Archive for St. Louis Cardinals

Dylan Carlson was the Cardinals’ first-round pick in 2016, so it’s easy to look at his numbers and say he’s been disappointing. After getting his feet wet with a .717 OPS in his draft year, he slashed a ho-hum .240/.342/.347 in his first full season. There have been flashes of power, yet the switch-hitting outfielder has gone deep just 10 times in 652 professional plate appearances.

Not to worry. While his performance has been anything but splashy, it’s important to consider that Carlson has been playing against older competition since signing. He spent the entire 2017 season in the Midwest League as an 18-year-old.

If he’s sometimes felt like he was in over his head, he was reluctant to admit it. When I asked him late in the season if being one of the youngest players on the field is ever intimidating, Carlson dove directly into the positive.

“It’s actually great to have teammates who are older and have been to college,” said the former Elk Grove (CA) High School standout. I can always lean on them for advice — I like being around older guys for that reason — and it’s also been fun coming out and competing against older guys. I’m learning a lot.”

Carlson claimed he’s essentially the same hitter he was when he entered the St. Louis system. While developmental strides have been made, there have been no mechanical overhauls or watershed moments. Aside from “standing a little taller in the box,” he’s just focused on “refining the basics.” Read the rest of this entry »

For Paul DeJong, it’s all about calm clarity and process. The St. Louis Cardinals rookie believes in coming to the plate with a plan, but also with a clear mind. He feels that if he can stand in the batter’s box and just let things happen — simply recognize and react to pitches — the results will be there.

Three-plus months into his big-league career, the results are very much there. Since debuting with the Cardinals in late May, the 24-year-old infielder has slashed a heady .287/.321/.533. His right-handed stroke has produced 100 hits, 43 of which have gone for extra bases. His 21 home runs are tops on the team.

He reached St. Louis in short order. A fourth-round pick in 2015 out of Illinois State University — DeJong has a degree in biochemistry — he had barely over 1,000 minor-league plate appearances to his credit when he got called up. Based on his performance thus far, that was enough to prepare him to handle big-league pitching.

DeJong talked about his cerebral-yet-simple approach when the Cardinals visited Fenway Park in mid-August.

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DeJong on hitting with a clear mind: “I’ve made a lot of jumps as a hitter, going from the college level to the big leagues in two years. As much as anything, I’ve tried to slow things down as much as I can. When I get into problems is when I get sped up.

Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, colleague Jeff Sullivan wrote that Tommy Pham is the best player on the Cardinals. It’s hard to argue. With a month to go in what has been a breakout season, the 29-year-old outfielder is slashing .311/.407/.522, and he has 19 home runs in 431 plate appearances. He attributes his success to two things.

“Vision,” said Pham. “I got my contacts squared away this year, and that’s helped me improve tremendously. I’d say we could start there. The other thing is that I’ve put myself in a position to where I’m playing every day. In previous years I played for stretches, but then I’d sit on the bench. Last year I had an .870 OPS in the middle of August, then I basically became a designated pinch hitter. In 2015, I had an .824 OPS in my rookie season. I’ve always produced. It’s just that I’m playing every day now, so you get to see more.”

His production has never been better, and seeing the ball better is clearly helping.

“Just look at the numbers, man — I was striking out 38% last year,” stated Pham, who elaborated that depth perception was the issue. “Now I’m striking out 15% less. That means I’m putting more balls in play, which means I’m going to have better results.”

He’s well-versed in more than just probability. The Las Vegas native is a big believer in using any and all data to his advantage. Pham — an affirmed FanGraphs reader — studies his stat page to see which aspects of his game need improvement. If data shows that he’s a negative in a specific area, he strives to turn it into a positive. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s almost always a cliche when a player says he’s out there to help his team win. When Whit Merrifield utters the phrase, the meaning is more nuanced. The 28-year-old Kansas City Royals outfielder attributes much of his late-bloomer success to an approach that didn’t seem plausible when he was a prospect.

After six-plus seasons in the minors, Merrifield is flowering in the big leagues because… he’s in the big leagues.

“Honestly, it’s just being up here and playing to win,” Merrifield told me when I asked about his breakout campaign. “Every day there’s a motivation to come to the field. There’s an excitement that you don’t really have in the minor leagues. Down there, you’re not playing to win every game so much as you’re playing to move up. Here, it’s a different attitude, and I’m at my best when I don’t focus on my numbers.”

His numbers have been a pleasant surprise. Playing in his first full MLB season — he split last year between Kansas City and Triple-A Omaha — Merrifield is slashing (despite his current 0 for 19 skid) a solid .281/.319/.461. Not only that, he’s left the yard 14 times, and his career home-run high on the farm was 11.

“I’m just in a little groove this year,” Merrifield responded when asked about his uptick in the power department. “I’ve always been more of a gap-to-gap, doubles hitter, but I can drive the ball. When I catch it right and get it a little more elevated, it will go out.”

The University of South Carolina product went into the 2015 offseason with a revitalized work ethic that arguably has as much to do with his success as his team-first attitude. Read the rest of this entry »

Mike Ilitch had a nondescript career as an infielder. Signed by Detroit in 1952, he was assigned to Class D Jamestown where he played alongside Coot Veal and Charlie Lau. Veal went on to play shortstop for the Tigers. Lau went to the big leagues as well, then became a legendary hitting guru.

Ilitch spent four years in the low minors, then became a pizza magnate and a beloved owner of two sports franchises in his hometown. On Friday, he passed away at the age of 87.

Ilitch opened his first Little Caesars in 1959, and in 1982 he bought the Detroit Red Wings. Ten years later, he bought the Detroit Tigers. All three thrived under his ownership.

Little Caesars is the third-largest pizza chain in the United States. The Red Wings won the Stanley Cup four times from 1997-2008, and have reached the playoffs for 25 years running. The Tigers have gone to the postseason five times in the last 11 years, and their lowest attendance over that stretch was 2.46 million.

What will happen now that the patriarch of the Ilitch empire is gone? Read the rest of this entry »

With the exception of an eight-game stretch in April where he went 13-for-26, with seven extra-base hits, Jeremy Hazelbaker has had a fairly unremarkable rookie season. The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder is slashing .239/.300/.487, with a dozen home runs in 221 plate appearances. He spent parts of June and July in Triple-A.

For a time, it looked like he might be a minor-league lifer. Drafted in the fourth round out of Ball State University by the Red Sox in 2009, Hazelbaker was dealt to the Dodgers following the 2013 season. Eighteen months later he was released. St. Louis signed him last May and assigned him to Double-A Springfield. He finished the year in Triple-A.

Hazelbaker was 28 years old when he reported to spring training — he turned 29 last month — and the odds were against him earning a spot on the Cardinals roster. He beat those odds.

I’d followed Hazelbaker’s career. I’d interviewed and written about him a handful of times as he was coming up through the Red Sox system. I’d seen the tools, but I hadn’t seen those tools translate into consistent performance. I was skeptical that I ever would.

When I caught up to Hazelbaker in early August, I admitted as much. Being perhaps a little too honest, I began the interview by saying: “I didn’t think you’d make it. Why was I wrong?” Here was his response.

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Hazelbaker on proving me wrong: “Everybody has their opinion on guys coming up. There are things people don’t really get. Looking in from the outside, you don’t see how hard of a worker a guy is, or how much drive and determination he has. Do you want to call me an underdog story? You can if you want. Whatever you want to call it, I know there have been people skeptical of me — my path, my journey, my abilities along the way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lucas Erceg hopes to have his name on the back of a Milwaukee Brewers uniform someday. In order to get there, he will have to keep his word to the scout who put his name on the back of Erceg’s. So far, so good.

Erceg slashed .327/.376/.518, with nine home runs, between a pair of low-level stops this summer. He did so after the Brewers drafted him 46th overall out of an NAIA program that helped him grow up. The left-handed-hitting third baseman had transferred to Menlo (CA) College after becoming academically ineligible at Cal-Berkeley.

“My priorities were mixed up,” admitted Erceg, who made a name for himself by hitting .303/.357/.502 in his sophomore season at Cal. “I failed a couple of classes — I didn’t pass enough units — because I was trying to live the life of a college student instead of going to the library on a Tuesday night. In essence, I wasn’t taking school seriously.”

Erceg is taking seriously the fact that he let people down. He doesn’t intend to have it happen again. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Bowman is having a solid rookie season in St. Louis. The 25-year-old right-hander — a Rule-5 pick out of the Mets system — has a 4.06 ERA and a 3.64 FIP in 50 games out of the Cardinals bullpen. He’s admittedly surprised by his success. As he explained to me six weeks ago, “It was a tough year last year.”

The numbers bear that out. Pitching as a starter for the Las Vegas 51s, Bowman went 7-16 with a 5.53 ERA. In 140 innings for New York’s Triple-A affiliate, his WHIP was a whiplash-inducing 1.68.

Bowman doesn’t attribute his turnaround to a mechanical tweak or an alteration of style. Nor does he point to an amended repertoire or an increase in velocity. Those things haven’t changed. What has changed is his environment. Bowman is no longer in a hitter-friendly ballpark in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. It’s often said that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, and for Bowman that meant perplexity and poor performance.

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Bowman on leaving Las Vegas: “From a statistical standpoint, you would look at last year, and then at this year, and wonder how exactly that jump happened. People are usually like, ‘Add on a run for Vegas; that’s really all you need to do. Whatever that was, that’s how good he was.’ I think there’s probably more to Vegas than that.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following a 4-2 win over the Red Sox in late July, Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander was asked about pitch selection. His response to a small group of reporters was as follows:

“It’s different when it’s a [close] ballgame. You don’t think about pitch count as much; it’s just about getting outs. It’s a different situation with more runs. Maybe you take a shot at throwing some more-hittable pitches to get some quick outs. But not in a one-run ballgame.”

As the media scrum broke up, I asked Verlander a point-blank question: “Do you pitch to the score?” His answer was a short and simple, “Yes.”

He’s not the only one. Jack Morris has been criticized — if not mocked — for saying that he pitched to the score. Others have certainly done the same, but how many? Is the practice prevalent, or are pitchers like Morris and Verlander the exception rather than the rule?

I decided to explore the subject. Prompted by Verlander’s answer, I asked a collection of pitchers, catchers, pitching coaches and managers if big-league pitchers do indeed pitch to the score. Here are their responses.

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Alex Avila, Chicago White Sox catcher: “For a starter, it’s probably a little bit different than it is for a reliever. Some starters can’t. They’re kind of oblivious to the score — they don’t want to know the score — and they don’t want to let up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this season, Bartolo Colon (now at 228) passed Pedro Martinez (219) on the all-time wins list. Among Dominican-born pitchers, only Juan Marichal has more (243).

Ervin Santana is also climbing the ranks. At 131 wins, the Twins right-hander is just four behind Ramon Martinez, who ranks third among natives of the Dominican Republic. Since the start of the season, Santana has leapfrogged countrymen Joaquin Andujar (127) and Pedro Astacio (129).

“To be in that category is special,” Santana told me recently. “Growing up, I looked up to Pedro, to Bartolo, to Jose Rijo (116 wins). I know many of them now, (although) I haven’t had a chance to talk to Marichal. He was obviously one of the great pitchers.”

Santana has learned from his heroes. He’s discussed sliders with Rijo, and two-seamers that run back over the plate with Colon. Some of the best tutorials have come from Pedro Martinez. Read the rest of this entry »