Hello, and welcome to my new feature here at STL Sports Central: Breakfast with Bernie, which I’ll write early in the morning on most weekdays. I’ll serve up observations, opinions, notes, facts, stats, praise, cheap shots, randomness, and some weirdness as I have my first cuppa or two of the day. We’ll (mostly) go “Buffet” style to give you a chance to graze before I write a different column that I’ll post later in the day. On most days during the week, I’ll lead off with a Cards recap. There will be plenty of baseball information served here.
And remember the old 1968 hit song by the Rascals: “It’s a Beautiful Morning.” Every morning qualifies – life! – even after the dad-gum Cardinals repeatedly soil and lose to the Texas Rangers for the second consecutive evening.
Tuesday’s final score: 7-4, Arlington. Here’s why the Cardinals lost to the Rangers again …
1. Abandoned runners: the home team went 3 for 14 with men in scoring position and left 11 teammates stranded afield. The Cards are tied for the poorest RISP batting average (.222) in the majors this season. Over their last eight games – vs. the Brewers, Cubs and Rangers – the Cardinals are 9 for 59 (.153) and have 16 strikeouts with runners in position to score. That includes a .122 batting average (RISP) in their six losses during this stretch.
2. Two mind-frying decisions to have Victor Scott II bunt even though runners already were in position to score both times. Masyn Winn was on third in the 3rd inning and Scott ruined a one-out safety squeeze attempt with a worthless bunt. Jimmy Crooks was on second (with no outs) in the 8th and Scott’s horrendous pop-up bunt was caught in foul ground. Scott bunting is incessant and redundant and ineffective. If a manager doesn’t have faith in a major-league hitter to step in the batter’s box and deliver a routine sac fly or produce an RBI single, then the major-league hitter should be in the minor leagues to work on his actual hitting.
3. Riley O’Brien’s extensive and alarming meltdown phase continued. The closer took over a 4-4 game in the ninth inning Tuesday and was jumped by the Rangers for three runs. In his last 13 appearances in a stretch that began April 25, O’Brien has an 8.31 ERA. In 13 innings over that time, he’s been slapped around for 12 earned runs and 18 hits with five walks, four hit batters and two wild pitches. In his last four relief assignments, O’Brien has been assaulted for six earned runs in 4 and ⅓ innings for a 12.46 ERA. I’m having unsettling Ricky Bottalico flashbacks.
4. Dustin May and the 3rd time through the lineup: that’s when the Rangers got to him, going 2 for 5 with a double and a walk to take a 3-2 lead in the sixth. May has a 6.75 ERA this season when taking on the opposing lineup for the third time in the game.
5. The Texas bullpen put up another wall. In the first two games of the series, Rangers relievers had a substantial role in the team’s two victories by working seven innings and yielding only one run. The bullpen crew faced 24 St. Louis batters over the two nights and was scratched for only three hits, with no walks. The relievers struck out 37.6 percent of the 24 Cardinal hitters that theoretically posed a threat.
Onto the Buffet. Follow me…
— Joshua Baez says: don’t you forget about me. Well, not literally. But he had four hits for Memphis on Tuesday night, with two going for doubles, and he produced three RBIs. I don’t think Chaim Bloom will forget about Josh, who has 16 home runs, 10 doubles, three triples, 42 runs batted in and a .573 slugging percentage .915 OPS in 51 games at Triple A ball this year. His Statcast profile for Memphis is exciting: 52% hard-hit rate, a 20.2% barrel rate, and an adjusted average exit velocity of 93.4 miles per hour. Baez continues to get starts in center field.
— New York Knicks vs. San Antonio Spurs, NBA Finals. Who you got? The Spurs have the homecourt advantage in this series, which opens Wednesday night in Texas. The Knicks are the more rested team, but did they cool off after winning 11 consecutive Eastern Conference postseason games to get here? This is a tough call but I think this is the Year of The Wemby. Spurs in 7.
— Depending on where you shop San Antonio is a minus 190 betting favorite to win the series. But a lot of quants believe the Knicks are undervalued.
— This is a crazy number from the great Steve Makinen at VSIN: Over the past 11 NBA Finals, outright winners of finals games are a preposterous 62-3-3 against the spread (95.4%). In last year’s Finals (OKC vs. Indiana) the outright winner of each of the seven games covered the spread in all seven games.
— Is the 2026 season beginning to turn on the Cardinals? I wouldn’t say YES to that; there’s a lot of NL parity and it’s too soon to make sweeping declarations. But recent trends aren’t inspiring. The Cardinals are 18-18 in their last 36 games. They’re 8-13 in the last 21, have dropped 10 of the last 14, and have won only twice in the previous nine games.
— I loved the final season of “The Bear” on Hulu. But I hate that The Bear and “Hacks” – two fantastic shows – have ended their run.
— Lookalikes, kind of: actor Jeremy Allen White and Turnstile lead singer Brendan Yates.
— The Cardinals have scored only 97 runs in their last 28 games going back to May 1. The Padres are the only MLB team with fewer runs than STL over that time.
— It’s a crisis. if you don’t see me here for a few days, it’s because I’ll be away from my home office to go into rehab to do something about my addiction to Red Hot Riplets. My laptop keys are covered with Riplet dust. It’s bad, folks.
— In his last 17 appearances, Cardinal reliever George Soriano has a 1.76 ERA and a 24.4% strikeout, and his park-and-league adjusted ERA is 56 percent better than the league average.
— The Milwaukee Brewers are rolling. And they are formidable. The Crew opened their current series against the visiting Giants by winning the first two games by a combined 24-5 score. The Brewers have won seven of their last eight and have a 24-8 record since April 26. In this 32-game blitz they’ve hammered opponents 165-86 for a run differential of +74.
— And there’s this note from MLB.com: The outstanding Milwaukee rotation is led by Jacob Misiorowski (1.65 ERA) and Kyle Harrison (1.57.) And both starters have a rate of at least 11 strikeouts per 9 innings pitched.
— Since ERA became an official stat in both leagues in 1913, no other MLB team has had two pitchers with earned-run averages under 2.00 and K/9 rates over 11 at the end of any day in June or later in a season. (Minimum 11 starts.)
— Going into Wednesday’s action the Brewer rotation leads majors in strikeout rate (26.5%), WAR (10.2), fewest homers allowed per 9 IP (0.73) and are second with a 3.15 ERA. During the team’s current 24-8 run Milwaukee’s starting pitchers lead the majors in ERA (2.49) and strikeout rate (29%).
— Wait. Hold on now. What? Pete Crow-Armstrong (Cubs) and Sophie Cunningham (Mizzou, WNBA Indiana Fever) are buddies? And she went on Instagram to tell the Tarps Off gang at Busch Stadium to "shut their mf trap" when PCA responded to their heckling with a 440-foot home run into their standing zone in Saturday night’s game? The news is a little old but it was new to me.
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.