4:46 AM UTC
ST. LOUIS — Faced with the prospect of potentially playing out a long string of relatively meaningless games after the Cardinals sell off pieces before the MLB Trade Deadline and shift their focus toward 2024, superstar third baseman Nolan Arenado had a rather pointed message for anyone who would listen on Monday night, vowing that he still had plenty to play for despite the Cardinals “depressing” spot in the standings.
Then, late Tuesday, Arenado backed up his fiery, pride-filled words with his bat, hitting one of the biggest home runs of the season for a suddenly surging Cardinals club putting all facets of the game together and showing signs of life.
Arenado smashed a three-run, walk-off home run in the bottom of the 10th inning to lift the Cardinals to a 5-2 win over the Marlins. It was the fourth walk-off homer of Arenado’s career, but his first walk-off winner as a Cardinal.
“We’re playing good baseball right now — something we expected from ourselves early on — but we’re playing good ball and that’s a good team over there and we found a way to battle and win,” said Arenado, whose smash off Miami closer A.J. Puk was a no-doubter when it left the bat. “That was a really good win.”
The victory pushed the Cardinals’ winning streak to four and they have now captured victories in seven of their last nine. Having already clinched a series win over the Marlins, St. Louis has won three straight series.
More importantly, their win combined with another loss from the sinking Pirates meant the Cardinals were no longer at the bottom of the heap in the NL Central. The Cardinals will wake up on Wednesday not in last place in their division for the first time since May 28 — a span of 51 days. Prior to pulling even with the Pirates on Monday, the Cardinals had been in last place for 80 of the 107 days of the season.
While Arenado said he long since stopped looking at the standings, the Cardinals’ front office has had to face that reality for weeks. President John Mozeliak said on Monday the club would likely be sellers at the Trade Deadline and shift the focus to building for 2024 instead of trying to get back to the playoffs for a fifth straight year.
That sort of thinking doesn’t sit well with a competitor like Arenado, whose intensity tends to burn at blast-furnace levels regardless of where the Cardinals are in the standings. He admitted that the thought of playing games without meaning made his blood boil and that he would continue pouring his full focus into every game regardless of the direction the team heads.
“I’m still playing for something — I know I am,” said Arenado, who had two hits and four RBIs in Monday’s win and another two hits and three RBIs on Tuesday. “I don’t know if it’s that sense of pride or what, but I’m playing for something.
“I don’t look at the standings anymore because I’m past that, but I’m still going out there and trying to win ballgames every night,” Arenado added. “If you’re a young player, you’re always playing for something — you can make some money in this game and solidify yourself a spot on this baseball team. There’s a bunch of things to play for and I’m playing for … I’m finding reasons to play — for family and a bunch of things. I’ll just keep trying to play my best.”
That Arenado is refusing to give in to the circumstances surrounding the Cardinals’ tough start — they haven’t had this poor of a win-loss record since they were 39-55 in 1995 — is not surprising to Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol. The second-year manager marvels at the will to win and white-hot intensity of a third baseman who has been to eight All-Star Games and has won 10 straight Gold Gloves.
“There’s one gear and, I mean, all the guy cares about is winning,” Marmol raved. “That’s why he came here — to win — and he’s not going to let up.”
Not willing to give up on this season just yet, Arenado thinks there’s still time for the Cardinals to put a run together.
“We’ve got 60-plus games left, we’re 10 games out of the division, we’re not going to win the Wild Card, so we’ve got to try and win this division,” he said. “I mean, I wouldn’t put [winning the division] past us.
“There’s no point at looking [at the standings] because we’re far back and it’s kind of depressing,” he added. “The goal is, we have a game tomorrow and let’s try to win it. … We’ve got to find a way to finish this stretch strong and we’ll see where we’re at at the end of it.”
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