Cardinals struggling for a 2nd straight season, and the NL Central's top young players are elsewhere

A model of consistency for so long, the St. Louis Cardinals are suddenly struggling to stay relevant.

Even after taking two of three against both the Angels and Red Sox, the Cardinals are six games under .500. They've rebounded from a seven-game losing streak earlier this month, winning five of their last seven, but they're seven games out of first place, and their run differential of minus-49 is by far the worst in the NL Central.

St. Louis went 71-91 last year, snapping a streak of 15 straight winning seasons. If they finish with a losing record two years in a row, it'll be the first time they've done that since the strike-shortened 1994 and 1995 campaigns. You have to go all the way back to 1958 and 1959 to find the last time the Cardinals were under .500 for two consecutive non-shortened seasons.

This is the franchise that let Albert Pujols leave and kept right on contending. The team that turned an 83-win season in 2006 into a World Series title. It's hard to write the Cardinals off, but it's also getting harder to see a particularly bright future.