But right now they are crumbling down like the walls in a John Cougar Mellancamp song. They've lost six in a row, seven of their last eight in-division games, and eight of their last 10 overall. Following the tradition of first the Nationals and then the Mets, their bullpen has collapsed like a deflated moon bounce fort.
Andrew McCutcheon is out for the season with a knee injury, and with him goes a .378 OBP out of the leadoff spot, and his replacements have been little more than an automatic out ever since. So they've tried Bryce Harper in the spot, with his underperformance in the middle of the lineup leading to the change much like Curtis Granderson back in the day for the Mets. The main difference is that, while Granderson was the first high-end, long-term contract given out by the Mets in the Alderson era, Harper is being paid more than Chewbacca, and such a move in the first year of a 13-year deal is pretty dramatic.
Plus, like the Cards, they're experimenting with powder blue revisited. Nameplates, too. Everything old is new again.
