The Size of the Fight

After last night’s 11-7 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cardinals sit at 16-13, guaranteeing that they will finish the first 20% of the season at .500 or better. While some of this is a bit of smoke and mirrors, it’s also a testament to something that we are seeing more of this season. There used to be an ad campaign that asked “Got a little Captain in you?” This team does—it’s Taggart, though, not Morgan.

We’ve seen it—for better or worse—a number of times in the past few days. Saturday against the Mariners was a back-and-forth affair but even when Seattle heartbreakingly took the lead in the top of the ninth, St. Louis still countered with a walk to lead off the bottom of the ninth. It didn’t turn into anything, but it wasn’t an easy 1-2-3 to wrap it up. (It was a 1-2-3 since Nathan Church hit into a double play, but you know what I mean.)

Or take Monday night against the Pirates, when the club spent much of the evening trying to avoid being the first team to have a combined perfect game thrown against them. They broke that up with an infield single from speedster Alec Burleson, but went into the ninth down two having just two hits and Pittsburgh having faced just one over the minimum. A lot of years, that would been a quick frame and the Pirates would take game one. Instead, the Cardinals put up four hits, including back-to-back homers from Pedro Pages and local boy JJ Wetherholt to tie it up, to go with two walks and swing that game from a two-run loss to a two-run win.

In the first 29 games, there have been very few times when the team has come out completely flat. Here’s a breakdown of how games have ended:

This lines up with how we feel about this team, doesn’t it? They aren’t going to blow people out—12 of their 16 wins are two runs or less—but they’ve done a good job of not letting others blow them out as well. Three of those four big losses (the 5+ group) came in three consecutive days against the Red Sox and Guardians. One of those, of course, was a close game until the ninth when Matt Svanson served up batting practice.

Again, I don’t want to put too much emphasis on this. It’s a month of games and, more importantly, the first month. All the players are fresher, the season doesn’t feel long yet, and sometimes you can fool some folks out of the game. Currently they are playing like an 89-win team, which would likely get them into the playoffs except that the rest of the NL Central is also playing like that. I don’t know that we revisit our preseason predictions just yet, unless of course you had them winning under 70 games. That one feels a little less likely now. They’d have to go 54-79 the rest of the way (which is like playing as a 65-win team overall) to hit the 70 mark.

That’s not impossible, especially after a July sell-off, but that doesn’t feel like what we’ve seen out of this team, does it? What I’ve seen from this team is more focus and drive than in the past. Maybe it’s early, sure, but it’s also a lot of young players that know their spot isn’t secure. Call it youngry or whatever, but that sort of attitude can build on itself. I’m not saying that the veterans that are no longer there were some sort of drag on the environment, because I don’t believe that to be the case, but freeing up opportunities that aren’t necessarily set in stone has seemed to bring out the best in a lot of folks.

For instance, let’s look at Nathan Church. It’s such a shame that the Cardinals lost on Saturday because that could have been “the Nathan Church game” for years to come. Hitting two home runs and stealing one as well? That’s Willie McGee in the World Series stuff.

Church has been on a heater of late, hitting .341 with an OPS of 1.036 since the last game against the Guardians. I’ve thought that Church would be a fourth outfielder at best and I don’t know if I’d revisit that yet, but he’s definitely had a stronger year overall than I would have thought. There’s still a lot of blue on his Baseball Savant page, but there’s some light red in there as well and not just in the fielding department. Three of his homers have come off of fastballs, though he’s had a better run of success overall against the breaking stuff. He’s pulling the ball in the air much more often than last year, which is giving him some of this success. With the tough run of teams over the next couple of weeks, it’s going to be interesting to see if he can keep this going or if better pitching might send him into a bit of a tailspin.

While I don’t know that Church is the center fielder of the future, I do think that between his run and the struggles of Victor Scott II that Church has earned significantly more playing time in center, especially if this keeps up until the return of Lars Nootbaar at the end of May. I really want to see VS2 succeed, but recently he’s looked overwhelmed at the plate. He did get a home run last night, which is a good thing, but even with that in the last two weeks he’s hitting .071. The guy that stole two bases on Opening Day has three on the season. He’s struck out in basically a quarter of his plate appearances. We’re a long way from his success against the Rays to start the season.

Now, we’re a month away from Nootbaar’s return. Thomas Saggese and Jose Fermin haven’t done anything to warrant regular playing time, though Fermin’s been a nice bat off the bench. (Saggese, on the other hand, might be walking in Memphis when the Noot is again loose.) So most nights it is going to be Church, Scott, and Jordan Walker in the outfield. A lot of things can happen in a month, as we well know.

There were a number of players signed this winter that, while Chaim Bloom probably hoped they would help the Cardinals, he was expecting more that they’d go out and make their case that they should be traded at the deadline. Let’s look at some of these guys and see how that’s stacking up so far.

The main one, of course, is Dustin May. May got off to a rough start, giving up six runs in both of his first two starts, but since then has settled in. His last four starts, he’s gone 3-0 with a 1.93 ERA and a 3.04 FIP. The strikeouts aren’t really there—his K/9 is less than six in those games—but otherwise he’s at least looking like a player that could be in demand in July. I’m sure there will be a few more blowups along the way, but I think this one is going to work out the way Bloom and company expected.

Ryne Stanek, maybe not as much. Yes, at the deadline everyone seems to want veteran arms and no matter what else you say about Stanek, he is a veteran arm, but the command has been so rocky that it’s hard to imagine a contender wanting to take on that risk. His walk rate is at 16.7% this season—to put that in perspective, the highest walk rate of someone that has enough innings to qualify for the FanGraphs leaderboard is Luis Severino of the Athletics, who has a 15.3% mark. He’s given up seven earned runs in high leverage situations, which means nobody is going to want him as a late inning guy. The strikeouts are there (28.3% rate) but that rate isn’t high enough to offset everything else that’s in the portfolio.

Justin Bruihl has a similar look. Anecdotally, you look at last night. The Cards were up 11-3 when he took over for the eighth. In that situation, you want to see someone throw strikes, get outs, and not make this dramatic in any way, shape, or form. Bruihl immediately gave up a hit to Oneil Cruz, which, OK, make them hit their way on, etc. After an out, though, he walked Bryan Reynolds, gave up a hard single to Ryan O’Hearn, and after a passed ball gave up another base knock to Nick Gonzales before being bailed out with a Masyn Winn double play.

Bruihl did throw strikes, for the most part—15 of his 25 pitches were in the zone—but his stuff is hittable enough that throwing strikes alone isn’t going to do it. That being said, Bruihl has at least had some solid outings of late. His last outing was a perfect inning against the Mariners (though did allow an inherited runner to score), before that was a scoreless frame (albeit with two walks) earlier in the Seattle series, and then he went 1.2 scoreless against the Marlins the time before that (stranding the inherited runner).

You hate to judge a reliever by ERA, of course, but he’s got a 5.87 ERA and a 5.80 FIP, so it’s not like he’s been too unlucky. He’s actually got a good BABIP, it’s just the walks that are really getting to him. Eleven in 15.1 innings isn’t good for anyone, much less the pitcher that’s been used the most out of the bullpen. Bruihl is a lefty, so that and a pulse probably means someone will call around July 31, but it’d be a surprise if anything that comes back in return ever has an impact.

The only other signing that will be a free agent at the end of the year was Ramon Urias. Urias has been a tolerable bench bat, with two home runs in 59 plate appearances. Signed to be an insurance policy for Nolan Gorman, the increase in Gorman’s defensive game has made that less of an issue. (Gorman’s bat still is iffy, but Urias isn’t going to top him there.) A veteran who can provide some defense and a little pop might get you a little something at the deadline and it seems unlikely Urias is going to do a lot to change his market between now and then.

The old saying is that it’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of fight in the dog. It feels to me that this team is a bit like a chihuahua. It’s not going to win based on talent, but it might be tenacious enough to surprise you. (I have two of them at home, both of which have a lot of bark but not that much bite.)

There are going to be rough days but I think, by and large, this team is going to put out a good effort and that effort is going to be enough to keep them in ballgames or, like last night, flip ballgames on their heads. Of course, as we said last time, the pitching might make sure that ballgames flip the other way, but it’s going to be interesting nonetheless!

Getting a chance to write this morning because I’ve taken the day off. Here in a bit I’m heading up to Fayetteville to watch the Razorbacks play, courtesy of a high school friend of mine who has season tickets to Baum Stadium. Both of my kids and my daughter’s boyfriend are up there, of course, and they’ll be joining me, so it should be a fun afternoon!

Haven’t had a chance to watch this week’s Maul: Shadow Lord yet, but I’m excited to do so. The show has been a slow burn but it’s been really well done in my opinion. Now that the Inquisitors have shown up and tangled with Maul, it feels like things will be ramping up. Just one more week after this one, as the show’s first season wraps on Star Wars Day.

Book reading continues. I’ve made it farther into We Sacrifice Everything for Baseball and it’s still quite enjoyable. In the last couple of weeks I’ve started a couple of others on my Kindle. Most of you know Rob Friedman, who goes by PitchingNinja online. He put out a book recently called Unhittable, talking about the scientific gains that have been made in the pitching realm. I’m not terribly far into it, but it’s very interesting to see how things have progressed over the last few years. He was just talking about Nolan Ryan and Tom House and I remember when some of those things, like Ryan and the other Rangers throwing footballs to keep loose, were happening.

The other one is in a different field altogether. Last Branch Standing by Sarah Isgur is a detailed look at the Supreme Court. She digs into the judges that are on the court now, some of the traditions and history of the Court, and how the Court works and does so in a breezy and fun style. It doesn’t feel like an overly political book (at least so far, and I’m about a quarter of the way through), and I believe there are insights for all sides in this one.

Over in the podcasting world, David Jones and I have gone from a Sunday show after the Cards sweep to a Sunday show after the Cards were swept. We liked the former better. Gateway is still coming at you most Sundays, though occasionally our life schedule shifts it a bit.

The guests continue on Musial, though Allen Medlock informs me that this is the last week of the season for the Nathan Hale Drillers and they have regionals next week. Since the last post, I’ve chatted with MLB.com writer Josh Jacobs and Viva El Birdos podcast host Jake Wood. This week, former podcaster Richard McGill joins me to talk about the team and how his empty nest is going.

I also had a chance to record a couple of Conversations with C70 in the last couple of weeks. First, I talked to Alys from the Guardians fan base, then had a good conversation with Jim, who follows the Pirates. If you like it when Alex Crisafulli and I get together (and he’s coming on Musial at the end of the month), you’ll like that last one.

Also, if you’ve made it this far, I’d love to do a mailbag post in the future, though Dayn Perry usually gives you all the answers you need. But if you have a question—baseball, Star Wars, or anything else—drop it in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.