Milwaukee Brewers rival's slim playoff chances may now be all but gone

For a while there, it seemed like the St. Louis Cardinals were coming back from the dead and might have a chance, small as it might've been, to challenge the Milwaukee Brewers for NL Central supremacy. If those worries hadn't already been put to rest, they should be now.

The Cardinals suffered a huge blow yesterday when catcher Willson Contreras, who was at designated hitter for the day, was struck on the finger by a pitch from Minnesota Twins starter Pablo Lopez. He would be removed from the game during his next at bat.

It would be confirmed after the game by Cardinals beat writer Derrick Goold that Contreras' finger was indeed fractured on that play. The result will be another stint on the injured list for the team's star backstop.

Odds are that Contreras will miss the majority of the rest of the 2024 season, if not all of it, which is a huge blow to the Cardinals. He had arguably been their best offensive player this year with a .262/.380/.468 slash line as well as 17 doubles and 15 homers in 84 games.

And the Cardinals just can not afford to lose any more offense, especially at this point in the season. They have not been a particularly strong offensive team as it is in 2024 with their 4.13 runs per game average through 129 games ranking just 24th in MLB.

After one of their worst seasons in years in 2023 and a equally rough start to the 2024 season, the Cardinals finally started looking like the team many thought they would toward the end of May. A strong stretch had them up to second place in the NL Central for the first time all year as of May 29th and just 4.5 games back of the Brewers.

St. Louis would spend a majority of the next two and a half months, including the entire month of July, in second behind Milwaukee, but wouldn't gain any more ground. Eventually, a hot August by the Brewers would see the division lead stretch and now the Cardinals are not only behind by 11 games and down to third place, but the loss of their best player may have dashed all hopes for a playoff run.

Manager Pat Murphy's Brewers have been great this year at tuning out distractions and focusing on the themselves on their way to another potential playoff appearance. It'll still be nice, though, to hopefully not have to worry about what at one point looked like a dangerous divisional foe.