Welcome to the new week. I don’t know if we have an official JJ Wetherholt “slump,” because I’m not sure how this would be considered an official event, and I don’t know if it’s actually a slump. And whatever it is we’re calling this, it doesn’t change a thing in how I view the Cardinals’ confident and industrious freshman.
Wetherholt is grand … and not just because of his so-called “Little League grand slam” Friday in San Diego.
OK, here’s what I do know:
1. JJ has experienced a stalled start in May. This downbeat phase has lasted only nine ballgames. And for almost heaven West Virginia sake, it was less than two weeks ago that we witnessed this left-handed swinging auteur from WVU complete a demolition of his hometown-team Pirates at PNC Park. So if there’s a slump going on here, it’s more of a glitch, a hitch, or a snag.
Factually speaking, in his first 40 plate appearances of his second month in the majors, Wetherholt is 6 of 36 for a .167 average. All of his safeties were singles. This sudden onset of normal-hitter stuff – he’s human – includes a .417 OPS, and six total bases and only three runs scored. But the Little League grand slam under the Friday night lights was a marvelous show. This St. Louis stripling hasn’t lost his ability to create drama and excitement.
2. There’s a learning curve, an education, in these major leagues. And no one said JJ had to turn in straight As, or be a flawless boy wonder in every competition. And the truth is, he’s having problems when these major-league slabmen stand on their little hill and throw everything but their iPhones at-him. These scalawags have an assortment of hocus-pocus pitches to confuse the most precocious novice.
Which is to say …
OK, kid, we see that you can sledgehammer a fastball. Welcome to the show. Now try some of these …
Wetherholt must sort through a large variety-pack of pitches. In his MLB career, which consists of 40 games, he has been tested by 12 different types of pitches (according to Statcast: four-seamers, sinkers, cutters, sliders, changeups, splitters, curves, sweepers, knuckle curves, forkballs, slurves, and slow curves. What, no eephus pitch?
Fastballs? Oh, Wetherholt has a 23.8 percent strikeout rate on four-seam heaters. But other than that he’s cracking pitches, stinging pitches, and hitting some corkers.
JJ vs. the four-seam fastball: .259 average, .704 slugging percentage, 1.069 OPS, seven home runs, three doubles, and a wRC+ that makes him 102 percent above league average. Yes, all seven of his homers have been off the four-seam.
However: when these villainous pitchers take JJ away from the family of fastballs, and introduce him to their variations on off-speed offerings breaking-pitch spinners, it gets a little confusing at times. Like an old-timey sportswriter might type something along the lines of, “he looks like he’s swinging with a broken ladder,” whatever the hell that means. But it’s funny.
JJ vs. all non-fastballs: 14 for 72, two doubles, 12 singles, .194 batting average, .222 slugging percentage, 1.7 barrel rate.
Early this month Wetherholt is sampling more changeups and sliders. There is also a strategy within the strategy.
Pitchers still throw Wetherholt four-seam fastballs, but usually up in the zone, which is a key part of the plan. Pitching high in the zone is designed to speed Wetherholt up and then mess with his timing by coming back at him with something slower, or something that slithers.
Wetherholt is gearing up for high velocity – thus accelerating his internal swing clock. So pitchers disrupt his rhythm and balance with a changeup or a sweeping, slow-riding breaking ball. This impedes his bat path.
And this approach of throwing hard, throwing slow, changing speeds, changing his eye level … Well, it’s been effective. As I noted earlier, in the first month of the season, Wetherholt slammed 10 extra-base hits when challenged by a four-seam fastball.
So far in May, Wetherholt is 2 of 14 (.143) against the four seam with a whiff-swing rate of 37.5 percent and a strikeout rate of 26.7%.
It’s all part of the game. JJ Wetherholt will learn. He will adapt. He will generate more confidence. You can only fool this guy so many times … and then he’ll be on it … all over it. And the pitchers will have to think of something else.
BIRD BYTES
— After ripping a two-run homer to put the Cardinals up 2-0 at San Diego on Sunday, Jordan Walker took some impressive numbers into Monday’s scheduled off day.
— Walker’s 169 wRC+ is the second-best among NL hitters behind Atlanta’s Matt Olson. And that wRC+ means Walker is 69 percent above league average offensively. Dang. Over his previous two seasons, 2024-25, Walker’s wRC+ was 32 percent below league average offensively.
— Going into the new week, Walker ranked 6th among National League position players in WAR (1.8). And in the NL he stands tall with a .955 OPS that ranks 2nd among non-Coors Field hitters … tied for 3rd with 11 homers … 4th with a 578 slugging percentage … tied for 4th with 31 runs scored … tied for 8th with 29 RBIs … 12th with a .377 OBP. Just remarkable when we take a minute to think about where Walker stood over the last two seasons.
— The St. Louis offense has been stymied too often during the first nine games of May. After slugging .401 and averaging 5.0 runs per game in March-April (No. 7), the Redbirds are slugging .341 and averaging 3.44 runs per game in May (No. 23.)
— The home-run pace has slowed in May. The Cards ranked 5th in the majors with 1.32 homers per game during the season’s opening month but are hitting only 0.55 HRs per game in May, which ranks near the bottom of the rankings.
— Another way to show the disparity: the Cards homered every 25.4 at-bats in March-April and are going deep every 59.2 at-bats in May. Big change. And this team will have a hard time scoring runs without the benefits provided by the longball.
— After scoring 31 runs in sweeping all four games in Pittsburgh at the end of April, the Cardinals have the same number of runs (31) in May … but it took them nine games to get there.
— The Cardinals should have won Sunday’s game at San Diego, but I don't heap the blame on closer Riley O’Brien for a rare failure to lock in a save. I put more blame on a St. Louis offense which went 3 for 33 in Sunday’s 3-2 loss. And excluding the fourth inning, when Jordan Walker gave the Cardinals a 2-0 lead with his 11th homer, STL hitters went 1 for 28 in all other innings.
— Even after the disappointing series split at San Diego, the Cardinals (23-17) have done very well this season relative to the gloomy forecasts. But because they’re a good team – and not a lost cause – more is expected of them now. And there’s nothing wrong with any fan for being disappointed with letting a series win get away. The Padres salvaged a 2-2 split despite scoring only eight total runs in four games and batting .121 in the series. San Diego had a 32 percent strikeout rate in this series – that’s a lot! – against a St. Louis pitching staff that isn’t known for strikeouts. The Cardinals’ 18.8 percent staff strikeout rate is tied with the Nationals for the worst among the 30 teams. But …
— The Cardinals, however, are sharpening up in their pitching performance. Here are some details of the resurgence:
+ The Cards had the third-best team ERA in the majors (2.46) this month through Sunday. That includes a 2.42 starting-pitching ERA that also ranks third. Redbird starters have yielded the lowest home-run rate in the majors so far this month (0.35 per 9 innings) and are tied for third with five quality starts in May.
+ The STL starters and relievers are striking out more hitters. During the first month of the season, the Cards ranked last in the majors with a 17.8 percent strikeout rate. But that rate has increased to 22.8% in May, which ranks 13th.
+ Since April 14, a span of 24 games, St. Louis starters rank fifth in the majors with a rotation ERA of 3.36. The only four teams to have a lower starter ERA over that time are the Brewers, Rays, Dodgers and Braves. Pretty good company!
+ Since April 14 the Cards starters also rank fourth in fielding independent ERA (3.33) and are 12th with a strikeout rate of 20.9%. Before that date, over the first 16 games of the season, Cardinal starters were last in the majors with a puny strikeout rate of 13.3%. So this is a significant improvement.
+ Here are the starter earned-run averages since April 14: Michael McGreevy 2.20, Dustin May 2.76, Kyle Leahy 3.86, Matthew Liberatore 3.86. I would take this season’s rotation over the Cardinals’ 2025 rotation. That’s because this rotation doesn’t have Miles Mikolas or Erick Fedde and has an improved version of Pallante.
+ And don’t forget that after the All-Star break last season, Sonny Gray had a 5.45 ERA in 13 starts; that ranked No. 107 among 124 starters that worked at least 40 innings in the second half.
+ In addition to having a 2.54 ERA in the first nine games of May, St. Louis relievers have an improved 4.20 ERA (20th) in the 24 games since April 14. What’s so special about a 4.20 ERA? It’s a matter of perspective. A 4.20 ERA is a helluva lot stronger than the 5.26 ERA slapped on the STL bullpen over the first 16 games of 2026. The relievers are also notching more strikeouts in recent weeks.
— The Cardinals are promoting their 19-year old catching phenom, Rainiel Rodriguez, to Double A Springfield. This is an aggressive move by the organization that tells us everything about how highly the Cardinals value Rodriguez. As others have pointed out, he’s been playing against older players at every step of the minors – including many opponents that are three years older in Double A – but nothing slows him down. This season at Peoria, Rodriguez performed nearly 50 percent above league average offensively. And in 154 professional games, he’s batted .301 with a .422 on-base rate and .581 slugging percentage with a .949 OPS. And Rodriguez keeps getting better and better and better.
— With such a logjam of catchers, Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom will be facing some tough decisions – perhaps sooner than he loosely envisioned. On the big club are Pedro Pages and Ivan Herrera. At Triple A Memphis are Jimmy Crooks and Leo Bernal. And now Rodgriguez will be only two steps from reaching the major-league level.
— Pages’ defense is valuable … even though some will (strangely) try to tell you that isn’t the case. According to Statcast, Pages has a Fielding Run Value that puts him above 95 percent of major-league catchers. His caught-stealing metrics show that Pages is better than 97 percent of big-league catchers at throwing out runners. He also has an excellent rapport with the Cards pitching staff and is a good leader.
— I’ve been touting Pages’ offense, and he thanked me (just kidding) by going 1 for 23 so far in May after ranking among the top seven catchers offensively during the first month of the season. But with so many young catchers surging through STL’s minor-league pipeline, Bloom will have little choice but to move Pages to another team. “When” is the top question.
— The Giants just traded Patrick Bailey, the best defensive catcher in the majors. And in the deal with the Guardians, the Giants received the 29th overall pick in the 2026 MLB draft, plus a pitching prospect. Bailey is extremely limited offensively, but San Francisco did well to clear space for two young catchers that need the room for playing time – and got a nice return (all things considered) in the exchange. FanGraphs has Pages rated No. 4 overall defensively among major-league catchers, and if a couple of teams out there have a desire to upgrade their defense at the catcher position, they should text Bloom and have a little conversation.
Thanks for reading …
–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.