I hope you had a good weekend, kind of like Spain had a good weekend.
I’m going free-forming here this Monday …
— On Joshua Baez: I’ve seen a number of interesting headlines lately on the Cardinals’ prolific home-run generator at Triple A Memphis. Including this one from Sports Illustrated: “Cardinals’ Top Prospect Joshua Baez Continues to Build His Case for MLB Call-Up”
— Well. Umm. I’m a Baez honk, a captain of the Baez cheer squad. Really I am. But since June 25, Baez has 7 hits in 62 at-bats (.113) with a .200 on-base rate and .290 slugging percentage. At least Baez has banged three homers over that time. And his strikeout rate (25.7%) and walk rate (10%) aren’t bad. And Baez has been chasing fewer pitches out of the strike zone. That’s a positive. His hard-hit rate (40%) is decent but not great. Of more concern is his relapse in swinging and missing at strikes. His contact rate in the strike zone is 72.4% since June 25, and that’s too low. At the least, you want to see Baez above 80% in his zone contact rate.
— For the season, Baez is in the bottom 10 percent of minor-league hitters in strikeout rate, whiff-swing rate, chase rate, and strike-zone contact rate. He has, however, shown improvement in some of these areas. But at age 23, Baez is still in the learning process during his first season at Triple A. His time is coming.
— Your St. Louis Cardinals sure have a strange way of showing how much they want to make the playoffs – but enough about the lost series at Arizona. The Redbirds won the opener Friday then handed the Diamondbacks two straight wins. And in doing so the Cardinals have now won only 7 of their last 17 series going back to May 19. Sunday’s 8-7 loss was their worst of the season by far. And it was the first time the Cards had a seven-run lead – only to lose – since July 6, 2010.
— That day Tony La Russa’s men led the Rockies 9-2 going into the bottom of the sixth inning at Coors Field – and then collapsed their way to a smoke-and-fire filled 12-9 defeat. The Rockies beat up on poor Cards reliever Ryan Franklin for six runs, six hits, and two homers. He retired one batter.
— The Cardinals sure do miss lefty reliever JoJo Romero, who had an 0.90 ERA in his previous 10 appearances before needing surgery to remove his appendix.
— Blaze Jordan doesn’t walk enough. He has one home run in 88 plate appearances since the Cardinals summoned him from Triple A Memphis. But one thing Jordan does very well is get hits with runners in scoring position. He came through again Sunday (two RBIs) and is now 10 for 24 (.417) and has 16 runs batted in when taking swings with men in position to score. With two outs and runners in scoring position, Jordan is 7 for 16 (.438) with 10 RBIs.
— At least Diamondbacks third baseman Nolan Arenado had a good time o’er the weekend, lashing his former team for big hits in the two consecutive wins over the bumbling Cardinals. In Arizona’s four victories over the Cardinals this season, Arenado has clubbed three doubles and a homer and knocked home five RBIs.
— Interesting idea: Citing the historically prominent shortage of right-handed big-league hitters in 2026, the fantastic Mike Pietrello (MLB.com) believes Cardinals catcher-DH Ivan Herrera “Would be the prize of the (trade-deadline) hitting crop if he’s available, which he probably won’t be, given how successful the Cardinals have been, and that he’s an above-average-hitting 26-year-old under contract for three more seasons after this one. But we’re listing him here for a few reasons, none more prominent than the fact that while the Cardinals are indeed in the race, they’re still not viewed as a go-all-in-for-it-right-now roster. It would surprise exactly no one if Chaim Bloom decided he could take advantage of the deadline's shallow crop of hitters to juice up the pitching help this team needs so badly now and in the future.”
— In his last 30 games Herrera has only three extra-base hits (two homers, one double) in 129 plate appearances. Over that time he’s batted .193 with a .310 on-base percentage and a wan .257 slugging percentage. Herrera barreled one pitch in the 30 games. In his last 22 games Herrera has a weak 23.9% hard-hit rate with no barreled pitches, and based on wRC+ he’s produced offense that’s 62 percent below league average offensively since June 23.
— In the month of July, St. Louis catchers have combined for a 34 percent strikeout rate and four RBIs. And this month opponents have swiped 16 stolen bases in 18 tries against Cards catchers. Leo Bernal, anyone?
— Former longtime Cardinals’ front-office leader John Mozeliak may be staying with the Angels longer than initially anticipated. Mozeliak’s contract as the team’s interim GM expires in December, but “Mo” likes what he’s seen so far and sounds happy.
— “I think my early takeaway is there's a lot of really good people that work here”, Mozeliak told reporters recently. “Do I think we need to better understand roles, responsibilities and how they're being deployed? Yes. Am I prepared to discuss that in a public setting like this? No. But it’s something I know is going to require time and energy.”
— All-time Cardinals’ GM rankings: (1) Branch Rickey (2) Walt Jocketty (3) Bing Devine (4) Mozeliak (5) Dal Maxvill. I wouldn’t wrestle with anyone who put Mozeliak third. Mozeliak did an outstanding job in many ways for a long time before turning stale in the gig which led to a damaging failure to draft and develop starting pitching. And there’s some things about “Der Bingle” – as legendary sports columnist Bob Broeg called Devine – that shouldn’t be forgotten.
— Devine built the 1964 and 1967 World Series champions plus the ‘68 NL pennant winner at a time when there were no playoffs. The teams that won the American League and National League then met in the World Series. There were no wild-cards entries. Your team either won its league or the season was over.
— Devine’s trade acquisitions included Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Bill White, Julian Javier and Dick Groat. He also scouted and signed a Creighton university pitcher named Bob Gibson. Bing also hired manager Johnny Keane who led the 1964 Cardinals to the first World Series for the franchise since 1946. Devine could have got a lot more done but was undermined by the meddling owner Gussie Busch. The constant interference was distracting.
— I have a question: why do we adults talk like children? I’d like to eat a sandwich. It ain’t a sando, sammie, sammich. Chicken tenders can be delicious – but what are tendies? What the hell are nuggies?
— Golf is in a strange place these days. The last three majors winners have been Aaron Rai, Wyndham Clark and Ryan Fox, a 39-year-old son of a New Zealand rugby star. Yes, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy have won six of the last 20 majors. But when they don’t win, casual fans like me usually stifle a yawn.
— And though both Scheffler and McIlroy are generally likeable, they can be odd ducks and get overly sensitive defensive when they don’t win and are asked about it.
– Example, here’s Scheffler: “I don’t really care. I would like to think that the people that love and care about me think a certain way of me, but I’ll be long gone. I’ll be dead.”
— And McIlroy: “I don’t think I’ll be seeing what people say about me. I’ll be six feet under. I don’t think I’ll be a ghost. I think it would be a pretty unfulfilling pursuit if you’re just chasing records and results. You have to enjoy the journey to get there. I’ve learned that the hard way at times by chasing results and records too much.”
— Back to Scheffler: “I don’t really play, like, for a place in history. I’m not playing for anything like that because — this is going to sound a little morbid — at the end of the day, I’m going to live my life, and it’s going to end.”
— For cripe’s sake. Lighten up, fellas. Life is good. Everything is OK. Have a pint and relax. Good grief.
— The World Cup halftime show had a little bit of everything: Madonna, the Muppets, the Biebs, Shakira, Ted Lasso, a chorus of kids from Staten Island, Coldplay’s Chris Martin … and I think I may have seen a dancing corpse of a U.S. Senator but I could be mistaken … I wasn’t familiar with the Bieber song. The only thing I caught was “We don’t have to go to Mississippi,” (what) followed by approximately 39 “hallelujahs.” Whatever.
— Spain won, no surprise. Argentina, what was up with the roughhousing? I mean, if you’re going to go that way, bring in the Tkachuk Boys.
— Six NL teams are separated by 2 and ½ games in the stalking of the No. 3 NL wild card spot. The Cardinals, Marlins and Pirates are in a three-way tie, with the Diamondbacks, Nationals and Padres in very close range.
— With that in mind, here are the updated wild-card probabilities for each of the six teams via FanGraphs.
Pirates, 43.7%
Dbacks, 27.9%
Cardinals, 25.9%
Marlins, 21.4%
Padres, 9.3%
Nationals, 4.7%
— Next up for the Cardinals: three at Anaheim. The Angels have the worst record in baseball at 39-61 (.390), have not made the playoffs since 2014, and have made only one postseason appearance since the start of the 2010 campaign. The Halos are 3-12 in the last 15 games. If the Cardinals lose this series, then it’ll be a good time for Chaim Bloom to do what he needs to do.
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, Keith Tkachuk, 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.