A SLOW START : Cardinals Are So Sluggish That Maybe Dodgers Can Pitch to Clark

Outfielder Andy Van Slyke is preparing to take batting practice at Candlestick Park.

It is the Monday of a week in which his St. Louis Cardinals will play two games in San Francisco, two in San Diego and three in Los Angeles.

“Every season has its peaks and valleys,” Van Slyke is saying. “The thing you have to try and eliminate is the Grand Canyon.”

Van Slyke pauses. He is concerned that his team may be already on the rim.

“Last year, we never went through anything like this,” the outfielder says.

This is a .214 team batting average that seems hauntingly reminiscent of last October’s .185, the bottom line on the World Series loss to Kansas City.

The Cardinals scored just 13 runs in the seven games, operating without catalytic leadoff hitter Vince Coleman, who last season stole 110 bases en route to the National League’s Rookie of the Year award.

St. Louis led the major leagues with 314 stolen bases during the regular 1985 season and led the National League with 747 runs scored and a .264 team batting average.

Now, returning to Dodger Stadium tonight for the first time since the Oct. 16 finale of the National League championship series with the Dodgers, the road signs point ominously toward the Grand Canyon:

--The Cardinals have stolen 32 bases to again lead the majors, but they rank last in the league in team batting and next to last in runs--an average of 3.2 a game.

--They have been shut out five times, compared to eight all of last year, and have been held to five hits or fewer eight times in 19 games. The only regular with a batting average of more than .227 is Ozzie Smith, who is hitting .333.

--The pivotal Coleman, recovered from his playoff confrontation with the mechanical tarpaulin at Busch Stadium, has eight steals in nine attempts, but he has recently gone nine games without one, the longest drought of his career. He also has 14 strikeouts in 80 at-bats and is hitting .225, which is 42 points lower than last year.

--Willie McGee, who led the league with a .353 average while batting behind Coleman and who eventually won the Most Valuable Player award, is hitting .212 and has only 2 steals. Tommy Herr, who batted .302 and had 110 runs batted in behind McGee, is hitting .141 with 5 RBIs. Jack Clark, who had 22 homers and 87 RBIs behind Herr, now has 3 homers, 5 RBIs and a .220 batting average.

The season didn’t begin that way for the Cardinals. They opened by collecting a total of only six hits in two games with the Chicago Cubs but won both on the way to a 7-1 start, their best ever.

They then lost seven in a row, including four to the hated New York Mets. Their longest losing streak since 1983 ended Monday with a victory over the Giants in extra innings.

Manager Whitey Herzog slumped in his clubhouse office and said: “The monkey is off our back.”

Tuesday, however, it was back.

Mike LaCoss, a San Francisco retread, combined with Greg Minton to hold the Cardinals to three hits, pitching a 2-0 victory. St. Louis then traveled to San Diego, where the monkey grew into a gorilla.

Mark Thurmond allowed only one hit Wednesday night in dealing the Cardinals another shutout, 5-0. Thursday, St. Louis was beaten, 4-3, for its 10th loss in the last 11 games.

The mounting frustration became obvious Wednesday night when both Herzog and first baseman Clark were ejected for disputing plate umpire Harry Wendelstedt’s calls.

The scene seemed strikingly similar to Games 6 and 7 of the World Series.

“I don’t care what anyone writes, what anyone says,” Herzog said, reflecting on the World Series the other day. “We had the (bleep)ing thing taken away from us.

“Maybe you have to wear a jockstrap to really know how that feels, how it hurts.

“We had every right to be mad.”

Now, after only a month of the new season, it is the Mets who seem ready to take away something the Cardinals regard as their own.

The Cardinals trail by six games in the East and look for solace to last year, when they also lost four of their first five games to the Mets, when they did not reach .500 until May 25, when they were still seven games out on that date and when they did not take their first lead until June 29.

There is a problem in looking back, however.

“Last year we took the league by surprise a little bit,” second baseman Herr said. “The way our lineup was constructed, no one thought we were for real.

“Now we’re no longer a secret. The pitchers are altering their motions (trying to prevent the steal) and using a different pitch selection (to keep the Cardinals off the bases).

“There’s no reason we can’t adapt to it and take what they give us because we have the weapons to do it.”

Coleman is the obvious key. The Cardinals hope he can eliminate 30 to 50 of his 115 strikeouts of 1985, when he arrived a year ahead of schedule.

Discipline will make Coleman a .280 to .300 hitter, Herzog said.

“Without it, he’ll struggle to hit .260 again,” he added.

Coleman believes that 200 steals are possible, but only if he eliminates the strikeouts.

“I know my job is to steal bases, set up runs, set the table,” he said. “If I get on base, you know I’m going to make things happen.”

Said Van Slyke, alluding to the top of the St. Louis batting order: “Vince is the salad, Willie the soup, Tommy the bread and Jack the entree. They set the table. Without ‘em, we go hungry.”

So far, at least, there have been only crumbs from the bottom of the order. Van Slyke is hitting .227, Terry Pendleton .200 and Mike Heath .080. Heath, the catcher acquired from Oakland in the trade for Joaquin Andujar, is hitless in 27 at bats against right-handeders.

Herzog is also not worried about his offense. He saw enough last year to believe it will come.

“If we stay healthy,” he said, “we’ll steal 300 bases again, and if we steal 300 bases, we’ll score enough runs.”

Neither is Herzog worried about the defense. St. Louis led the league in fielding percentage last year and has made a league-low eight errors this year.

“Position by position, I feel we’ve got the best defense in the history of the game,” he said.

Herzog’s concern is that Smith, the Wizard of Oz, will require periodic rest for a tear in his right rotator cuff, and that relief pitcher Jeff Lahti, who had a club-high 19 saves, has been sidelined indefinitely now with a shoulder injury, compounding the loss of Andujar’s 21 wins and 269 innings.

“You lose 21 wins and 19 saves and it’s quite a jolt,” Herzog said.

The brewery that owns the Cardinals reportedly insisted that Andujar be traded out of embarrassment over his behavior in Game 7 of the World Series.

The restructured rotation includes 21-game winner John Tudor and 18-game winner Danny Cox, who has now made two starts since chipping an ankle bone jumping off a Florida sea wall on March 30; Rick Horton, who had a 2.91 ERA working primarily out of the bullpen; Rick Ownbey, who is 3-9 in parts of three major league seasons, and Tim Conroy, a left-hander acquired in the Andujar trade.

Control problems plagued Conroy with the A’s, but he will start against the Dodgers Saturday, having allowed just one hit and one run in 8 innings of three relief appearances with the Cardinals.

Said Herzog: “It will be easier to replace Andujar with our 3, 4 and 5 starters than it will be to replace Lahti. It may be harder to replace Lahti, in fact, than it was to replace (Bruce) Sutter because now we’ve lost a lot of the depth with which we replaced Sutter. I can’t do a lot of the things I like to do.”

A bullpen that did not lose a lead in the ninth inning or later last year has already lost four. Lahti’s load must be shared by right-hander Todd Worrell and left-hander Ken Dayley. Now the setup men are rookie Pat Perry and inexperienced Greg Bargar, acquired last winter from Montreal.

Now, too, there is an increased load on the slumbering offense. The Cardinals won 101 games last year. Herzog said that 94 victories could win the East title this year, citing improvement in the league.

He said that the Cardinals have wearied of the media’s constant claims that the Mets will win it all, but he admitted that his team now needs help from those other improved clubs.

“I know that we can still out-defense and outrun the Mets,” he said. “I also thought we were deeper in the bullpen, but now we’ve lost Lahti, so that’s a tossup. Last year I thought our first three starters were just as good as theirs, but that’s where they seem better now.

“Their pitching is just awfully deep, and a lot will depend now on how they do against the other clubs. We don’t play them for another two months. We’ve got to hope we’re still in the race by then.”