St. Louis Cardinals: Five keys to the 2018 regular season part three

With Opening Day just a day away, I continue my look at the keys to a successful 2018 regular season for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Yesterday I continued my “Five Keys to the 2018 regular season” series with part two focusing on the bullpen. Like the starting pitching in part one, the bullpen also needs to step up their consistency late in games. Perhaps the more intriguing questions for the St. Louis Cardinals now after Jordan Hicks made the Opening Day roster is who will close?

Time will tell, but let’s focus on another key to this season: the lineup.

Scoring early and often

The St. Louis Cardinals front office made it their first official business of the off-season to address the offensive side of the team by trading for Marcell Ozuna. The issues plaguing the team on offense only added the stress to the other aspects of the team, especially pitching late in games. However, in 2018, the tables will be turned.

It is now the offense’s responsibility to bail out a potentially weak starting rotation and bullpen. The offense will need to compensate for some of the inconsistencies the back-end of the rotation may give us on a day. Is that to say the pitching will be bad? No, but the St. Louis Cardinals need to be able to put pressure on other teams early on in games and at higher frequency than last year.

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Last year the Cardinals scored 4.7 runs per game, good for 13th across baseball and seventh in the National League. Of the six teams ahead of the Cardinals last season in average runs per game, five of the teams made it into the playoffs.

If the Cardinals are to make the playoffs, it is reasonable to say they need to average right around five runs per game. The Dodgers scored right around 4.81 runs a game last season and made it to the NLCS, mainly on their pitching.

But, there’s more to it than just averaging five runs a game. At times last year, the St. Louis Cardinals offense went absolutely silent for days at a time and then exploded for a multitude of runs over a couple of days to even things out.

If the Cardinals are to have a successful season, avoiding being shut out in back to back nights is a step in the right direction. Obviously, they will face some of the best pitching in the National League, but the retooled offense should be able to make a difference this year.

Superstars need to produce

How do the St. Louis Cardinals reach the threshold of five runs a game? The quick and easy answer is they just need to hit. But I’ll take it a step further and focus on the middle of the order and the Cardinals superstars.

No matter how you feel about how manager Mike Matheny should create the lineup, the answer continues to hit us right in the face. Matt Carpenter is your third place hitter, with Marcell Ozuna hitting fourth, and Yadier Molina hitting fifth. Although it is not set in stone, Joe Trezza of MLB.com covering the St. Louis Cardinals gave us his projected lineup for Opening Day.

1. Dexter Fowler
2. Tommy Pham
3. Matt Carpenter
4. Marcell Ozuna
5. Yadier Molina
6. Paul DeJong
7. Jedd Gyorko
8. Kolten Wong

It’s the same lineup I’ve tried explaining to a couple of our contributors here at Redbird Rants. Some of them will still tell you they would prefer the lineup a different way, but this just makes the most sense for the team moving forward.

But this lineup hinges around those three guys I mentioned earlier in Carpenter, Ozuna, and Molina.

If Matt Carpenter is to hit in the three-hole, then he needs to return to the hitter he was when he made the All-Star team in 2013 and the stellar year he had in 2015. Carpenter recently said he has given up searching for the home run ball, which only means good things for the rest of the lineup.

Related Story: Top-10 lineup rankings

But even then, it goes beyond Carpenter returning to the hitter he was. What made Marcell Ozuna such a prolific hitter last year, outside of just being really good, was having a prolific hitter in front of him as protection. Ozuna’s hitting ability is something the Cardinals have sorely missed since the days of Albert Pujols, but it doesn’t mean anything if the person hitting in front of him offers him protection.

Carpenter and Ozuna must protect one another in the lineup by playing to the best of their abilities. If they can do that in the lineup it then gives way to the fifth place hitter, Yadier Molina. Now I know Molina hitting fifth is sticking point for some fans, but as I’ve said before he makes the most sense for the Cardinals this season.

Could Paul DeJong make his way to fifth in the order by the end of the year? Definitely, but if DeJong cannot lower his strike out rate, then Molina’s hitting is what the Cardinals need behind Ozuna.

Don’t forget Molina is coming off a season where he hit .273 with 18 home runs and 82 RBI. You’re telling me you wouldn’t take that out of Molina in the same spot in the order? Again, like Carpenter and Ozuna though, Molina has sustain his presence in the lineup by continuing to produce at a high rate, especially as he nears the end of his illustrious career.

Next: Five key to the 2018 regular season part two

If the St. Louis Cardinals receive superstar play from their core middle of the order guys, then it makes it that much easier for the rest of the lineup to thrive in situations. It will also help maximize this offense’s potential. Over the last couple of days, we have seen the offense look really good. Let’s just hope they can carry that throughout the season.