The first season of Nolan Arenado’s campaign in St. Louis came with all the things we’ve come to expect from the superstar third baseman. Superb defense:
And that superb defense comes with a very solid offensive season in which he tallied 34 HR and 105 RBI en route to a 113 wRC+ was certainly a season Cardinals fans could be happy with.
There were points in the season, however, where it seemed like Cardinals fans saw a lot of this:
The words “Arenado” and “popup” started appearing more frequently together in game thread comments, and game-to-game it seemed like the narrative was hard to refute.