Bernie’s Redbird Review: Cardinals Lose 5-4 At Wrigley. What Is It With Ryan Helsley And The Cubs?

THE REDBIRD REVIEW

What the heck is up with Ryan Helsley and the Cubs?

Why do the Cubs turn the Cardinals’ All-Star closer into a palooka when they see him standing on the mound? The Cubs get to him over and over again, and I don’t get it.

That’s my No. 1 takeaway from the Cardinals’ sudden and hideous 5-4 loss Thursday night at Wrigley Field. Helsley couldn’t guard-dog a 4-2 lead in the ninth. The Cubs busted him for three runs. And the beatdown was nothing new; it continued a disturbing trend.

Stats to know about Helsley’s strange futility against the Cubs in 2024 …

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Helsley vs. all other teams this season: 41 innings, eight earned runs, 1.76 ERA.

Helsley vs. the Cubs this season: 5 and ⅔ innings, six earned runs, 9.53 ERA.

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Other teams, batting line vs. Helsley this year: .184 average, .256 onbase percentage, .213 slugging percentage, one home run in 160 plate appearances.

Cubs, batting line vs. Helsley this year: .414 average, .485 onbase percentage, .690 slug, two home runs in 33 plate appearances.

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Other teams, strikeouts/walks vs. Helsley this year: 30.6 percent strikeout rate and 9.4% walk rate.

Cubs, strikeouts/walks vs Helsley this year: 15.2 percent strikeout rate and 12.1% walk rate.

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After the Cubs blasted Helsley (again) to the thunderous delight of their ecstatic loyalists at Wrigley, a lot was written and said about Helsley’s approach. Should have thrown more fastballs. Should have thrown fewer sliders. His approach didn’t work.

The one spot-on aspect of this assessment was Helsley’s erratic control of his slider. He left a few up in the zone which made the pitch more hittable.

Relative to his workload before the All-Star break, Helsley hasn’t pitched all that much since the resumption of play. His slider wasn’t sharp against the Cubs, with six of 12 pitches out of the strike zone.

OK, but let’s dig a little deeper on this.

Helsley hardly owned the Cubs with his four-seamer last night. The sizzler averaged 99 mph but the Cubs didn’t flinch. The Cubs had no problem handling the Hesley heat, going 2 for 4 with a single, a double, and a 50 percent hard-hit rate.

The Cubs swung at six four-seamers and put four in play. He got only one swing and miss. And Mike Tauchman’s game-winning double came on a Helsley four-seam.

The Cubs did some damage on the slider, with Dansby Swanson’s game-tying double that made it 4-4. And it’s certainly fair to second-guess the strategy of throwing sliders to Swanson on all five pitches during their confrontation.

The other wound was Cody Bellinger’s leadoff homer to open the ninth. It came on a curveball (huh?), Helsley’s third-best pitch and one he’s used on only seven percent of his offerings this season. Bellinger sent the aberrant curve into the bleachers to narrow STL’s lead to 4-3. So much for the plan to catch Bellinger off guard with the curve.

It doesn’t matter what Helsley throws at the Cubs this season. They’re teeing off on him. Sorry about all of the numbers, but I have to show you the stat to underline an important point …

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Helsley’s four-seam vs. all other teams this year: .288 average, .346 slug, 37.5% hard-hit rate.

Helsley’s four-seam vs the Cubs this year: .393 average, .571 slug, 52.5 percent hard-hit rate.

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Helsley’s slider vs. other teams: .128 average, .141 slug, 50.6 percent whiff-swing rate, 19% hard-hit rate, and a strikeout rate of 45 percent.

Helsley’s slider vs. the Cubs: .357 average, .429 slug, 46.4% whiff-swing rate, 20% hard-hit rate, and a strikeout rate of 25 percent.

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Is this randomness? Is he tipping pitches? Are the Cubs onto something after studying his usage patterns? I don’t know, but this is strange.

Helsley has allowed 14 earned runs this season. The Cubs have scored 43 percent of them, but in only six games.

FRUSTRATION: The worst part of Thursday’s debacle was the way Helsley had the Cubs in serious trouble … two-out trouble, two-strike trouble, and on the brink of losing. But he couldn’t finish them off.

In the ninth inning Helsley had nine two-strike counts on the Cubs, but the North Siders recovered in those situations to strike back for three hits, all for extra-bases, on two doubles and a homer. Helsley had three 0-2 counts and five 1-2 counts on the Cubs … and didn’t get a strikeout. Both the game-tying, and game winning, double game on two-out, two-strike pitches.

PERSPECTIVE: Before Thursday’s late collapse, the Cardinals were 45-2 when leading a game through seven innings, and had an immaculate 48-0 record when leading after eight innings. If we’re being realistic about this – and I had previously written this several times – that type of excellent late-inning security is difficult to sustain over an entire season. And that’s especially true of a 2024 Cardinal team that plays so many games decided by one or two runs – and games that go into extra innings.

This pattern of living dangerously puts extreme pressure on the St. Louis bullpen, and it’s preposterous to demand perfection from their high-leverage relievers over 162 games. The Cardinals have done well in these narrow outcomes this season, ranking ninth in the majors with a .556 winning percentage before Thursday night in games decided by one or two runs. But one got away this time, and the Cardinals’ winning percentage in one-run and two-run games dropped to. .546. (This includes their updated 20-15 record in one-run games.)

All of this is still quite good, even after Thursday’s jarring jolt. But here’s the concern, which I’ve expressed here several times before: what happens to the 2024 Cardinals if the bullpen cracks? The Redbirds are overly dependent on their bullpen, and need greatness from their bullpen. As we know, the difference between winning and losing with this team is marked by a very thin line. And with so many of these games coming down to a bullpen duel, the Cardinals leave themselves vulnerable too often.

Their relievers have been fiercely effective in protecting close leads late in games, but if this established strength starts to weaken, this team will be in real trouble.

STL’s 3.97 bullpen ERA ranks 17th in MLB since the start of July. Before that the Redbirds had the 10th-best bullpen ERA in the majors. We’ll watch this trend to see where it goes.

THE CARDS OFFENSE: COULD HAVE DONE MORE: There were some positives, which I’ll get to. But the bottom line was four runs in nine innings. The Cardinals had one hit in six at-bats with runners in scoring position, that coming on Nolan Arenado’s RBI single in the seventh to increase STL’s lead to 4-2.

But in their other RISP situations, the Redbirds went 0 for 2 in the second inning, 0 for 1 in the third, and 0 for 2 in the ninth. They left eight runners on base overall. The Cubs were 4 for 7 with runners in scoring position and left only four runners stranded.

The Cardinals went 2 for 9 against Cubs relievers and didn’t score a run. JoJo Romero pitched a scoreless eighth for the Cardinals but the Cubs won the bullpen battle by hammering Hensley with four hits in six at-bats, including the solo homer and two crucial doubles that delivered three runs. The Cardinals were put away over the last two innings by right-handed Cubs relievers Jorge Lopez and Nate Pearson.

LIST OF POSITIVES

– Nice rebound by Cards starting pitcher Sonny Gray. He held the Cubs to five hits, a walk and one run in his seven innings and struck out 34.5 percent of batters faced. Before getting the snap back in his pitching, Gray had been smashed for a 6.67 ERA in his previous five starts.

– Romero struck out two of three batters faced in the eighth. This was a great sign given his startling loss of strikeout power in recent weeks. Romero has struck out four of 12 batters faced (33.3%) over his last three appearances. Before that, Romero had struck out only two of 43 hitters (4.65%) in 14 appearances.

– Paul Goldschmidt went 3 for 5 against the Cubs with a double and a homer. In his last 25 games, Goldy is batting .276 with a .514 slugging percentage – and has seven doubles and six homers over that time. Goldschmidt launched the six homers in his last 19 games, averaging a homer every 12.6 at-bats during the heat-up stretch.

– Michael Siani had two hits Thursday. In his last 101 plate appearances going back to June 17, Siani is batting .330 with a .364 onbase percentage and .426 slug. Outstanding.

– Per wRC+, Siani is 26 percent above league average offensively since June 17. And his .330 average ranks 11th overall and fourth among NL hitters among those who have at least 100 plate appearances over that time.

– Two more hits for Tommy Pham, making him 6 for 10 with a homer and six RBIs in three games as a reborn Cardinal.

– Masyn Winn gave the Cardinals a 2-0 lead with a two-run homer in the second inning and went 2 for 5 for the evening. It was Winn’s fourth homer in his last 16 games. And he has seven multi-hit games during the 16-game stretch.

– Arenado has four hits in his last two games and is batting .276 with a .483 slug and five RBIs in his last eight contests.

ACCOUNTING DEPARTMENT: With Thursday’s setback the Cardinals are 56-53 on the season … they’re 3-5 in their last eight games, 8-11 in their last 19 games, and 15-15 in their last 30 … the loss dropped the Cardinals to 5 and ½ games behind first-place Milwaukee in the NL Central … the Cards lead third-place Pittsburgh by a half-game … in the wild-card keno, the Cardinals are two games behind Arizona for the third wild-card spot, and are perched a half-game behind the Mets, who are fourth.

PLAYOFF ODDS REPORT: As of Friday morning, the FranGraphs postseason probabilities give the Cardinals a 12.1 percent shot of winning the division, an 11.2 percent chance of getting a wild card, and an overall 23.3 percent likelihood of making the playoffs. Among the non-division leaders, four teams (Braves, Padres, Diamondbacks, Mets) have a better chance of reaching the playoffs then St. Louis.

Good luck to Erick Feddes in his Cardinal debut on Friday afternoon (1:20 p.m.) at Wrigley Field.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

A 2023 inductee into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Bernie has provided informed opinions and perspective on St. Louis sports through his columns, radio shows and podcasts since 1985.

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Stats used in my baseball columns are sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, StatHead, Baseball Savant, Baseball Prospectus, Brooks Baseball Net, and Sports Info Solutions and Cots Contracts unless otherwise noted.