Here are my official post-game comments written with a lack of effort in honor of the Cardinals and their travel anxiety and their 4-1 loss to the Marlins at the empty art deco ballpark in South Florida. Because of the visiting team from the Midwest, Little Havana was a Little Sleepy.
Direct to you from my laptop. Do not be offended by snark, side-swipes, or borderline cheap shots. If you watched this ballgame, as I did, then grumpiness is permissible and therapeutic. Feel free to rip me. I love y'all.
To quote the famous American poet -- 50 Cent -- "I love you like a fat kid love cake."
That's me. Nothin' but love.
1) I’m not gonna say the Cardinals weren’t all that interested in playing ball the way they have to play ball to come away with a win … but they weren't all that interested in playing ball the way they must play ball to come away with a hard-earned triumph. I’ll explain more on this later. With juicy details.
2) The Cardinals won four of six games on their road trip to Houston and Miami, and that’s a successful tour. Could have been better, yes. They had a chance to take both road series but flopped on the final day. With the three-game set in Miami up for grabs in the sixth and final game of their journey, the Cardinals presented their least inspired showing of the season. It happens. But it’s kind of weird to see this considering the way these crusading Cardinals compete with a hunger to prove they’re more than a dismal and irrelevant rebuilding team that exists to get slapped around by the elites. Hey, even working-class heroes take a break.
3) All teams have bad days at the yard, so this wasn’t a disgrace or a betrayal of trust or anything dramatic like that. The boys were flat. The boys were a Gashouse Gang with no gas.
4) I guess I’m just disappointed that, in this particular game, the Redbirds played the role assigned to them before the season. You know what I’m referring to. They were cast as the low-payroll, low-ceiling, low-talent enterprise that was supposed to win fewer than 70 games in the new campaign. They were and are the lonely birds, playing in front of small crowds at home. They’ll try to replenish the pep in time for the weekend home series against the Mariners.
5) That said, I think every team in the majors would be ecstatic to go 4-2 in every six-game roadie they have during a season.
6) Manager Oli Marmol went with a so-called “getaway day” lineup for the series capper Wednesday at the empty art deco baseball park in Miami. These types of lineups are typical, predictable, and no surprise whatsoever. I’ve always been entertained by the way the noisiest fans go bananas over this, as if they’re shocked to see it, as if it’s never happened before.
7) My goodness the most competitive man I know, Tony La Russa, put these odd lineup mashups together more often than people want to remember. (And I always loved it when he’d win with these patchwork lineups – which he did frequently.) Every single Cardinals manager I’ve observed has used getaway-day lineups, to get their regulars an extra day off before a scheduled day off.
8) On Friday, the Cardinals will begin a stretch of 17 games in 17 days. And they will be taking on the Mariners, Pirates and Dodgers. HELLO! Everybody could use a little extra rest before heading out on the collision course. And I don’t know how to break it to the performative whiners … but it’s a 162-game season in baseball, and they can’t all be treated like a Super Bowl. But let a Cards manager rest two or three weary regulars, or try to protect a minor injury before it turns more serious – and just like that the fake outrage comes oozing out of the ears when it’s time to perform on “X”.
9) The problem wasn’t the lineup. The problem was the effort and the execution. The Cardinals had enough solid bats in that lineup to score more than a run – and some of the most pitiful at-bats in this setback were taken by some of their most talented players.
10) Alec Burleson was given the day off after playing in all of the team’s first 23 games of the season. On this trip, in particular, the big man was out there diving and sliding and body-slamming around in the infield dirt – as a runner or a belly-flopping first baseman … even ripping holes in his uniform a couple of times. I think a breather was a good idea for Big Burly. You know, because there’s 138 games left on the schedule?
11) Jordan Walker was given the day off, and folks who are actually capable of paying attention were also capable of understanding why this was an OK thing to do. Walker had struck out exactly two times per game during a six-game stretch before Wednesday. In the six games he batted .200, had one RBI, and whiffed to a strikeout rate of 42.8 percent. (He was chasing bad pitches again.) Since last homering on April 14, Walker has 6 hits in 29 at-bats (.209) with a .281 on-base rate and .276 slugging percentage. The small break will do Walker some good.
12) And in the seven games since his most recent home run, Walker had a strikeout rate of just under 41 percent. And in an action-packed sequence of games, we watched Walker repeatedly and aggressively flying around the bases – pushing hard and playing hard – to help set up runs. And defensively, he intimidated opponents with his autocannon throws. That’s 250 pounds of energy and emotion, ignited to find ways to help his team win games when he doesn’t homer. Rest him Wednesday? Check. Scheduled day off Thursday? Yes. That’s smart.
13) Masyn Winn had the day off (OUTRAGE!!!) after a huge and deeply personal series in his hometown (Houston), followed by his important contributions in the first two games of the Miami series. After a very slow start, Winn batted .387 with a 1.074 OPS, a combination of 14 runs scored or driven in, and five extra-base hits, and dynamic defense at shortstop.
14) Winn’s start to the season was eventful, more than just a little draining. And the irony of all of these folks mewling over his day off Wednesday – many of them are the same souls who criticize Oli Marmol for playing Winn too much and wearing him out. I’ve criticized that myself, and I see no reason to deplete Winn with 85 percent of the schedule to go.
15) I don’t know if there was any type of allergic reaction to Marmol’s decision to give Jose Fermin a start Wednesday. (I doubt there was, but who knows?) But if there was any caterwauling over that – what would be the reason? Fermin had only 25 plate appearances on the season before Wednesday, and he’d done pretty damn well with his chances, posting a .333 on-base percentage and .450 slug and an OPS+ that was 25 percent above league average offensively. Before Wednesday, in 40 games and 95 plate appearances since the start of the 2025 season, Fermin had a .275 average, .366 OBP, a .425 slug, and was 27 percent above league average offensively. He had a lousy day at the plate Wednesday – most Cardinals did – but that doesn’t mean it was wrong to give him his sixth start of the season.
16) Thomas Saggese was in the lineup. Not sure how the BFIB felt about that. When he isn’t in the lineup, there’s bellyaching about how the Cardinals should play him more. I mean this sincerely: I actually think Saggese should get some sharpening time at Triple A Memphis. Saggese is 0 for 17 with eight strikeouts since April 12, and his batting average for the season (50 at-bats) is down to .180, with a .461 OPS. Saggese, who bats from the right side, is 1 for 10 against lefty pitchers with four strikeouts. When facing righthanders, Saggese is batting .200 with a strikeout rate over 30 percent. I like him. But he needs sharpening.
17) I’m rooting for Kyle Leahy … but at some point it would be nice to see some progress in the Cardinals’ attempt to turn him into a starting pitcher, a move that I supported. But after getting clobbered by the Marlins on Wednesday and slogging through a dismal start, Leahy’s ERA ballooned to 5.63. He’s made five starts, allowing too many hits, too many baserunners, too many homers and not enough swing-miss or strikeouts. The experiment continues, and I have no reason to believe the Cards are thinking about relocating Leahy to the bullpen.
18) Reliever Matt Svanson continues to get better. At least he’s trending in a more positive direction. We’ll see if he can keep progressing.
19) I saved this for the last item because I love the info I gathered and wanted to share it. The St. Louis hitters really did look like a group of people who were in a hurry to get to the airport and catch a flight home. Let’s just say that the quality of at-bats was unimpressive. Perhaps “frustrating” would be a better term.
Here’s why I say this:
a) As a team the Cardinal hitters saw an average of 3.39 pitches per plate appearance in Wednesday’s game – down from their season average of 3.91 pitches per PA. That may not seem like much, but it is. That 3.39 PP/PA is far, far below league average.
b) One of the Cardinals’ specialties is grinding out at-bats and making pitchers labor. This did not happen Wednesday – though there is one exception that I’ll get to in a bit. The Cards had 33 plate appearances in the loss, and with that average of 3.39 pitches per, their hitters made it easy for Miami’s pitchers, who threw about 20 pitches less than usual in a game. The equivalent of an inning, or maybe 1 and ⅓ innings. The rush-job at-bats led to only four hits, two walks, and an elevated strikeout rate of 27.2 percent.
c) So why am I calling this a rush job by the Redbirds? Well, for starters 20 of their 33 plate appearances lasted only three pitchers or fewer.
d) They saw 14 or fewer pitches in seven of the nine innings. The worst of this happened early; over the first four innings Miami starter Janson Junk got 12 outs on 38 total pitches – an average of 9.5 pitches per inning.
e) In nine innings of at-bats, the Cardinals fouled off only 13 pitches! And 12 of the 13 foul balls came after the fourth inning – with 10 of the 13 happening in the 6th inning or later.
f) Prince JJ Wetherholt, the leadoff man, is known for his persistence in making pitchers work hard in the process of wearing them down. Well, in his four plate appearances Wednesday, Wetherholt saw exactly three pitches in each of his four at-bats. What? Was there a glitch in the matrix?
g) Ramon Urias: nine pitches, total, in four at-bats. Thanks very much.
h) Jose Fermin had one three-pitch at-bat, and the result was identical on every pitch: strike (looking), strike (looking), strike (looking.) Yer out.
i) With all due respect to Ivan Herrera, who smoked a solo homer in the 9th, the “star of the game” for the Cardinals was outfielder Nathan Church.
j) In his four at-bats Church extended the battles for a final total of 28 pitches thrown his way. That’s an average of 7.0 pitches per at-bat. And with the Cardinals down 4-1 in the ninth with a runner on first base, Church pushed Webster Groves native Pete Fairbanks, Miami’s closer, during a spirited eight-pitch showdown that included three fouled-off balls. On the eighth pitch Fairbanks struck out Church on an 82-mph slider. But Churchie put up a helluva fight and had a single and a walk in this game.
From now on, I hope the Cardinals leave the hurry-up offense to the Battlehawks.
Thanks for reading and I’m sorry for any typos.
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.