It hasn’t been a great start to the season for the Cardinals. Obviously, it’s too early to worry too very much about anything; when you’ve played just over 5% of the season, what you see is every bit as liable to be noise as signal, and even if it’s real, there’s so much time left to try and correct it that running around yelling about the sky falling is not the most productive use of one’s time just yet.
All the same, it hasn’t been a ton of fun to watch so far. The bullpen was constructed in what looked like maybe the best way possible, with a big investment in a premium arm to go along with all the best, most talented high-strikeout weapons the organisation could rustle up.