Cardinals Strength Pulling 180 At Wrong Time

The St. Louis Cardinals got off to a fantastic start this season, largely due to their incredible defense and talented pitching staff.

But as the season has gone on, the Cardinals have regressed to the mean and their pitching staff has struggled. Both the starting rotation and the bullpen appear to have some glaring holes at this point with the team's best players not performing too well right now.

Bleacher Report's Kerry Miller recently ranked the Cardinals' pitching staff as the 18th-best unit in the league. That's quite a drop from their rankings earlier in the season, and they look nothing like the unit that was carrying the Cardinals to huge wins.

"Pitching keyed St. Louis' 32-24 start to the season, but it has also been the negative driving force of the Cardinals posting one of the worst records in baseball over the past three weeks," Miller wrote. "Sonny Gray has had a few gems, but Andre Pallante and Matthew Liberatore have come crashing back to earth, while Ryan Helsley has blown all three of his save chances thus far in June."

Sonny Gray has been good for St. Louis. He's stayed rather consistent atop the team's rotation. Erick Fedde has also been rather consistent, though he could, and likely will, end up on the trade block in the coming weeks.

Matthew Liberatore has returned to earth after a very hot start to the season. Miles Mikolas' last few outings haven't been as great as fans would have hoped.

All in all, the Cardinals don't have a supremely talented pitching staff. Fans and media should have expected this kind of regression from the team. They don't have all the talent in the world and the defense can only carry the weight of the load for so long.