Bernie’s Redbird Review: The Cardinals Are Singlehandedly Trying To Make Baseball More Entertaining!

Hold everything … what’s going on? Are the Cardinals trying to bring entertaining baseball back to the modern MLB? I don’t know who these people think they are with their bushel baskets of singles, their style of running the bases in a way that would delight Ty Cobb.

The Cardinals are cute with their little sacrifice flies, and their opportunistic insistence on taking an extra base on batted balls. They have the gumption to win without hitting home runs, and their last two victories were a protest against the way the game is played in 2022.

You know, men standing around doing mostly nothing for 3 hours 30 minutes, boring the hell out of TV viewers and fans in the seats. They swing for the fences. They strike out a bunch. And minutes elapse without a hitter depositing a live baseball into the field of play.

On Wednesday afternoon the Cardinals peppered the New York Mets with 10 singles, four doubles and a triple in for a busy, buzzing 10-5 win.

On Thursday night the Cardinals flecked the Busch Stadium field with 15 hits – ALL SINGLES – and ran around the bases as if possessed by Lou Brock, Maury Wills and Tim Raines. The Arizona Diamondbacks probably got a little dizzy as the Cardinals frolicked to an 8-3 victory. I think I saw Willie McGee scoring a run in this game, but I can’t be certain.

In emerging from their malaise on offense and a three-game losing streak to win two in a row, the Cardinals came up short in one area: not one home run was propelled by their bats.

Nothing new there. The Running Redbirds haven’t homered in 309 consecutive plate appearances. Forget Big Mac Land; the Cardinals are a New Balance team right now.

The great Rick Hummel got the “Whitey Ball” mentions going in his Friday-morning game story for STLtoday. And why not? With Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright back together again, it’s already a Season Of Nostalgia at Busch Stadium. Whitey Herzog and his unique 1982 World Series championship team will be honored later this season. The ‘82 Cardinals led the National League in stolen bases (200) and were last in the NL in home runs (67.)

OK, we’re having some fun here … no, really, the last two games were a tremendous amount of fun. And we’ll take more of that, please. And while the Cardinals won’t be able to sustain this wonderful style of play all summer long – there will be homers! – they’re exceptional at running the bases and are discovering a variety of ways to score runs. There’s always a place in the game for that. There’s always a place for putting men in motion, putting pressure on the defense, and forcing mistakes.

I think we loved watching the last two games because they reminded us of what baseball used to be before the music stopped, and the serious people took over the front offices. At that point hitting singles was considered inefficient and unacceptable, and was it decided that stringing together a bunch of base hits to score runs was a stupid idea – and hey, mister, don’t even think about stealing bases! Homers are the game’s currency, and we don’t care about strikeouts, but our analysts like it when their hitters draw walks.

For two days, the Cardinals played animated baseball that offered amusement, excitement and merriment – perhaps summed up best by Yadi stealing second base in the drizzle of Thursday night and laughing like a little kid as he stood there in the rain.

In two days of baseball the Cardinals’ throwback party featured all sorts of goodness and a spontaneous defiance of present-day trends:

== Twenty-five singles in two games … more than they had (20) in the four previous games combined. And not long after a five-game stretch that included only 21 singles. The Cardinals have played 18 games this season; they’ve had five or fewer singles in 11 of the 18. Now all of a sudden these crazy boys are trying to bring the single back!

== The Cardinals hadn’t registered 15 singles without an extra-base in a game since winning 10-3 at Kansas City on June 27, 2004. Five Cardinals had multiple singles in that one: Scott Rolen (3), Edgar Renteria (3), Reggie Sanders (2) Hector Luna (2) and Mike Matheny (2.) Roger Cedeno, Ray Lankford and So Taguchi chipped in one single each.

== Baserunners galore. The Cardinals sent 84 hitters to the plate over the past two days, and 44 percent of those batters reached base.

== 30 hits, with only five going for extra bases.

== A .405 team batting average.

== A strikeout rate of only 15.5 percent.

== 10 of the 17 RBI produced over the two days were delivered via singles.

== 4 stolen bases. After three of the steals the STL runner came around to score.

== Two Cardinals that got hit by a pitch came around to score a run. Another came around to score after being walked intentionally.

== 3 runs scored on sacrifice flies. Another run scored on a wild pitch.

== 9 hits and 3 RBI on two-strike counts.

== 8 two-out hits, and 5 two-out RBI.

== 13 hits in 29 at-bats (.448 average) with runners in scoring position.

Good times.

NOTES ON MY SCORECARD

1) Tommy Edman … wow. He leads all MLB second basemen with 1.3 WAR. Last season’s Gold Glove winner already has five defensive runs saved, which leads all second basemen. FanGraphs rates him No. 1 in baserunning among MLB second basemen. He’’s first at the position in batting average (.328) and onbase percentage (.425) and is second in slugging (.532) and OPS (.957) and tied for second with 11 RBI.

2) Edman had a 5.5% walk rate in 2021; early this season he’s more than doubled that with a walk rate of 13.3%. In his 31 plate appearances at the top spot in the lineup Edman has an outstanding .452 onbase percentage. That isn’t much is a sample size, but his improved walk rate is making a difference. Dude is a catalyst.

3) Because of Edman the Cardinals lead the majors in defensive runs saved at second base. And they are No. 2 in the bigs with five defensive runs at shortstop: three by Paul DeJong, two from Edmundo Sosa.

4) Because of Edman the Cardinals are ranked No. 1 in the majors with 1.3 Wins Above Average at second base.

5) In their last two games St. Louis hitters were very good at hitting the ball to all fields, with a .480 average when pulling the ball, a .524 average when hitting the ball to the center of the field, and a .467 average when going opposite field. They put 51 percent of their batted balls to the center or opposite field.

6) In the two games the Cardinals went 18 for 40 (.450) and drove in six runs against a traditional defensive shift. They were 5 for 5 against non-traditional shifts, and 7 for 16 (.438) with no shift.

7) Marmol Ball: The Cardinals lead the majors with a 95 percent success rate in attempted stolen bases, swiping 18 of 19. Pretty remarkable. And the only non-success (Albert Pujols in Milwaukee) was more or less a pickoff.

8) The Cards are tied for 8th in the majors in productive outs percentage (38%).

9) The Cards are second to the Giants in the NL with an extra-bases taken percentage (49%) on balls in play. That’s a key part of their effective baserunning.

10) Dakota Hudson’s last two starts: 12.2 innings, no earned runs, three hits, seven walks, eight strikeouts. Hudson had a 71 Game Score against the D-backs, meaning that his start was 21 percent above average. (Game Score was devised by the great Bill James, and as a measure, I definitely prefer it over the Quality Start.) Hudson had a 70 Game Score in his previous start on April 23 at Cincinnati.

11) Miles Mikolas has the highest Game Score average (62) among St. Louis starters so far, followed by Hudson (56), Adam Wainwright (50), Jordan Hicks (48) and Steven Matz (44). When the Cardinals receive a Game Score of 50 (average) or higher from a starter in a game this year, they’re 8-2. When getting a below-average Game Score they’re 3-5. The Cardinals rank 13th in MLB with a 52 average Game Score by their starters. Not bad but they’ll have to do better.

12) Through 18 games the Cardinals rank 5th in the majors in run prevention with an average yield of 3.17 runs per game.

13) The St. Louis bullpen ranks 4th in the majors with a 2.74 ERA.

14) The barrage of singles over the last two games has lifted the Cardinals to a second-place tie among the 30 teams in total singles this season (108.)

15) After a slow and disappointing start Harrison Bader is 6 for 15 in his last five games to pull his batting average up to .250 on the season. And Bader’s OPS+ is at league average (100.) Since the start of the 2020 season Bader is 13 percent above league average offensively in OPS+. He’s hit .257 with a .328 OBP and .442 slug over that time. And since the start of the 2019 season Harry is tied for second among MLB center fielders with 31 defensive runs saved.

16) Three hits and three RBI for Paul Goldschmidt on Thursday; he’s batting .500 with eight RBIs in his last seven games. In 62 plate appearances against his former team since Arizona traded him to St. Louis, Goldschmidt is batting .278 with a .500 slug and .844 OPS.

17) Molina, who had two hits last night, is heating up. He’s 6 for his last 21 (.286) and has more bounce as he moves around.

18) The Milwaukee Brewers (13-7) lead the Cardinals by a game in the NL Central. Since April 16 the Brewers have played the Pirates six times and gone 6-0. The Milwaukee rotation has been bolstered by the rise of lefthander Eric Lauer. In three starts and 16.1 innings this season Lauer has a 2.20 ERA and a dynamic strikeout rate of 34.3 percent. Since June 15 of the 2021 season Lauer has a 2.38 ERA in 102 innings.

19) Nolan Gorman went 1 for 4 Thursday and struck out three times as Memphis lost to Durham 8-2. I guess the three strikeouts means Gorman will have to stay in Triple A until 2024. (Sarcasm alert.) The base hit Thursday extended Gorman’s hitting streak to 15 games. During the 15-game spree Gorman is batting .393 with 10 homers and a 1.351 OPS.

20) I don’t know why Tampa Bay released outfielder Moises Gomez at the end of last season. He was only 23 at the time. I do know that the Cardinals quickly signed Gomez. And I do know that in 15 games at Double A Springfield Gomez has 10 homers, four doubles, 21 RBI, a .436 average and 1.531 OPS. Gomez – who bats from the right side – has a 1.547 OPS vs. RH pitchers and a 1.434 OPS vs. lefties.

FINAL THOUGHT: Nolan Arenado is good at this baseball thing. After scorching five hits in seven at-bats over the last two games ‘Nado has pumped his batting average to .382, and his 1.146 OPS is tops in the NL.

Thanks for reading and I hope you have a terrific weekend …

–Bernie

Bernie invites you to listen to his opinionated and analytical sports-talk show on 590-AM The Fan, KFNS. It airs Monday through Thursday from 3-6 p.m. and Friday from 4-6 p.m. You can listen by streaming online or by downloading the “Bernie Show” podcast at 590thefan.com — the 590 app works great and is available in your preferred app store.

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All stats used here were sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Stathead, Bill James Online, Fielding Bible, Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball Net unless otherwise noted.