On Tuesday night against the Indians in St. Louis, Matt Carpenter enjoyed one of the best nights in the history of a Cardinals hitter, going 5-for-5 with a double and a pair of homers. Given a chance to become the first Cardinal to hit for the cycle since Carlos Beltran on May 11, 2012, and the 19th since 1908 — all he needed was a triple — Carpenter instead capped the team’s 11-run outburst with a 399-foot homer off reliever George Kontos. He had collected a 368-footer off Corey Kluber in the first.

As colleague Craig Edwards pointed out in the wake of that performance, Carpenter has been the game’s hottest hitter this side of Mike Trout lately:

MLB wRC+ leaders since May 16
1. Mike Trout, 208
2. Matt Carpenter, 199

— Craig Edwards (@craigjedwards) June 27, 2018

Admittedly, May 16 is an arbitrary endpoint, but it not only coincides with the offensive nadir of the 32-year-old infielder’s season, it happened to mark the halfway point between Opening Day and his big night. The Cardinals had played 39 games up to the point when Carpenter broke out by going 3-for-5 with a pair of doubles against the Twins at Target Field, and his 5-for-5 showing came during the team’s 78th game. Here’s the split through Wednesday’s game:

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With two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning on Monday, the Cardinals found themselves up by one run. Matt Bowman, the Cardinals pitcher, put himself in a little bit of trouble when Rhys Hoskins hit a single and then advanced to second on a groundout. Cardinals manager Mike Matheny put Bowman in considerably more trouble with the dubious decision to walk Carlos Santana and put the winning run on base in order to try for the double play. Bowman did not get the double play, instead striking out Jesmuel Valentin. That brings us to Aaron Altherr, the game’s final batter.

The win-expectancy chart provides a pretty good idea of what happened on that play.

Source: FanGraphs

If the graph doesn’t help enough, here’s a small clip of what transpired.

Marcell Ozuna dove for the ball and, by missing the catch, allowed Hoskins and Santana to score and win the game for the Phillies. Mike Matheny defended the aggressive play, because that’s what a manager is supposed to do. That doesn’t prevent us from asking the question, though: just how badly did Ozuna screw up by trying to dive for a catch he wouldn’t end up making?

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Jordan Hicks once deserved our attention because he was the hardest-throwing pitcher in baseball. He later commanded more of our time because he couldn’t get any strikeouts despite that incredible velocity. Hicks is once again being highlighted at FanGraphs because he has appeared to resolve his previous issues. Over the last three weeks, in fact, he’s been the best reliever in baseball.

Hicks is still fascinating because he throws the ball really hard. His 99.7-mph average on his fastball still tops MLB with a healthy lead over Aroldis Chapman, per Baseball Savant. He’s thrown 180 pitches of at least 100 mph with Chapman’s 103 the only pitcher within 125 of him. He’s thrown more fastballs above 102 mph than below 97 mph this season as the graph below shows.

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In most cases, a player’s end-of-season statistics provide a pretty decent sense of how his campaign went. Are his numbers good? Then he was probably good for most of the year. Below average? Chances are, he was generally weak.

This isn’t the case with Michael Wacha, however. Since the beginning of the 2014 season, Wacha has put up at least 100 innings and a FIP below four every single year. The fraternity of pitchers who’ve done the same is pretty select. Chris Archer, Madison Bumgarner, Carlos Carrasco, Jacob deGrom, Gio Gonzalez, Clayton Kershaw, Dallas Keuchel, Corey Kluber, Jose Quintana, Chris Sale, Danny Salazar,  Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Justin Verlander are the only others ones to do it. The Cardinals right-hander has joined that group, however, not by means of consistently strong performances, but rather due to a combination of brilliant periods offset by decidedly poor ones.

After taking a no-hitter into the ninth inning on Sunday, Wacha appears to be in the midst of a good stretch currently. Wacha gained notoriety in 2013 when he finished off September with five good starts followed by an excellent run in the postseason before the Boston Red Sox got to him in the World Series. Since then, Wacha has had stretches of being a very good pitcher, but inconsistency and injuries have prevented Wacha from becoming the ace many hoped he would be after his late-season success in his first campaign. The chart below depicts Wacha’s 10-game rolling FIP since the beginning of 2014.

If there’s a pattern, it is that, at some point in every season, Wacha pitches really well for a time before things fall apart and he ends the season poorly. Wacha suffered a stress reaction in his scapula back in 2014, and has worked hard to strengthen his shoulder over the years, but he hasn’t yet found a solution to make it through the season unscathed. Last year was arguably Wacha’s best as a pro, but before a strong September, he struggled in August with a 5.24 FIP and a 6.04 ERA. While it is probably pretty easy to chalk up Wacha’s struggles to injury, breaking down his successes might be more useful in assessing his current talent level.

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Between 2012 and 2014, the Cardinals had six first-round picks. They spent five of those picks on pitchers, three from college and two from high school. The strategy — overseen by scouting director Dan Kantrovitz, now assistant general manager in Oakland — is an interesting one, as most franchises attempt to load up on cornerstone bats to contend. Of the five pitchers selected, though, only Rob Kaminsky — traded for Brandon Moss — has failed to reach the majors thus far. Marco Gonzales is also gone from the Cardinals organization, departing in a trade last season for “a dense pillar of meat” in Tyler O’Neill. The other three picks are current employed as members of the Cardinals rotation.

• Michael Wacha – The top Cardinals selection in 2012, Wacha made the majors about a year after being drafted. Only health has prevented him from making more than the 121 starts and producing more than the 11.5 WAR over the last five years.
• Luke Weaver – The first pick by the Cardinals in 2014 out of Florida State experienced some ups and downs in his debut during the 2016 season, overcame some hurdles in a promising run during 2017, and has recorded solid numbers this season, now totaling 2.9 WAR in just 144 big-league innings.
• Jack Flaherty – Picked seven slots after Weaver, the high schooler has zoomed through the Cardinals system without much fanfare despite considerable success. He made his debut at 21 years old in 2017 and, in 2018, is proving he belongs.

Not included in the group above, but acquired during that time period for a near-million dollar bonus, is Alex Reyes, who was signed out of the Dominican Republic at the end of 2012 after moving from New Jersey to avoid the draft. With those four pitchers, plus Carlos Martinez (currently on the disabled list) and the surprising Miles Mikolas, the Cardinals have enviable depth and maybe the right situation for a six-man rotation. While acknowledging the influence of recency bias on such a claim, Flaherty’s dominant 13-strikeout performance on Sunday nevertheless suggests the great potential possessed by the 22-year-old.

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Last year was one of many great stories for baseball. Leading the way was the ascendance of the Houston Astros, fulfilling the prophecy made three years earlier. Max Scherzer attempted to wrest the “Best Pitcher” title from Kershaw, and Aaron Judge obliterated pitches on the way to giving baseball one of its most exciting new faces in years. Yet, despite all of this, possibly the best story on the year was the breakout of St. Louis outfielder Tommy Pham, rising from being blocked at all three outfield positions to being the best player on the Cardinals.

What Pham did was virtually unprecedented. It took him eight years to reach the majors, and he became a regular player 11 years after his draft season. Then he put up over six wins’ worth of value in that first campaign of regular at-bats. Over the offseason, the Cardinals traded for Marcell Ozuna, envisioning him to be their new best position player. Despite this, with a quarter of the season done, we still see Pham leading the Cardinals offense. He has built on his breakout 2017, continuing onward with an astonishing consistency.

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I’m going to show you two clips, featuring right-handed rookie relievers around their top fastball speeds. One of these relievers has struck out almost a third of the batters he’s faced. That’s good! It’s not exactly Josh Hader good, but then, nobody is. Hader is on another level. Anyway, the other one of these relievers hasn’t struck out even a tenth of the batters he’s faced. Absent any other information, that’s bad! It should at least make success very difficult to achieve. I know I’ve kind of ruined it with the headline, but I don’t care, we’re still doing this. I’m the one in control of how this goes.

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Yadier Molina inspires considerable debate. Debate about his importance to the the St. Louis Cardinals. Debate about his value in terms of wins, more generally. Debate about his place among the best players both of past and present.

Buster Olney himself stirred up considerable debate last week when he asserted that Molina was “the best catcher of his generation” and asked fans to vote whether they believed the Cardinals’ catcher would make the Hall of Fame. While the precise magnitude of his impact will continue to be a matter of some dispute, there’s less disagreement that Molina is both (a) a good player right now and also (b) important to the current edition of the Cardinals, even at 35 years old. Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they’re about to lose Molina for at least a month after the catcher suffered a painful injury over the weekend.

Before hitting the disabled list, Molina paced all MLB catchers with 256.1 innings behind the plate this season — or nearly 20 more innings than second-place Yasmani Grandal. The Cardinals’ Gold Glover had started 29 of the team’s first 31 games. Since the beginning of the 2015 season, Molina has started 435 games at catcher and recorded 3,750 innings in that capacity, roughly 50 games and 400 innings ahead of any other backstop. Now, Molina heads to the DL for first time since 2014 — and only for the fifth time in his 15 big-league seasons.

Most of Molina’s injuries over the years have been more of the freak variety rather a product of physical deterioration. He tore thumb ligaments in 2014 while diving into third base. He fractured his had in 2005 and his wrist in 2007. He did miss a couple weeks with a sprained right knee that had been bothering him during the 2013 season, but that’s the closest thing to a chronic problem.

This injury, what has been called a “pelvic injury with traumatic hematoma,” is most definitely a freak sort, although it’s among the risks to which catchers subject themselves daily.

Here’s how it happened:

Out of respect for readers, I haven’t reproduced Molina’s entire pained reaction. Basically what happened, though, is Jordan Hicks threw the ball at 101.5 mph according to the Statcast Gamefeed. Kris Bryant deflected the pitch just enough to divert it away from Molina’s glove. The ball ricocheted into an extremely sensitive area of the male anatomy. Molina immediately fell over, was tended to, and, shortly thereafter, underwent surgery.

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Episode 810
Eric Longenhagen was told by a source before publishing his Astros list that right-hander Josh James, a former 34th-round pick and generally obscure prospect, had been recording higher fastball velocities in camp. Given James’ age and modest numbers as a professional, Longenhagen omitted him from the Astros list anyway. In the meantime, however, James has cobbled together one of the best starts in all the minors. Should it have been obvious? Would Longenhagen do anything differently? Those are questions the host of FanGraphs Audio fails to ask explicitly.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 51 min play time.)

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Trey Mancini did some tinkering prior to the start of the season. Hoping to “limit a bit of pre-swing movement,” he decided to lower his leg kick. The Baltimore Orioles outfielder hit that way throughout the offseason, and he continued the experiment in spring training.

Then, about a week and a half before opening day, he returned to doing what feels natural.

“I am who I am,” Mancini told me last weekend. “The leg kick is just something that works for me — there’s a comfortability factor involved — so once I realized what I was trying didn’t feel totally right, I went back to my old one.”

Mancini felt that the lower kick disrupted his timing. Read the rest of this entry »