Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - Here's Why Sonny Gray Is Giving Up So Many Home Runs

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

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The Cardinals take the series in Minnesota, but what is going on with Sunny Gray? Had another rough outing on Saturday. Thomas Govane from Redbird Rance.com is here to give us a little insight into what's causing his declining numbers. You are locked on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team every day. Hey there, Carlis fans. I'm J.D. Hafford and I'm a national radio sports anchor. Born and raised in the Lou and a lifetime Cardinals fan. and I'm your host for Lockdown Cardinals,

part of the Lockdown Podcast Network covering your team every day. You can follow me on Twitter X at JD Sports Radio and follow the podcast at L.O. underscore Cardinals. You can follow my guy, Thomas Govain. He's available on Twitter X as well at Thomas Govain and obviously find all his writings at Redbird Rants.com. We want to make those of you who make Locktown Cardinals your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast.

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HVAC, or electrical job and get fast shipping from coast to coast at supplyhouse.com. All right, Thomas, our man from Redwood Rance.com here with us today. How are things? How school has started? So how are things in your? world now that life is picked up a little bit now that summer vacation is over. They're not bad. It's nice to have the routine of school, but honestly, I'll take summer any day of the week. I tell you, man, it's coming to an end here quickly. The season will be over

before we know it, but so far, the Cardinals are still hanging on by a very thin thread as they end up taking two or three in Minnesota against a very good twin squad, who seems destined for the playoffs. You had that solid all-round win in game one, a wild late inning comeback in game three to win on Sunday. But on Saturday night, it was another disappointing outing for not only the offense, because I mean, obviously you got to score runs if you want to win baseball games. But what people are more specifically worried about is what's going on with Sunny Gray, because he got ripped again for five runs on seven hits and six innings. He walks just two. He strikes out seven. That's normal stuff for him. But he also gives him two home runs, Thomas. And he gives

them both up to Trevor Larnick and he loses his eighth game of the season. And I get a lot of people who continue to hit me up about, and it's been happening all year where, you know, Sunny Gray is not an ace. He's not a number one. You shouldn't trust him. He's not that good. And I look at his overall body of work. I see 11 wins. I see eight losses. We know how that can sometimes be a relevant because it just depends on who's scoring and who's not that night. The ERA is now above four at 4.07, which is it, you know, God awful by any means. But, you know, we thought it'd be a little bit lower than that. The strikeouts, they're there.

Sixth highest in the league, just 18 behind the top spot held by scubel and cease. Opponents are hitting 233 against them. That's nothing great. That's in the top 25 lowest in the league. The whip, 1.13, top 20 in the league. but the stat that sticks out is the amount of home runs that he's given up. He's now surrendered 20 dingers this year, which is tied with Miles Michaelis for the most on the team and tied for the ninth highest amount in the league.

This is coming off a year where, you know, he was second in the ALSye Young with the twins, but he only gave up eight home runs all year last year with Minnesota. 32 starts, 184 innings, eight home runs. He's already at 20. It's a career high in one season for him. And fans are wondering, and myself are wondering, what is going on here? And you are the guy that can shed some light on this subject for us. So in your opinion and in the research you've done,

what is going on with Sunny that has led to the long ball doing so much damage against him? Yeah, first of all, the fact that he's ninth overall in time with Miles Michael has. sounds terrible to a lot of people. It's not what we thought was going to happen. No. If you look at the guys ahead of him, though, you see names like Aronola, Pablo Lopez, Chautas, Shoda, I'managa, Freddie Peralta, Luis Castillo. I mean, those are aces of people's staffs, legitimate aces. So, yes, he's giving up a lot of home runs, but there's still guys out there who are

having more damage done against them. I think, so take my word for as little as you want to here. I'm not a statistician by any means, but I did a little bit digging last night. And I found that there's three main reasons primarily why he's getting hit so hard this year. The first would be his pitches and their locations. If you go to baseball savagance, you'll see the red, which is where most of his pitches are thrown, aren't as tight this year. It's a little bit more spread out.

That could be part of the issue. There's more elevation in some of his pitches, especially his sinker is a little bit more elevated and less focused on the edges. The other thing I noticed was how much movement he's got on his pitches. He relies pretty heavily on his sweeper, especially these last two or three years. He revamped it, and it's lost an inch of drop on it. The horizontal movement's about the same, but then you're starting to look for something that looks more like a slider

than just a sweeper, and it gets real funky. His change-up is not breaking horizontally as much. It's a lot flatter by about two inches, two-and-half inches. So that's just coming in really easy for people to see. The velocity differences between his change-up and his fastball are about the same. It's a lot more flat coming in. His curveball isn't breaking as much, either horizontally or vertically. And then lastly, it would be his pitch mix.

He's dropped his curveball quite a bit, I think by about 8% in usage. And he's thrown his cutter more often, which is getting hit significantly harder, especially for average, not necessarily for slugging, but batting average, people are just hitting his cutter and getting on base. And these are things that Dusty Blake, Sunny Gray, obviously, have these kind of stats available to them. And it's probably when it comes to the curveball and cutter thing, it must just kind of be a trust issue for them.

It's the only thing I can come up with because you wouldn't keep throwing a pitch that gets hit hard more often than not if you have faith in something else that you're throwing. And if you're not believing in it, you're not trusting your release points. You don't like where your arm angle is, whatever it may be. You know, Sunny is a very meticulous guy. He knows his body better than any. buddy. Remember how he was like, all right, hamstring, let's stop. He knows what's going on with him. So I'm sure he's aware of these things. And that's the only thing I can come up with is to why he would choose to stop throwing the curveball as much.

And going with that cutter a little more often, maybe he just feels like he's got a better grasp of throwing it for strikes. Because that's one thing that he's brought up a few times is where, look, I got to quit nibbling. You know, I need to be aggressive in the zone. You know, when I start, Neblin. That's when I get myself in trouble. And he's like, I got to knock that off. But you mentioned all of these different things about the movement on his pitches. Now, there are plenty of guys in this league that throw 100 and can just throw it right by you. Sonny Gray's not that guy. He relies on the movement. That's his thing. And if your bread and butter pitch, which is the sweeper, as you mentioned, is now a flat pitch that's coming across the zone instead of going down and going across,

that's a big deal. That's a very big deal. And the sweeper, what you need is you need that diagonal movement on it, but you need to be more horizontal than a curveball would be, for example. Sure. And the sweet spot for the velocity of the sweepers right around 84, 85 miles per hour. So that half tick down and that one inch less of movement, that makes a pretty big difference for a pitch like that.

Because if hitters are going to get on a sweeper, they're going to hit it pretty hard. It's just when it is really effective, that's a good pitch. to have in your arsenal. Yeah. And when we talk about the home runs, too, there's something that's usually very in common with the balls that are getting smashed over the wall. And that's his accuracy, where the control is. He's missing on pitches that I've noticed just eyeballing it. Like, I don't have a stat in front of me that tells me this, but just watching it. Like, watching Larnick hit him, you know, on Saturday, these pitches are like right down the middle. These are there. He's missing his spot and these guys aren't missing the ball.

which you can say that about any pitcher. I mean, look at, look at Miles Michaelis. You know, Miles Michaelis, he goes out and has a great game his last time out against the Brewers. And he was hitting his spots beautifully. But as soon as he starts to get towards that middle in the heart of the plate, he gets killed. He just can't live there. He's got to be on the edges. He's got to mix his speeds.

And, you know, Sonny is similar in certain ways like that. And most pictures are if you're not throwing 99, 100 miles an hour to get a pass people, you still got to be able to hit your spots because 95, 96, guys can catch up to that pretty easily. So that's just some of the things that might be going on with Sunny Grazer. Anything else you want to add to what else might be causing some of his problems, specifically with the long ball? Because, again, you look at the stats that he's got out there, he looks like a pretty darn good pitcher. I mean, a top 25 across the board and a lot of these stats, that's pretty good, you guys.

And I know you, when you think ace and you think top pitcher in the league, how many teams we got, right? And how many aces do we have out there? If each team's got one guy that's later number one, so you should have that many guys out there. And Sonny's clearly inside the top 25 and a lot of that stuff. So, you know, I still think he's very, very good. Oh, yeah, he's great. I think his meatball percentage is up a little bit. Those are the pitchers right down the middle, the softballs that everybody's going to hit.

So he's just throwing him, as you said, they're down the middle more often. And I did see his stats this year, a lot of them are looking eerily similar to 2021 his last year with the Reds. And that kind of lost a bad taste in people's mouths. His strikeouts were elevated that year, but his home run rate was as well. His ERA was up, but his FIPP stayed pretty steady. So it's looking a little bit like that last year in Cincinnati for him. Yeah, his FIP so far this year, 3.34.

So when you take that and you see an ERA over four, you're like, all right, You couldn't kind of find a happy medium there. And you're like, okay, you could live with a 3.75 ERA from Sunny Gray. You're not going to complain about that. What about people who say the signing has been a mistake? They overpaid and this is going to look bad following this year that he's on the decline in getting worse. Do you feel there's any merit to that? I'd have to see how he does the next two years.

I mean, technically he's only worth $10 million this year with those deferments and the pushbacks. I mean, if he's this, if he's pitching this way in two years, I think I'd be a little bit more concerned and look back on the contract differently. But for right now, the price we're getting, I'm pretty happy with it. He's not really fit in the role that we needed him to be, but it's tough to bring a guy into a new league and say, or a newer team and say, go be our ace. Go ahead, get us 20 wins a year and lead us to the promised land. That's not going to, that's not going to happen. And I know expectations were high. you hear second in the ALSY Young Award behind Garrett Cole.

So if Garrett Cole had had an injury and went down for a couple of months, he might have been your side young award winner. I get that. But we didn't expect them to have the exact same numbers this year. We thought they were going to be better than where we are right now. But we expected regression from what Sunny Gray did last year. We just thought it would be a little bit better than what we're getting so far. But for me, still not a mistake, still a great signing.

VILA was still there. arm strength, everything else. He's looked healthy. The one thing that always crazy about him is that like every time he pitches, I feel like I'm exhausted watching him. Like it feels like he's throwing a lot more pitches and guys are working him a little bit harder and he's just drenched and sweat all the times, man. So he's working his tail off out there.

And as we've learned in this one year with the Cardinal so far, nobody works harder than sunny. Great. Now, what we want to do is jump into the DeLorean next, Thomas. We're going to get into our Delorian, and we're going to take a look into the future at this club next. Should the Cardinals go with the youth movement in 2024? We'll talk about it next on Locked on Cardinals. Get supplies from the site that's made for the skilled trade, supplyhouse.com.

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who has it all covered every single day on Locked-on MLB, which is available on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast, part of the Locktown Podcast Network, your team every day. Remember, Cardinals are coming back home again, so you can catch every pitch of the Cardinals hometown broadcast with Sirius XM. Just download the SXM app and search the word Cardinals. Thomas Govane from Redwood Rance.com joining us again here today. And we were texting back and forth the other night about what the future of this team might look like,

what kind of direction we were hoping that they might go to for next season. Not saying that the season that we're in is over, but they are on life support. It ain't going to be easy. Taking four out of six from the Brewers and the Twins, obviously helps the cause. But let's start with the rotation since we were just talking about Sunny Gray. we've got Sunny, Eric Fetty, who looked amazing on Sunday, Michaelis, who looked really good in his last outing against the Brewers, Stephen Mats, who I don't even remember what he looks like,

and then Andre Palante, who has been very, very good since becoming a part of the rotation, all under contract for next season. They do hold club options for Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn. So, Thomas, I ask you, you have to get into John Moseilock shoes. You don't get to wear socks, just like him. would you attack, or how would you attack, I should say, the rotation this offseason?

What would you do to kind of put your little touch on it to make them the best that you think they can be? There's three guys you mentioned that I think are really going to stay. It would be gray, Fetty, and Palante. I'd love to see those three guys back out. I think that Gray and Fetty will come back next year and be a little bit more steady, especially Eric Fetty. He's shown the last couple of starts that he's settling in with the Cardinals. Sure.

I don't think that we need to accept Gibson and Lance Lynn's options. Are they 13 and 11 million, something like that right around there? I think that those can be declined. Save yourself to $25 million. You can spend that somewhere else, whether that is on one of the top starters like the Max Reed or something like that. Or you can put that towards a position player somewhere if we have that need. I would love to see Miles Michaels get dumped off to anybody who will take him for any

amount of money. I'll swallow $15 million. Do you think there's anybody out there that would be like, we'll take them? I think if we eat a chunk of the money, someone will take his 200 innings with a five ERA. If we don't, someone will take one of our top prospects for $5 million as well. And they'll be smiling and taking it to the bank. The Braves did that with a couple of people last year. Marco Gonzalez, I think, was one of them. They picked him up for some prospects, dumped them to somebody else. So I think there's a world in which. which Michaelis could be traded. And then you're left with Fetti-Polante and Gray.

You've got two spots. I think that Michael McGrievey could get another chance. I see a very good chance that Quinn Matthews is ready to join the rotation. And that's what we need. Those are three homegrown guys with two free agents at the top of the rotation. That's what a good rotation looks like. It'll be rocky. Some of the guys might need some time to get adjusted.

But from a youth perspective and a future perspective, I think that a gray, fetti, Palante, McGreevy, and like a Quinn Matthews or even Gordon Gricepho, someone like that, Zach Thompson even. Sure. And we can't rule out what teen Kins might be as well, another name that, you know, he had some injury things this year, which have held his innings back, but he's looked really, really good since he has come back. And, you know, he was on the same plane with Quinn Matthews for a while.

The only difference is Quinn stayed healthy and has, you know, skyrocketed through the organization. I've got a lot of people, obviously, when you go and you see Quinn Matthews numbers in the minor leagues right now and how good he's been, you're going to get people like, call him up. Let's go. Put him in the rotation today. Put him in the bullpen. Get him up here. And I'm like, hold on, hold on a second. All right. First off, he's in double A. All right. Let's let this progress naturally. What has happened the last two times we brought up a guy straight from AA? And I'm talking about some headers. I might have heard of him, Jordan Walker, and Richard Scott the second. Things didn't go so well. They struggled mightily. And you don't want to do that with Quinn Matthews early on. So let him progress. And if he, you know, dominates at AAA or is even just really good. That's somebody that you can maybe feel comfortable about putting in the back of your rotation and feel okay about it. So, but I'm not saying you got to handle him with kids gloves because sometimes we read a little too long. But I'm saying let him progress a little bit more. I'm not trying to rush him just yet.

How about we go to the bullpen, man? Kittridge and Armstrong are your free agents in the bullpen right now? Would you have either of them coming back? You do hold a club option on Keenan Middleton, $6 million. I mean, obviously he was hurt all year. We don't even know what he's going to be like when he comes back. So what are your thoughts on the bullpen in those names? Are any of them, are you interested in bringing any of those guys back?

Relievers get so funky. You never know what they're going to produce year over year. Kittrich has been consistent for most of the year. He's had a couple of rough starts, but I think he's near the top and holds still in the league, which whatever you want to put, whatever stock you want to put into the hold statistic, whatever. I would love one of those two,

just to be a stabilizing veteran force in the bullpen. I've always been under the impression that you just throw some minor league guys out there, some guys with some high stuff, and just see what they can throw in the majors. You've got Helsley in the back. Romero's coming back. Kittredge you can roll with again late in games. And then Riley O'Brien should be there.

I think Keenan Middleton's contract should be accepted. There's names in the bullpen. You don't necessarily need to go out and spend free agency there, except for some debt, reliable guys if you need them. Libertory also. I saw you posted about him today too. But what has he been now that they just quit messing with him? Like just leave him alone.

Let him go and have. have a role, quit bringing him up and down and making him a starter and making him a believer and like knock it off. Just let him do some. If you're really good at something, stay there. Let him have some success and enjoy it for a little while. That way he could become comfortable in a role and be the best that he can be because people get mad.

They're like, well, you should have been a starter if you're going to give up this guy. I don't care about that. What I care about is him having success at any point. And now he's starting to find it. and he's becoming a dominant guy coming out of the bullpen against lefties. I mean, the strikeout numbers are fantastic recently. Yeah, multiple innings, too. He's not a direct comparison, but as far as usage, it's Andrew Miller, pretty much from four, five, six, seven years ago.

I mean, I would have told me Randy or Rosarena for Andrew Miller, 2017, I would like, fine, take him. I'll take Andrew Miller any day of the week. Yeah, no, I've really enjoyed the fact that Matthew Levertoe is starting to find his feeding, his footing at the major league level. and has found a role. He looks comfortable. He comes out. He looks like he's got a lot of confidence now. And I think that's a problem for some of these young guys.

They come up and then they have all the expectations on their shoulders talking about, you know, like a Dylan Carlson. And then when they fail, it just seems like they just, they come on. They just look deflated every time. And that's how Libertor seemed every time he would take the bound for me. And I don't see that anymore. I see a mature kind of guy that's coming out of the bullpen. now and I'm excited for them and I hope it keeps going.

Yeah, bullpen wise, I'm still under the, I still like Kittrich. I still want to keep him around. I was funny talking to, I was talking to Chuck who was locked on brewers the other night. And he was like, how is he good? He's like, look at him. When he just comes in, he just, and I'm like, I know, I know. And I love it. It looks like a dad playing, catching the backyard.

Exactly. That's the exact comparison I made. I go, it looks like a dude who would be out there with a beard at his left hand and these whipp and whiff and whiffle balls at you. with his other one and doesn't break a sweat. And you got to remember, too, this is his first full year back after having surgery. So, you know, he's probably going to get a little bit tired down the stretch. But this will be good for building whatever they need him for next year if he decides he wants to come back.

And it seems like he has a good time with the team. So I don't know why he wouldn't. Quickly, how about the rest of the roster? We've got names like Goldie, carp, fam. You know how the Cardinals and Ali like their veterans. Are you keeping any of them or are you just bringing the youth? What are you feeling? Out of those three, Matt Carpenter can come back as a coach, but not on the field.

You're number three hitter in the line of the state? Yeah, right. You're over it? Yeah, right. Goldie I would be okay with. I've said this before at the right price and at the right length. If it's two years, even $40 million, no, I'd shy away from that. If he's somewhere around like the 10 to 12 million annually, even at two years at that point, I'd be fine.

But if he wants to do one year after another, I'd be even better with that. I think that Goldie could be a good presence. He creates a bit of a logjam, especially if the plan is to move Burleson or even Luke and Baker to first base. But him being in the locker room, I think, could do a lot of good for the team. I just, I can't watch it anymore, Thomas. I can't. I know. I know.

It's not getting better. It's been getting worse for two years now, and it's going to be worse next year. I don't know why anybody thinks the fountain of youth is all of a sudden going to touch Paul Goldschmidt at the... It hasn't touched St. Louis in years. Yeah. So I don't see how that works. And I feel like some other team, if he's willing to continue to play in his career, because watching that interview the other night, it feels like he's like, dude, I'm almost done. I almost don't want to do this anymore because I'm so defeated.

if he decides to continue his career. I feel like somebody else would give him a chance more every day at Bats and would probably overpay for him. I really hope, and this isn't like an anti-Paul Gold's thing for, you know, obviously we like Goldie, but I just, it's for the team. It's time to move on. And you can't just hang on to these old guys.

And especially I'm not if he's, he can't play anywhere else. That's the excuse you have for Luke and Baker not getting at bat. So you'd be paying a guy who's on the major decline, way too much money to only do one role. And I just, I can't get on board with that whatsoever. I'd be more on board out of those three. Like, I don't need carp anymore.

God bless him, dude, but that's enough. I wouldn't hate Tommy Fam just because of the attitude that he brings. You know, you could always use a veteran platoon player off the bench. And he seemed to embrace that role. So I wouldn't hate that. But, you know him. Pham's like, look, somebody's going to pay me more. I'm going to go.

And if the Cardinals don't want to fork it over, then this will be the end of the Tommy Fam era part due in St. Louis. All right, coming up next, we're going to talk about this series against the twins because outside of the sunny gray game, pretty entertaining stuff by the St. Louis Cardinals. So we're going to get into that next here on Locked on Cardinals. You've heard us talk a lot about Fandul, America's number one sports book.

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your team every day. Thomas Covein from Redford-Grants.com with us here today. Your thoughts on the series in Minnesota, things that you enjoyed because, you know, we talked about no offense on Saturday. Sunny gave up the home run ball a couple of times. That was that. There's really not much else to talk about. But games one and games three, what did you like that happened in those games? The bullpen gave up only two runs all series by my account.

That is wonderful. We cannot shake this silly run differential ghost that's on our... We broke even, nine runs each. It's a zero run differential. So that's just bothersome at this point. To see them come back today, it was great. They took advantage of some mistakes by the opposing team, by the twins, with that bad throw that should have been a game-ending double play.

To see Newt Bar be the guy to bring them in. who I think needed a big push. He would be my guy the last month or so. I think Derek Gould and Bernie Miklis talked about this. Newport needs to be the guy that steps up with Contreras being out now. He's had so much talked about him. He's had those preferables and the baseball savant page that's dripping in red, but he just hasn't seen him from that corner.

So to see him get that hit today was huge, I think. Carpenter's pinch hit, home run. That was the first game in the series, right? Or is that? I think there was something else. First game, it was that. You're thinking about the, maybe the Brewers. Okay, yeah.

Well, either way. The offense showed up in times it needed to, especially in the two games that they won. That was exciting to see. Both end as well has still been solid. Yeah, the thing that said about me on Friday was them actually using the running game to their advantage a little bit. Stealing some bases, which, you know, bands of St. Louis are always going to love that since the 80s. you know, it's run, Redbirds run, let's go. And you just haven't seen it a lot with this team.

They just haven't built their teams around speed very often. And when they do, they didn't run all that much with the guys. They were very cautious on the base pass and Friday night. They kind of created offense, which was weird for this team. But it was fun to watch. I enjoyed that. And obviously, yeah, I am in full agreeance about the Newt Bar stuff. I've been very hard on him this year because this is the guy that, you know,

we kind of put our eggs in his basket. We were like some of these other guys like Tyler O'Neill, we're fine. We got new, you know, and we never saw that guy partially because of injuries. And I realize that's a thing. And he's got to stay healthy and stay on the field. But the guy that helped lead team Japan and the world baseball classic, which, you know, all the charisma, top of the order guy was drawing walks and was just set in the table for Shohei and the boys.

And we just haven't seen it. And you catch like little glimpses. And then something would happen. and he pulls a hammy or he twists an ankle or, you know, he hurts a rib. Like all these weird things that happen to Newpar all the time. And so I'm like preparing myself where he's going to get on this roll and then something dumb is going to happen and we're going to lose him. So I'm hoping I'm reverse jinxing it here because I don't want to see it happen,

but I've watched this movie a couple of times and this is usually what happens to Lars Newpar. So we'll see. But yeah, definitely a couple of big clutch situations. with Newt in the series, and he was able to step up and come through. So definitely a guy. And when are we going to see more of Luke and Baker, man? I know this. I know it splits, but Goldie's not doing anything.

Like, it'd be different if he was still getting, you know, one or two hits. He got a sack, fly. There's not a lot going on there, man. And you got to, like how we talked earlier, you got to start thinking about the future. And if he's not going to be on this team, who are. Are you going to put it for a space? We saw Burleson there. But if you're going to be one of these teams that does the splits thing all the time,

having a Baker-Berlinson combo over at first makes a lot of sense. But how do you know what Luke and Baker is yet? We saw him take some walks. We've seen a pinched home run. He's been adding more to the offense than Paul Goldschman has. And I'm sorry, I hate to bench you, Goldie. But dude, this is go time. This is the end of the rope, and we need people who can get on base and do some stuff.

Yeah, I mean, he had three walks on Friday night. He's at least getting on base, and he's got the damage to hit the home runs there. I don't know. It's tough for me to watch Goldie at this stage when he's done in his career to just ride the bench. But like you said, it's go time. We've got, what, 30 games left? Let's get going. Yeah.

I'm not saying he's got to just say he's just a bench bat from here on now, but I don't need to see him every day. I don't. Like, give Luke a couple of bats. Huh? Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. You go.

I was going to say, I was like, give him a few at bats. And then like, if he's, Baker goes, you know, one for nine or something with like five strikeouts, then Goldie comes right back in. But, and you can also with Contreras out, you got some DH possibilities as well here, where there's some at bats to be had where we don't have to use both of our catchers in the lineup every game anymore.

We don't need to do that. Just one. Just one is sufficient. And you can let Goldie and Baker have it bats there. Yeah. And I think Goldie, you could play him for the rest of the year against pitchers who he has a good history against. He seems to be a guy that, I mean, he's very knowledgeable. He practices his craft pretty well.

If he's got a 400 batting average against this guy, play him the whole game, or at least throughout the first three rounds of the game. Yeah. Yeah. I just need to see more from whoever is in the lineup. I'm not trying to just pick on Paul. I'm trying to just say in general, the offense just needs guys who are producing. And because we don't have time to screw around anymore. We've done it for four months where we just kind of watch them just kind of languish here.

And now we need the guys who can make a bigger impact to be in the lineup more. And three walks and a home run so far for Baker in the limited times that he's had at bats thus far. That's something. That's something, you know. We talk about batting averages and stuff. and people get mad because we're like, well, this guy's hitting 220, but look at his OPS and his on base percentage and all of that going on. That's kind of what Lucan has showed so far.

Yeah, he's had a few strikeouts at the play. We know that's going to happen, but he also offers the power and he gets on base with the walk. I'll take a walk, man. That was beautiful. Nine walks on Friday night. I loved it. I was like, for once, we were wearing somebody out instead of being the other way around.

It was beautiful. Yeah, well, that doesn't make mistakes. That's the idea of the game, right? Exactly. What is Brad Pitt say in Moneyball when your opponent is making mistakes, don't interrupt them. Let it keep going, man. Let them keep doing it. And we were able to get one against the twins on Sunday, you know, to see that air at the end of the game. And normally situations like that, what happens? We strike out, we pop up, game over. They came through this time, which was nice. And that's what good teams do. When you screw up, they take advantage of you. That's how the brewers have been doing. doing it this year. And the Cardinals were able to kind of flip the script this time around and we're able to do it to the twins. And I couldn't have been happier for it. So for those of you who still have faith in the Cardinals, good for you. Enjoy the last couple of wins. It's going to be

difficult. We got the Padres coming up next and they have been one of the hottest teams in baseball for a while now. I had another walkoff win on Sunday, which actually did the Cardals of favor because they beat the Mets who are one of the teams in front of St. Louis. The Braves also lost. So, you know, they were able to make a little bit of ground here. And that's what it's going to take, man. You've got to keep going two out of three, three out of four. And hopefully, slowly but surely, you can catch up to these guys. Yep. Let's go win some games. All right. Well, be sure to follow Thomas Govane and Thomas Govane on Twitter X. Make sure you hit them up on Redbirdrance.com as well. Any new blogs coming out, things you're writing about in the future here that you want people to be

aware of? I've got one coming out. I'm talking about which prospects and the system. whose stocks have gone up and which have gone down throughout the year. So that should be coming out in the next couple of days. I think that's all I've got in the queue right now, though. All right. Well, I'm sure we'll get some Quinn Matthews in that one. He's on the read and find out what's happening to some of the other guys that maybe haven't been making the cut so well.

Go to Redbird Brants.com and check out all of Thomas's writings. Appreciate you, as always, brother, for joining us. And thank you guys for making a lockdown cartilage for first listen every day. If you haven't already, give us a follow on Twitter, X at L0 underscore Cardinals and at JD Sports Radio, like, subscribe on YouTube and help our channel and love for the Cardinals grow. You guys are the best fans in baseball for a reason. We'll see you next time on Lockdown Cardinals.