Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - The Cardinals Have Two Of The Hottest Hitters On Earth

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

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The St. Louis Cardinals have two of the hottest hitters on the planet right now, leading the way as they take down the Braves to win their fourth in a row. You are Locked-on Cardinals, your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey, there, Cardals fans. I'm J.D. Haffern 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,

at JD Sports Radio. You can follow the podcast at L.O. 100th Cardinals. I want to thank those of you. We make Lockdown Cardinals your first listen every day. We are free and available wherever you get your podcast. You can also find us on YouTube. Again, thank you to all of you who got us to the 10,000 subscriber mark and growing.

Let's go to 20. Why the hell not, right? And I appreciate all of you guys. If you haven't subscribed, make sure you do that. If you like what you're hearing here on this Lockdown Cardinals content, make sure you're commenting. interacting with us so that you can be a part of the show, hit the notification button so you know when new episodes are posted. This is a show serving Cardle Nation and giving the best fans in baseball,

all of the info about the birds on the bat. Today's episode brought to you by prize picks. The easiest and most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports is by going to prize picks. Go to price picks.com slash locked on MLB and use the code all lowercase, locked on MLB for a first deposit match up to $100. So all smiles here at Locked on Cardinals right now. They are on quite the run, quite the run. It's fun. And I, for one, am going to enjoy every little more so love it.

If there's something that we learned about from last year's ugliness is that we should not take for granted how good the Cardals have been over the years. Because living like some of these other teams that don't win a lot very often, I don't want to be them. It was not fun in 2023. And it wasn't a fun start to 2024. It seemed like we were going to go down that dark path once again. But the Cardinals are playing some of their best baseball yet. They're doing it right now on Monday. They take one from one of the best teams in baseball.

And in normal cardinal fashion, they had to make it a sweat fest at the end with Hellsley walking a couple people and giving up a couple of hits and scoring a couple runs. But in the end, he picks up the same. and they hang on to get that four to three victory. There are a lot of reasons why the Cardals have been winning a lot more recently, and we're going to go into a few of these things here in just a bit. But I want to focus on two people right now, two individual hitters,

and that's Alec Berluson and Brennan Donovan. On Monday night, the two hitters combined for five of the team's 11 hits. Burley goes two for three. Donnie was three for four. they each drove in a run as the Cardinals' offense does just enough against Brave Starter Spencer Schwellenbach, which is a doozy of the name, by the way. That's got to be tough.

Imagine trying to spell Schwellenbach when you're like a little kid in school. Like what was that like on his Scantron cheat when he had to do the ACTs and stuff like that? We got to fill out each box like that had to be a pain in the butt. So tough for you, Spencer, but I don't feel bad for you from last night because the Cardinals show no mercy. No mercy right now. Get their 40th win of the season. So how hot have Berluson in Donovan been? Well, let's start with Alec Burleson.

Over his last 30 days, hitting 271, which you're like, okay, that's good. Nothing special, right? Seven home runs, 16 RBIs. Those seven home runs, by the way, tied for fifth in Major League Baseball over that time span. So no, you know, a chunk number right there by any base. It's like, that's good.

More reasonably, though. He's been even better at the plate. In his last 15 days, he's hitting 354. In his last 7, he's hitting 458. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Now for Brendan Donovan, last 30 games for Donnie, he's been quite good, right? Hitting 344.

Fifth, highest batting average in all of baseball during that time frame. His last 15 days, he's up to 392. and in the last seven, he's a ridiculous 480. His 480 averages second in the league to only Bryce Harper, who might be the leader in the clubhouse for the NLNVP now. I remember at the beginning of the year, I was like, so Mookie Betts has got this wrapped up after just a couple of weeks, right? And now he's hurt.

It's going to be out for a long time. He cooled off. And here comes Bryce Harper, who's just doing wonderful things for the Phillies. So he's got the high. highest average, but right behind him, there's Brennan Donovan. Now, Berluson's 458, nothing

to sneeze at. He's sixth in the league over that time span. During this team's four game winning streak, Berlison and Donovan are a combined 18 of 30 with four home runs and 14 RBIs. Burleson has gone nine of 14 in the four games, while Donovan

has nine hits in 16 at bats. Donovan also has driven in a run in seven consecutive games now. I mean, both of these guys have been instrumental in what the Cardinals have been able to accomplish since things began to turn around on that fateful day, May the 12th, Mother's Day, in Milwaukee. And we're going to continue to go back to that point because that is where this team took off. That is where Ali got ejected. Remember, he got thrown out of the game,

let a fire under their butts, they win it four to three. At that point, their record stood at 16 and 24. not good since that point. If my math is correct, they are 24 and 13. I'm horrible at math. I honestly am. I'm not good at that stuff at all. So if I'm wrong, just let me know. I'm pretty sure it's 24 and 13 now. In their last 30, they are 19 and 11,

which is the second best record in all of baseball to the Cleveland Guardians and is the best record of any team in the National League. Now, more specifically in the game on Monday, another big reason for the win outside of Burley and Donnie and the offense doing what they needed to do was the start that they got from the big Bronco himself, Lance Lynn. Lance Lynn, and I got a great picture of Lance Lynn, by the way, here you go. Ooh, solid, right? Just look at them.

Just screams everything we love about Lance Lynn. Over his previous four starts in June, Lance Lynn has been great. had pitched only 17 to 2 thirds innings in those four starts. Again, here we go with math, but I believe that's like four and a third innings per start, which is not what you're trying to get. That is not what they were expecting when they signed the 37-year-old. Right, Andrew, he was supposed to eat those innings, right?

Along with whatever else he wants to eat in his life. And that has been happening. The team was still winning, though. They go three and one in those four starts. with Lance Lynn giving the nod, but none of them go to Lance Lynn because he doesn't pitch long enough. And for good reason. Other teams were hitting him.

It's not like this was something where, oh, he got worn out and just had to come out of the game. No, he was getting clobbered. In those 17 and 2 thirds innings, he allowed 17 runs. Now, 12 of them were earned, which tells you a little bit how the defense has failed him in those starts. So not entirely his fault that these innings kept going,

but he's giving him 23 hits. Only two home runs, though. he has drastically cut back to home runs from what was going on last year with the White Sox and the Dodgers. He's only walked seven, which is better, but he's punched out 20. So the whiffs are still there, which is great, which is something you love to see from Lance Lynn. But the ERA over those four starts, 6.1-1. The opponents are hitting 295. Not great, Bob, but on Monday.

Monday it was a different story. Monday, Lance Lynn was very, very good. Very good. held a Braves offense that granted doesn't have a lot of their big names in the lineup right now, reigning MVP, Ronald Acuna Jr., out, Michael Harris, the second, out. Ozzy Albi's left last night's game because he got dizzy because of the heat we think. But he held him to just one run on four hits. And the key, in my opinion, to this, zero walks. He's not putting people on because that's what gets him in trouble.

You know, he walks one or two guys in an inning, and then it just kind of gets out of hand, and then he's gone. didn't have that problem on Monday. Zero walks over six and two-thirds innings. Great job. Great job. The one run was indeed a solo shot by Austin Riley, but it happens. Pitch up and away outside part of the zone.

Wasn't a horrible pitch. Austin Riley's a good hitter. So that happened in the fifth inning, but outside of that, Lynn was excellent. I got nothing but praise about him. According to Lynn Worthy at STL Today.com, Lance Lynn entered the outing, leading NL starting pitchers in notice

decisions. It's got 10 of them so far this year in his 15 previous starts. And he also led the majors in unearned runs allowed 13 in 75 innings. And after Monday's outing, honestly, I didn't realize his ERA was as good as it was. But now he's now dropped down under four. He's at 3.86 on the year. Pretty good. You'll take that, right? You just won, at least I do. It's these four inning outings where I'm just like, come on, man. You got to get at least through five and the goals obviously to get through six. But he was great. He was great on Monday.

I'm not going to sit here and needle him about some of the starts previously in the month. Last night was good. So let's focus on that. After the game, he spoke with the media saying, I can do some things when I get in a rhythm and able to use them. So right now I'm in a good spot. We've been building to this. Also probably didn't hurt to have his buddy Wilson Contreras back there behind the plate again.

So I want to talk about the return of Will, Wilson, what it means to the team, and about this amazing fast return. Like, how did he do it? Crazy stuff. We'll get into it next on Locked on Cardinals. Here on Locked on Cardinals, we pride ourselves on getting you the latest news for your team, whether it's the offseason, the draft, which is coming up, spring training, playoffs, which we're hoping for.

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So it's been a nice long homestand, which is good for the Cardinals, who have been very, very good at home. Another big piece of the Cardinals puzzle that's been missing during this recent surge to the second wildcard spot in the National League is Wilson Contreras. Now, Willie made his triumphant return from his fractured forearm and did it on Monday. Well ahead of schedule, right? Like it was not supposed to be. this quick. Not only did he call a solid game on Monday with Lance Lynn, who looked great together like they never missed a beat, but he also contributed offensively. He got a single, had an RBI, got a run score in the win. He was a big piece of this. Like they threw him right in the middle of it again. Like it wasn't like they're like, okay, timing and AAA a little bit

different than what goes on in the major league. So let's get him down here, sit him in like the number six or seven holding up, threw him right into the meat of the order. or had him batten third on Monday. And it paid off after the game he said, I like to be challenged. And when I heard eight to 10 weeks as the approximate recovery time for the medical staff, I was like, eh, then when I went on social media,

people thought I was out for the season. And that made me laugh because they didn't know what they were talking about. But thanks for the comments, because you guys pushed me and I pushed myself, and I'm back. So, Wilson Contreras, throwing out a little love to all of our trolls.

out there and the naysayers who who doubted Willie. Apparently you helped the cause. So thanks, I guess. Now, I didn't notice, to be honest, I didn't notice any talk among our locked on Cardinals crew about anybody saying, oh, he's done for the year. This season's over because I never really saw any of that. Almost everything I saw from you guys was all words of encouragement And that's because you guys friggin' rock and are real fans. But his return in just six and a half weeks, I mean, it caught a lot of people off guard. And there were still some people yesterday going, doesn't this seem like are they pushing them? Is this a little too early?

But he covered all the bases. Like he did everything that he needed to do to prove that he was healthy enough, swinging the bat, able to catch on back-to-back days. Like, me, the medical staff had no reason to say he didn't need to play. So it was nice. And it amazed me. It amazed fans. It amazed the media.

It also amazed his own teammates who John Denton at MLB.com has said that they've now nicknamed him Wolverine. By the way, because of the titanium plate in his arm. I don't mean to nerd out a little bit, but it's not titanium in Wolverine, Adamantium, is the name of the metal that is inside. Logan, also known as Wolverine. but I regress. By the way, you got that new Wolverine Deadpool movie coming out. Who would be the Deadpool to go along with Wilson's Wolverine?

Let me know in the comments section. Who do you think it should be? Just in time for the new movie to come out, right? It's happening in July, I think. Right. Anyways, Denton got some quotes from a few of his teammates. Closer Ryan Helsley had a really good one. He said, it's crazy how quick he got back.

And it's a testament to how hard he worked and how much he cares about being here. and helping us win. When he went down, I was thinking we'd probably have him back at the beginning of August. Then we started hearing All-Star break. Maybe. Now he's already back and we're still in June. That's insane. Manager Ali Marmal said this about Willie's return as well after the game. He cares about winning more than anything. It's a really good trait, man. How he talks and his actions are no different. He wants to be in the lineup to help us win. And that's all the matters to him. This is a guy who brings a lot of competitive edge and people feed off that. it still shocks me.

If you look up Wilson Contreras, Chicago Cubs, you'll still find people talking and telling stories about a totally different Wilson Contreras than we've known in his time in St. Louis. Like, you don't hear as much of this praise about Wilson in these other stories and stuff. Like, you hear other things and you're like, it's not the Wilson Church. We know this guy's been outstanding as a person, as a teammate all the hell he went through in that first season, which was not his fault,

basically pitting him as part of the problem of why they were losing last year, which he wasn't, you know, I mean, everybody had issues with things last year, but, you know, Wilson just was a real man and stood up during all of that. It was just like, I'll do whatever the team needs me to do. I just want to win. and bought his way through it and earned the respect. I think of the organization of the teammates, certainly of the fans.

We all adore him now. And that injury, the injury was devastating. I mean, you knew something was seriously wrong when it happened. And at the time that it happened, I'm sure many of you thought the way I did, like how are they going to survive losing this guy? Because on May 7th, when the injury went down, the Cardinals were not a good team.

You remember? They were in a bad spot at the time. They were not winning. They weren't hitting. Pitching wasn't great. Fulpin was still good, but starting pitching was still kind of still figuring it out. And now they were going to lose the guy who was hitting consistently and was providing a spark in the middle of the order. And it seemed like they were going to be doomed. But the boys were able to persevere.

You got to see young guys like Ivan Herrera and Pedro Pahas. They get valuable playing time. And let's be honest, they did hold their own. own in the place of Willie's absence. Like neither of them are the offensive weapon that Wilson Contreras is. We know that. But it's not like the position just became like an automatic out, became like this black hole in the lineup.

I mean, Herrera, who's out with the back issue right now, he hit 318 while Wilson Contreras was out. 318. Had 8 RBIs, didn't get much power in there. But 318, that's pretty freaking good. Pahas, he had the two home runs against the Cubs, which is phenomenal. If you're going to do it against somebody, do it against the Cubs, right? Also had eight RBIs since getting brought up.

Now, the batting average is not great. I think it was 161 is what I saw. But he has seemingly taken the starting catching duties away from Yvonne Herrera due to his framing ability, his ability to throw better from behind the plate. It's much better than what Yvonne Herrera offers you. So the combination of them together pretty good in the place of one Wilson-Contreras. So that should be acknowledged because they held down the fore pretty darn well. And the Cardinals won a lot while Wilson was out.

But now Willie is back. And with the trust in Pahas behind the plate, Contreras doesn't have to be back there all the time. He can take more time at DH as he builds his body back up to where he was before the injury. and the Cardinals, you think, will be fine. They won't miss a beat because they've had that time with Pedro already to get to know him. And he clearly calls a great game. And the coaching staff loves them behind the plate. The pitchers do.

It's a good spot to be in right now. So as bad as it was when Contreras went down, a lot of good actually came out of this. The Cardinals learned some things about their catching depth. And that's an invaluable thing to have moving forward towards the trade deadline. when you've got some other prospects in your organization that also are catchers. Maybe they're a little more expendable now. Maybe another team could use one of those guys in exchange for a veteran starting pitcher. We'll see.

We'll see. Bernie Miklis put together a list of some of the other reasons why the Cardinals have been the best team in the National League since May 12th. And one of those reasons actually might surprise you a little bit. We're going to get into that next here on Lockdown Cardinals. Price Picks is America's number one fantasy sports app with more than five million members. Price Picks is the easiest, the most exciting way to play daily fantasy sports. Unlike other apps on Price Picks, it's just you against the numbers.

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of Lockdown Plus our national shows, which cover every league. You can find Locked On Sports today, now available on the Free Fire TV channels app. So Bernie Meckles wrote a piece at Scoops with Danny Mac.com on the reasons why the Cardinals have become better. You can say what you want about manager Ali Marvel. Shouldn't have gotten the job.

That's fine if you feel that way. Shilk got screwed over. Should have never got rid of them. It's fine if you feel that way. Ollie should have been fired last year, should have been fired this year. It's okay to feel that way. It really is. The one thing I kept bringing up when talking about Ali and, you know, people always go, oh, he doesn't belong here.

He should be fired. I'm like, it's, okay, I get it because the results are not what you want. They're not winning. But through it all, he always, always had the backing of the front office. they always believed in him. They always stood by him. Hell, they gave him an extension after a 91 loss season.

Who does that? I myself thought that was a little premature. I wanted him to prove that he could go out and do this thing before they gave him something like that. But front office said, no, it's not his fault last year. We believe in him.

We're going to give it to him now and just squash it. Upset some people at the time? I don't know how many people are upset about it now. But the other people that had the best of Ali Marmal was always the players. You never heard them complaining. There was never a mutiny.

They always talk glowingly about their manager, at least the ones that are still here. Okay? And now with the Cardinals turning things around, he's starting to get some credit for it. And Bernie McClest, as I mentioned, scoops with Danny Mac.coms where you can read it, gave a bunch of reasons why the Cardals have turned things around.

It's a long list of stats and stuff, and Bernie's really, really good at those things. So I encourage you to read it for yourself. including throwing out some love for my boy Michael Siani. I'm starting to think I'm the biggest Michael Siani fan on the planet. Might be. Might be. But at the end of the whole article,

he gives a little bonus reason why, and he gives credit to Holly. And here's what he says about the Cardinals manager. The manager deserves credit for holding this team together. He won't get any credit. That's just the way it is around here. Many, not all, and the best fans in baseball colony have made up their minds,

and that's all there is to it. The Cardinals reached their low point of 15 and 24 on May 11, but Marmal didn't freak out or put on a cheap show by dogging players in public to curry favor with fans. He stayed steady. He expressed confidence in his players, while also speaking in a straightforward manner about the bottom line necessity of doing better.

Marmal has done the best he could with a roster that's been afraid by injuries and an embarrassing front office failure to come up with a fifth starting pitcher. The effectiveness of Marmel's bullpen management is defined by the team's outstanding record when leading in the late innings. He's cultivated additional sources of quality of relief to expand the bullpen depth. With Marmal engineering the usage patterns, the St. Louis bullpen is the fifth best in the majors based on win probability added. And I'm in the same boat as Bernie is here because Ali is, he's never going to win every year. everybody over. I mean, there are people who didn't like Tony LaRosa while I was here

despite all of the winning the Cardinals did while Tony was manager. Didn't like him, didn't like his attitude, didn't like the things he did, didn't want him around. It's going to be the same way for Ali. He's never going to win everybody over. So what. So what? Trying to make everybody happy is impossible. It is impossible. The Cardinals are now winning games. That's what we want. That's what we want to see, right? I don't care how they do it. Just win, baby. They're playing with confidence.

You can see them joking around on the field, having fun. They're laughing. They're smiling. They look like a team. Last year they didn't look like a team. Last year, they looked like a bunch of depressed individuals just walking around, sulking all the time. This year, camaraderie, friendship.

You're seeing it out there. You can just tell that there is a. Good vibe going on with everybody. They're a fun little bunch. It's a nice community of teammates inside that locker room this year. They're playing with spirit. You're seeing attitude. It's going to get even better with Wilson Contreras being there because he brings a lot of attitude, which I love.

They're also playing entertaining baseball. They're doing the small things. The defense has gotten better. Michael Siani, my man in center. Injured, making a diving play the other day. What was he doing the first day on Monday? Makes another fantastic diving play. This time he pops back up and feels great, which is good

because I was like, oh, boy, here we go. I was nervous he was going to get hurt again. But you're seeing it. You know, Nolan Aronado is out right now. Hopefully he'll be back here soon. But, you know, he's played better over at the hot corner. It was an ugly start to the year, but he's played better. Mason win up the middle with Gorman.

They played better. They tried to make that flip play yesterday. and it might have worked. It might have worked if they'd have been able to handle it. Ball up the middle. Gorman dies for it, flips it with his glove, trying to get it over to win so he could throw it over to first. Would have been cool.

Didn't work this time. I don't know if they work on that in practice or not. But so doing things like that, you can just feel the exude confidence right now. I want to give some credit to pitching coach Dusty Blake. Look what he's had. We killed this guy last year. I killed this guy last year, a lot.

Not a whole lot of complaining going on here, considering the level of pitchers that were brought in. Not a lot of superstars outside of Sunny Gray, but look, it's working. It's working. Hitting coach Turner Ward, everybody wanted him fired. Things are turning around, right? Bench coach Daniel DeSalso, been huge, been huge for this team.

and everybody else who's a part of the staff, you know, who just stayed the course, despite the fans at the gates with their torches, threatening to burn it all down. I'm not coming anymore, games. Some people are still staying away. I mean, you look at the attendance, you had an announcement of 30, what, 6,000 last night.

And then you look at how many butts were actually in the seat. You're like, ooh. So I don't know what it's going to take to get these guys back to Bush Stadium. But you're missing a hell of a show by not showing up. because they're winning and they're doing it in a lot of fun ways. They weathered the storm through all the ugliness early on this year, and now they got Willie back and guys like Tommy Edmund, Lars Neupar, perhaps Jordan Walker at some point,

they should all be back ready to contribute as well. This team could actually get even better. It could. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's enjoy it while we got it. And let's just game by game, right? Let's just game by game. It's not get out of control here.

They got the win on Monday. Tuesday night, you're going to have Kyle Gibson set to return after missing his last star when things didn't go so well in warmups. He had to get scratched, which threw the Cardinals into panic mode because they weren't ready for that. And they just had two extra innings games against the Marlins. And you're like, oh, my God, how are we going to get through this? They end up losing that game. But he's back.

And hopefully everything goes well in warmups today. And don't have to worry about it. And we get the same Kyle Gibson that he has been all year, which has been pretty freaking good. The Braves are going to counter with Rinaldo Lopez, who he was on three different teams last year, guys, three different teams. And now he goes, he's all the Braves and he's five and two with a 1.57 ERA. Explain it to me. I don't know. I don't know how the Braves do it all the time.

But he's been very good so far this year. Last three starts combined against Washington, Baltimore, and Detroit. He's allowed just two earned runs while striking out 21 and 17 innings. 17 in fact the last two starts he hasn't allowed a single run those two runs came in in that first game against washington nothing to baltimore or detroit so going to be another tough test for the birds tonight at bush but that's what you want you want to keep testing these guys and make sure they're the real deal last night it all worked out see how it goes down tonight at bush stadium thank you guys for making it locked on carlos your first listen every day if you

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