifth. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think an IL stint is very likely for Montgomery. How long it’ll be, we can’t be sure. But even with the season careening, the Cardinals have to upgrade their pitching staff and reload for 2024.

They need to go get multiple pitchers. They should add at least two before the deadline in my opinion. We’ll discuss that another time, but the front office should be feeling the heat after Montgomery’s injury. They can’t wait around any longer to add some reinforcements.

Miles Mikolas gets the ball tomorrow as the Cardinals look to even the series.