The St. Louis Cardinals are going through the ringer in the 2023 season. They recently suffered a demoralizing loss to the Miami Marlins on Wednesday.
There's a general rulebook for how to win games, but in 2023, the St. Louis Cardinals are re-writing the rules on how to lose them.
The Cards' forgettable season hit a new low on Wednesday night in a 10-9 loss to the Miami Marlins. The loss itself may not have been so bad if St. Louis didn't bungle the game so badly in the bottom of the ninth.
It was Jordan Hicks' irreparable error that led the Cardinals to shoot themselves in the foot at the end of the game, ruining what could have been one of the most thrilling comebacks of the year. After going down 5-0 early, the Cards dug their way back by the ninth inning and even held a one-score lead.
Then, as unforeseen bad luck would have it, chaos struck.
Marlins shortstop Joey Wendle was at bat, and he hit a grounder to pitcher Jordan Hicks that should have turned into an easy out. But when Hicks collected the ball in front of the mound, he airmailed it Baker Mayfield-style way over the first baseman's head.
His throw traveled all the way to foul territory in right field, giving two Marlins players enough time to make it to home and end the game in dramatic walk-off fashion.
Chip Caray called the Cardinals' end-of-game meltdown on Wednesday and described the scene as the "absolute worst way to lose." He was pretty on the nose.
Chip Caray's call of Cardinals meltdown vs. Miami is utterly depressing
At the end of the game, you can see Miami's players running onto the field jumping for joy and their fans at Marlins Park screaming with pure ecstasy and excitement. If you listen closely, you can also hear the sounds of Cardinals fans' jaws dropping to the floor. The thought of "How can this season get any worse?" somehow keeps manifesting itself in different ways for St. Louis.
Hicks gets painted as the obvious scapegoat, yet he wasn't the one who allowed eight runs in the first 5 1/3 innings. Starters Matthew Liberatore, Dakota Hudson, and Steven Matz should share the burden of this brutally demoralizing loss, too.
A day after the Marlins blew out the Cardinals 15-2, Wednesday's result was arguably much more painful because of how close St. Louis came to clinching the game.
In 2023, the Cards are 8-18 in one-run games and have fallen down to a 35-51 record, 11.5 games behind a wild card spot. Can this season get any worse for St. Louis? Yes, yes it evidently can.