St. Louis Cardinals' NL Central Stranglehold Starting to Slip Away

The division was once a runaway, and that was as recently as a week ago. 

In the six games since, the National League Central has turned into a legitimate race as the St. Louis Cardinals, the division’s dominant squad for nearly this entire year, have gone on an ill-timed slide. That run in the wrong direction has opened the window ever so slightly for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and even the Chicago Cubs, to climb through.

Michael Wacha, arguably the Cardinals’ most consistently dominant pitcher, was the latest piece of the rotation to get battered in the last week, allowing six runs over four innings Tuesday in what ended up being an 8-5 loss to the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis’ third consecutive defeat.

The team has also lost five of its last six, with four of the losses to the Pirates and Cubs, to see their lead over the Pirates shrink to 4.5 games. The Cubs, winners of five in a row and seven of their last 10, are 6.5 games back.

Per Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cardinals manager Mike Matheny told reporters after the latest loss, in which his team scored five times in the seventh to make it a game:

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You’re going to have days like this. You don’t like to see them consecutively. You don’t like to see them in the same week. You don’t like to see them at all. But they do happen. We’ve had so many of those one-run, two-run games all season long, and we’ve figured out how to stay in those and how to win those and how to come back in those. None of that has gone away. This is where we are right now.

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The Cardinals had been a team on pace to win 100 games, picking up their 86th win on Sept. 1. The reason for that triple-digit projection was the team's pitching staff, particularly its outstanding rotation.

However, over the last six games, the staff has a 6.00 ERA and the rotation sits at 6.25, although there are three quality starts mixed into that stretch. The pitching has allowed five or more runs in seven of its past nine games after doing so, amazingly, in just 32 of the previous 131 contests.

The worst of the outings came Monday from Lance Lynn, who allowed six runs in 2.1 innings and afterward griped about pitching on a few days of extra rest, per Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Wacha had been dazzling in his previous six starts before Tuesday’s blowup. In those previous turns, he had a 0.92 ERA and the team went 5-1. So while the pitching numbers don’t look great, there probably isn’t a need for extreme panic when it comes to that group.

“It hasn’t gone well for the Cardinals here in recent starts, particularly these last games against the Pirates and now the Cubs,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Jeff Gordon told CineSport’s Noah Coslov on Tuesday.

“This team was pitching at a historically great level start after start after start,” Gordon continued. “Some downturn is inevitable. Guys will get tired. Small injuries will occur.”

It has not just been the pitchers, though. The offense has not held its own, scoring just six times in the last three games, and not one of those runs has come before the seventh inning. Going into Tuesday, the lineup had a .244/.302/.310 slash line while scoring just 11 times in its previous five games.

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

After being shut out by the Cubs on Monday, the Cardinals had just three hits and no runs going into the seventh on Tuesday before they erupted for all five of their runs. That inning gave the team more runs in the span of 10 hitters than it had in each of its previous five games, but the Cardinals went down meekly again in the eighth and ninth innings.

While the Cardinals are enduring their struggles, the Pirates have gained ground in the division despite losing six of their last nine. As for the Cubs, their five-game winning streak has gained them four games in the standings, and while winning the division still seems like a long shot, they are helping the Pirates chase down the Cardinals with their last two victories in St. Louis.

The Cardinals still have a 100 percent chance of making the postseason, but their chances of winning the division have dropped from 91 percent six games ago to 88 percent, according to FanGraphs’ playoff projections.

“It’s not something we’re accustomed to,” Wacha told reporters of the team’s losing ways and the rotation’s struggles, per Goold. “It’s not something people should get used to. These past couple nights haven’t been typical of what we’ve been doing all year. We have to get back to what had been working, get back on the roll. We hate putting our team in that situation.”

The situation is quickly heading toward dire just days after the Cardinals had a stranglehold on the NL Central. Chances are they still win it, but this is suddenly a division worth watching after their latest skid.

All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired firsthand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.