After doing nothing at the deadline, the St. Louis Cardinals are going to need their offense to step up and perform at the very least at their career norms the rest of the second half if they are going to have a chance at going far in the playoffs or even getting in at first.
The biggest player that all this starts with is Paul Goldschmidt. In the first half, Goldy was almost exactly a league-average hitter with an OPS of .769 with 16 bombs. That OPS is about the top end fo what the team would hope to get out of a player like Harrison Bader, not the one they just signed to a five-year extension after trading for him over the offseason.