St. Louis Cardinals: The Takeaways from the Cards Turnaround

With a slow start to the St. Louis Cardinals season, they seemed to have turned it around with a 6-1 record this past week. Now 9-10 on the short season, but there were plenty of great signs this past week for the club.

The St. Louis Cardinals opened up the week at home against the Pirates and, of course, they swept that series. They won every game against Pittsburgh by a score of 2-1, oddly enough. From that series alone there are many things to learn.

After the Pirates series, they headed to Milwaukee to play a four-game set against the Brew Crew, where they lost the first game and won the next three. A very good week for the Cardinals.

Starting off with the series against the Pirates at home, the club saw great games from their starting pitchers, with timely hits on offense.

In Game one, the St. Louis Cardinals saw a great outing from Lance Lynn: he went seven innings and only allowed three hits and no runs. While in Games two and three, Mike Leake and Michael Wacha had great starts. The offense was solid all series as well. To this point, a big takeaway from game three was Dexter Fowler‘s three hits, two of them being solo shots.

The Cards saw great production from nearly every guy on the team last week, including Matt Adams, who was off to a slow start, as he had a big insurance RBI single in game four against the Brewers. Platoon guys like Jedd Gyorko, Kolten Wong, Jose Martinez, and Greg Garcia all had great weeks.

Don’t forget about Randal Grichuk and Yadier Molina as they had a combined ten hits in the series.

Let’s not forget about the pitching improvement this past week either. The only game where the Cardinals gave up more than runs than they would’ve liked was game one of the Brewers series, as Martinez had five earned runs.

The bullpen held up well despite giving up two runs in the series finale late in Milwaukee. With Tyler Lyons back in the fold, the bullpen is a bit deeper to this point. Brett Cecil has picked it up, as Trevor Rosenthal and Seung-hwan Oh continue to be good out of the pen for the Birds.

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The St. Louis Cardinals now have three of the best starters in terms of earned run average in the National League. Those guys are Lance Lynn, Leake, and Wacha, all with ERA’s under 3.00. They all rank within the top-20 in the NL; Leake is second behind a guy the Cardinals beat this past week– Brewers’ Chase Anderson.

Things should get better and more consistent offensively, with Fowler hoping to heat up along with many other Cardinal hitters. Fowler’s OBP should jump up to Stephen Piscotty/Matt Carpenter level soon (the .350 or above range). The platoon guys are the types who can jump start the offense as they kind of did this week. The weeks that Gyorko and Kolten Wong had were pretty incredible which are good signs for the Cardinals there.

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The power bats aren’t there as much this year, but timely hitting, good defense, and good pitching is the Cardinal way. Getting to the Cardinal way is where they should want to be and where they will be soon. Let’s hope they can continue their turnaround and try to gain back NL-Central prominence, keep it going boys!