The reeling redbirds rebound and take series vs the phighting phillies
April 13, 2025
If you asked most Cardinal fans about the prospect of facing the Philadelphia Phillies before this weekend, the Cardinals seemed destined to lose a series to Philadelphia at home.
However, St Louis won the three game series two games to one with a 7-0 win today. The Cardinals intense hitting 2025 offense shined through today for the first day in a few games by scoring 7 runs vs Zack Wheeler and the Phillies. They have been among the best teams in AVG and OBP even after slumping. Now if we could get them hitting more home runs!
Well they did hit a couple home runs today! Willson Contreras appears to be coming out of a really slow start, a big ol’ nasty slump basically, with a home run and a double today. Nolan Arenado similarly emerged from being missing in action hitting-wise with a shorter but light’s out slump of 0-20: today he was 2 for 4 with 2 runs scored. But let’s not stop there… Jordan Walker was also 2-4 but had a home run and 2 RBI.
Joining the hit parade against the Phillies were Nolan Gorman who was 1-3 with a walk and an RBI double, Victor Scott 1-2, and Brendan Donovan and Yohel Pozo at 1-4 on the day. The top of the order did not do well however, with Lars Noobaar and Alec Burleson going hitless.
The star of the game was ultimately Matthew Liberatore who shut down a pretty good Phillies offense in 6 IP, .332 WPA leading the day in that department, 7 K, 1 BB, and 3 hits total. Maton, Romero, and Leahy made sure that the Phillies stayed scoreless and the pitching all the sudden seems much better than we might’ve thought.
Zack Wheeler was not his usual self today, as he has been good this year. But our offense can hit anyone, apparently, when they’re hot. Wheeler gave up 4 earned runs while the Phillies bullpen gave up 3 runs more. 7-0 Cardinals!
Liberatore had 14 swing and misses today as per baseball savant.
From the gamethread, postgame, ORSTLcardsfan noted that the Cardinals pitching retired 20 batters in a row! I doubled checked that and it appears to be correct.
It sure seems like the umps have been calling a number of strikes in the zone balls outside. Here is today’s chart from fangraphs:
April 12, 2025
During this game Contreras showed signs of coming out of his slump and provided the Cardinals with their only RBI on the day. He was 2-4 also, which means he’s heating up it would seem. 7 Cardinals had 1 hit each, so they certainly could’ve/should’ve had more than one run. Just felt like one of those games that wasn’t going to work out for various reasons. It was a wasted “good” start for Mikolas, he got jobbed by the ump a little bit. But ultimately let down by his own offense scoring only 1 run.
The Phillies actually had less hits than the Cardinals in this game, but scored 3 more runs while not hitting any home runs. Nick Castellanos had a day at 3-4 and 2 RBI. Cardinals pitching struck out 10 batters so it was just one of those games. On another day or in a parallel universe we might’ve had a sweep this weekend.
Roddery Munoz made his debut during this game and looked like a future stabilizing force for the bullpen, possibly. He struck out both batters faced and didn’t walk anyone. King was also good and seems to be still effective like last season. Matz wasn’t as good out of the ‘pen but ate some innings nonetheless. The winner of the game was Phillies starter Christopher Sanchez, who danced around all the hits quite well in his quality start, striking out 3 and walking 2 while giving up 8 hits. The Phillies bullpen gave up only 1 hit between 3 pitchers.
I think the umping was terrible this weekend!
Terribly stingy and questionable that is.
April 11, 2025
Andre Pallante had a terrific performance for the Cardinals on a colder Friday night in St Louis. He was even more effective than Liberatore was today with a .406 WPA while only giving up 2 hits in 7 IP. This game featured a rare appearance of Pedro Pages at second base! Yohel Pozo went 3-4 with an RBI, Nootbaar 1-3 with 2 BB, Burleson 1-2 with 2 BB, Saggese 2-4 with a run scored, while Pages was 1-3. The bottom half of the order wasn’t hitting much this game.
Maton and Helsley closed out the game for Pallante, while the Phillies only could muster 3 hits. Maybe we got their offense in a downturn, but they also might not be that good of an offense this year. Whatever the case, the series started off on a good note with the pitching able to allow the offense to win without scoring very much. We really needed that.
Umps weren’t as bad as Saturday and Sunday, but still frustrating nonetheless. There seems to be a pattern going on here.
Looking forward
After this weekend, the Cardinals find themselves above zero in run differential, but still one game below .500. This is because they have been losing series, and were swept by Boston. They really are hanging their hat on sweeping the Twins, and fending off the Phillies this weekend. That and of course, defeating Paul Skenes again. Which was pretty nice.
The Brewers and Reds are just ahead of us and the Cubs are at the top, only 2 games up on us at the time of this writing. The Rays and Astros are also 7-8 with a positive run differential, and the Mariners as well, but with a negative RD. We are 0-4 in extra innings, 0-3 in 1 run games, 5-3 during the day, and 2-5 at night. Above .500 vs righties, and 1-3 vs lefties.
Jordan Walker’s home run exit velocity today was at 112 mph, and he has the third hardest hit ball of anyone in MLB this year at 116.5. If he can learn to channel this power more he will be a deadly force at the plate! Schwarber and Ryan Mountcastle barely outdo him at 116.7 mph, but the season is far, far from over.
The season keeps going strong with a series vs the Astros beginning tomorrow at 6:45pm. This seems to be an interesting matchup with both teams at 7-8 and Sonny Gray on the mound. Framber Valdez pitches for Houston and he’s had a good start to the season. Let’s see if Gray can match him.
