Lack of big hit continues to plague Cardinals during losing streak

ST. LOUIS -- It felt like a key spot early in Saturday’s game, so the Busch Stadium crowd rose to its collective feet, hoping to see Jordan Walker deliver a memorable swing.

With Thursday’s postponement thrown into the mix, it had certainly been a while since the red-clad fans had seen one -- from any Cardinal.

The bases were loaded in the bottom of the third inning on Saturday night, and the Cardinals already trailed the Marlins, 2-0. Walker had a chance to flip the script on a sluggish stretch for an offense that was seeking its first run in nearly 70 hours.

Instead, he swung through a Ryan Gusto sinker to quietly end the threat.

In a manner uncharacteristic to this year’s Cardinals prior to this recent skid, Walker’s spot ending without a thump felt like the wind had already left the club’s sails for the night -- and sure enough, another listless six innings followed.

The Cardinals eventually secured their first run since Wednesday’s ninth inning on a Masyn Winn RBI single in the sixth, but the allure of additional damage went left unrealized after an inning-ending double play.

The big swing evaded the Cardinals for another game as they dropped their fourth in a row, 5-1.

“You look at the games we’re successful, we come up with that key hit, that big hit and kind of keep it rolling,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “We haven’t been able to do that recently and that’s a big part of how we’ve gotten to this point.”

On the pitching side, Saturday was a slow burn for the Cardinals. Andre Pallante recorded outs in the seventh inning for the third time this season, but he was charged with all five runs, allowing tallies in four separate innings.

None of the individual Miami rallies were especially damaging to the Cardinals’ chances, but stacking them up made Pallante’s stat line look far worse than the right-hander felt about compiling it.

“If I’m not getting beat in big innings, that means I must be doing something relatively right,” Pallante said. “It’s frustrating, because when you’re out there, you feel like you make a good pitch and some guy hits it. The biggest thing is, every pitcher has a plan how they attack batters. … I think it’s important that I don’t let the wrong things take me away from that.”

The pitching hasn’t been perfect, but Saturday was only the second time this week that the Cardinals permitted more than four runs in a game. Over the course of their four-game losing skid, the Cardinal bats have mustered just eight runs.

Has the wet St. Louis weather left the bats feeling soggy? What gives?

Overreacting to any one stretch in this sport can be a foolish endeavor. Marmol didn’t risk entering that territory on Saturday.

“You’re going to go through stretches where your big boys don’t feel great and they’re still going to battle and give you everything they’ve got,” Marmol said. “There’s going to be stretches where they can’t get out and they scorch everything thrown.

“Right now, we’re at a spot where we’re having to claw for every run. At some point, we’ll get out of it and be fine. But I don’t think it’s so much approach-driven as much as, just, we weren’t able to get that key hit when we had an opportunity tonight.”

The Cardinals rank as one of the league’s most stingy teams when it comes to succumbing to strikeouts, but St. Louis fell into nine of them on Saturday, all consolidated within the bottom two-thirds of the order.

While Marmol alluded to the key, timely swing evading the big bats in the lineup, spots seven through nine failed to produce even one base runner across 12 plate appearances on Saturday.

Once seen as an example of the aggression the Cardinals’ front office has shown to fortify the bottom of its order to keep the momentum going offensively, Jimmy Crooks slunk to a .157 batting mark and .501 OPS after an 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.

The Cardinals had built a cushion in the NL Wild Card standings through an uncanny ability to see one element of the roster regularly pick up the slack for whichever group needed it in a given game.

For one reason or another, lately, it’s been rare to see a requisite offensive performance timed up with the pitching to match it for a win.