The frustration Cardinals manager Mike Matheny shared after another loss to Marlins, he also heard in the dugout during it. There were shouts of “this isn’t it” and a “sense,” he said, of knowing what the players were seeing on the field was not familiar and not acceptable, and so he expected Thursday a “better brand of baseball.”
The bedrock of the Cardinals’ start to the season has been the rotation, specifically a pitcher like Miles Mikolas, a fresh face who ventilated the stench of the previous two games from Busch Stadium with seven sterling innings Thursday. The Cardinals went through a checklist of the constants — taking a lead with a home run, holding it with the starter and closing it with the relief tandem of Jordan Hicks and Bud Norris — on their way to a 4-1 victory against the Marlins.