August 15, 2013
Pittsburgh Pirates' Pedro Alvarez celebrates after hitting a solo home run in the second inning during a game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Photo by Chris Lee, clee@post-dispatch.com
After staging a rare ninth-inning comeback victory Tuesday to stun the marauding Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cardinals drifted back into the fog.
The Cardinals viewed Tuesday’s stirring win as a potential pivot point that would liberate them from a stretch of failure and frustration.
“Games like that definitely help you,” manager Mike Matheny said hours before Wednesday’s first pitch at Busch Stadium. “As a team that’s working from behind I think you need a couple of those wins to where you fight back and you see a lot of character, you see a lot of heart. And that typically does translate into a heightened level of expectations that it can happen (again.)”
Yeah, well ...
In easily dismissing the Cardinals 5-1 on Wednesday, the Pirates avoided a letdown after gifting the Cardinals a Tuesday victory.
Instead of curling into a ball to submit to another beatdown, the first-place Pirates reminded everyone that this is 2013. They are not overloaded with the psychological baggage of 20 consecutive losing seasons.
Given an early lead, Pirates starter Francisco Liriano put the Cardinals under his thumb and cruised to a four-hitter.
It was another silent night at Busch, and the Cardinals drooped to three games behind the Pirates in the NL Central. And third-place Cincinnati — suddenly afire — lurks only a half-game behind the Cardinals.
The Cards and Pirates will settle their three-game series this afternoon at Busch. The home team could use a jolt of energy, and a bolt of power.
With their best-team-in-baseball status long evaporated, the Cardinals have lost 14 of their last 20 games and are desperately searching for their missing offense. A sign of the tough times: They’ve batted .200 and averaged 1.9 runs in those 14 defeats.
Not counting several random assaults that generated double-digit run totals in games, the Cardinals’ offense has pretty much remained in shutdown mode in recent weeks.
The Cardinals have been trying to overcome their home-run recession with an unusual offensive profile.
Let’s see: The Cardinals don’t steal bases. They don’t walk that much. They rank 27th in the majors in homers. They have only 19 home runs since June 1, hitting one every 68 at-bats.
The Cardinals do like doubles. Compared to most teams, they limit their strikeouts. They’re a high contact team, leading the NL with 43 percent of their swings putting the ball in play.
What the Cardinals do best is find open spaces with their assault of singles. They came into Wednesday tied for the NL lead for most singles, and are on pace to finish with more singles than all but two Cardinals teams since 1979.
More than anything the Cardinals cut teams to ribbons through timely, run-producing singles with runners in scoring position. St. Louis is batting .333 with RISP, the best by an MLB offense since the statistic became officially recognized in 1974.
And yes, this requires skill — but also a good amount of luck. The Cardinals are offended when we say that, but it’s true. What the Cardinals are doing with RISP is an outlier, and a thick file of historical data confirms it.
We often hear Matheny lament his team’s bad luck this season, citing the line drives that are gloved for outs. But in the inherent luck that goes with the batted baseball, the Cardinals are one of the more fortunate teams in modern history.
Through Tuesday the Cardinals’ .320 batting average on balls in play was the highest for the franchise since 1954. And only 17 MLB teams have had a better single-season average on balls in play since the 1961 expansion year.
The Cardinals have no reason to gripe about lousy luck; their real problem is that too many batted balls stay inside the yard. The Cards’ current home-run rate of 0.79 per game is the lowest for the franchise since 1995.
Yes, it’s possible to score plenty of runs without the aid of homers. All you have to do is set a major-league record for batting average with runners in position. Piece of cake, right? Not really; this may happen once every 40 years or so.
The Cardinals could do themselves a favor by depositing more baseballs over the outfield walls, and into the bleachers. But they require the services of additional home-run hitters to do that.
I’m not saying that the Cardinals have to stand in the box, lose all discipline, go one-dimensional and rip away like some berserk modern version of Dave Kingman. That would lead to an absurdly high number of strikeouts.
That said, if the Cardinals’ collection of hitters is incapable of going deep more frequently, it’s something GM John Mozeliak must address over the offseason. A team that has a so-so walk rate, little speed and weak HR power can’t count on hitting .333 with runners in scoring position every year. It’s implausible.
The Pirates certainly use the home run to their advantage. In going 8-4 against the Cardinals this season, the Pirates have a 13-3 edge in homers.
The Pirates have 22 homers this season in high-leverage situations; the Cards have 13. The Pirates have 17 game-tying homers; the Cardinals have three. The Pirates have 38 go-ahead homers; STL has 26.
Can you see the problem here?
The Cardinals’ binge offense has scored more runs than the Pirates overall this year. But that doesn’t tell the entire story.
Home runs are among the primary reasons the Pirates have slugged their way to more comeback wins than St. Louis this year, 28 to 19. Home runs are a factor in the Pirates having a 42-30 record in games decided by two runs or fewer — compared to the Cards’ 24-28 mark in such games.
The Cardinals won’t deliver many comebacks until they can bring the home run back.
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Watch “Breakfast with Bernie,” each weekday, sponsored by Papa John’s, where you get 40 percent off regular price menu items the day after a Cardinals victory. Use promo code “CARDSWIN” at checkout. 10% of purchase price benefits Siteman Cancer Center.
Watch "Breakfast with Bernie," each weekday, sponsored by Papa John's, where you get 40 percent off regular price menu items the day after a Cardinals victory. Use promo code "CARDSWIN" at checkout. 10% of purchase price benefits Siteman Cancer Center.
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