Frustrated Cardinals continue to underperform

12:48 AM ET

ST. LOUIS — Outfielder Randal Grichuk didn’t even wait for the reporter to finish a question about whether his St. Louis Cardinals are better than their middling record implies before he jumped in with an answer.

“Oh, most definitely,” he said.

And is that maddening?

“It’s frustrating,” he said, before pausing, looking around and repeating that word. “Frustrating. Hopefully, we put it together here pretty soon.”

For years, other teams considered the Cardinals to be better than the sum of their parts. Through the first month of 2016, the Cardinals have confounded their fans and themselves by being worse than the equation would suggest. It’s not easy to outscore your opponents by 40 combined runs in 27 games, drop below .500 and fall seven games behind in the standings, but somehow the Cardinals have pulled it off.

Randal Grichuk and the Cardinals couldn’t get much offense going against Aaron Nola and the Phillies in a frustrating 1-0 loss on Tuesday night. AP Photo/Bill Boyce

The highest-scoring team in the major leagues, the Cardinals got completely unplugged by Aaron Nola and his baffling breaking ball in a 1-0 loss to the …

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