LOS ANGELES — Having touched down here in Southern California, I can report there is a sense of worry in the air.
It’s not the smog; people here are used to that.
It’s not the fact Stan Kroenke’s SoFi Stadium looks an awful lot like a concrete comb-over from the vantage point of an airplane’s descent into LAX; people here are more familiar with the view from the hours-long wait to get into hundred-dollar parking lots.
No, what has the left-coasters a little worried is the state of the Dodgers lineup as Wednesday’s wild-card game against the Cardinals approaches.
Mad Max Scherzer will be on the mound for the Dodgers, and there is great comfort in that for Dave Roberts’ 106-win club, but it seems Mighty Max Muncy will be out.
Roberts made it sound like the first baseman would need a miracle to appear in the postseason after he suffered a scary looking arm injury Sunday. The southpaw slugger leads the Dodgers in home runs (36), extra-base hits (64), go-ahead RBIs (26), game-winning RBIs (17) and RBIs in general (94). Without him, Roberts will have to figure out if wants to take the risk of starting lefty-bashing Albert Pujols against right-handed Adam Wainwright, or Cody Bellinger, whose numbers this season are rotten.
With all due respect to Pujols and his propensity to make magic against his former club, a cruel twist for the Dodgers is a fortunate one for the Cardinals, and it raises a question that would have been laughed at when the Cardinals’ postseason hopes were hanging by a thread.
Which of these two teams has a hotter lineup?
The season-long view screams Dodgers. Despite multiple injuries to key players during the regular season they averaged an NL-best 5.12 runs per game compared to the Cardinals’ 10th-place 4.36. They averaged .244 with a .330 on-base percentage and a .429 slugging percentage, producing the NL’s third-highest OPS of .759. The Cardinals posted the NL’s eighth-place .725 OPS, trailing three NL clubs that failed to make the playoffs.
But check the numbers since August.
The Dodgers, with Muncy, averaged 5.05 runs per game with a batting line of .244/.322/.444.
The Cardinals averaged 5.02 runs per game with a batting line of .262/.329/.456.
We’re talking about a sample size of 50-plus games.
Cardinals manager Mike Shildt deserves a lot of credit for the offensive intervention he spearheaded in late June, when a lineup full of hitters who all seemed to be trying to hit every ball into Big Mac Land was in the process of producing a pitiful batting line of .217/.290/.336 along with a meager 3.19 runs per game for the month. Shildt said enough was enough. Hard conversations about and with embattled third-year hitting coach Jeff Albert were had. It was time to climb out of a one dimensional rut, or go down trying.
Situational hitting was reemphasized. Key lineup changes were made. Paul Goldschmidt surged. We finally saw what happened when he and Nolan Arenado lock in at once. The outfield offense boomed in a way the Cardinals front office had long dreamed of witnessing. Tommy Edman rallied from his sophomore slump. Edmundo Sosa emerged. Finally, almost everything started working.
Shildt gets a daily printout that proves it.
The following numbers can be found on it.
Before the late June hitting intervention, the Cardinals ranked 28th in MLB in on-base percentage (.298), 24th in slugging percentage (.376) and 26th in runs per game (3.93) Between the intervention and the Cardinals’ clinch of the NL’s second wild-card spot, the Cardinals had a .327 on-base percentage (10th in MLB), a .441 slugging percentage (seventh) and a runs-per-game average of 4.8 (13th).
Perhaps most impressive has been the on-the-fly salvation of situational hitting.
The pre-intervention Cardinals averaged .146 in two-strike counts (28th in MLB) and .241 with runners in scoring position (24th). The post-intervention Cardinals on the night of their postseason clinch had averaged .194 with two-strikes (third-best in MLB) and .294 with runners in scoring position (first).
"Things weren't clicking," president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said. "Internally, we made some adjustments on how we approach hitting. The outcome, or the performance, is something we are all seeing together. None of this we speculated was going to create a 17-game run. But what we were hoping is to see us be able to put up some numbers early in a game, and continue to add on late in a game. Over the last month and a half, that's what we have been able to produce."
When the season ends, it will be time for the Cardinals to sort out whether the turnaround should be scored as a plus or a minus for Albert. Did he finally break through, or was this a byproduct of a shift away from his plan? Maybe it’s somewhere in the middle, with the right amount of big picture and attention to small details finally reaching the right boiling point. We’ll see. There’s a more important assignment at this particular moment. The Cardinals have to find ways to score against Scherzer, who since his trade from the Nationals to the Dodgers has a 1.98 ERA and a whopping run-support average of 6.59.
"This lineup is more dynamic,” Wainwright said about the offense that has backed him with an average of 5.91 runs of support per game since August. "It's not one punch. We have a lineup that can punch and counter punch. Keep punching. Keep coming back."
The Cardinals figuring out how to score hard runs salvaged their season.
Figuring out how to do it against Scherzer on Wednesday can extend it.
