St. Louis Cardinals: Paul Goldschmidt named NL Player of the Month

The St. Louis Cardinals first baseman is finally playing up to where fans thought he would. As August begins, he was honored for his July.

After doing nothing at the deadline, the St. Louis Cardinals are going to need their offense to step up and perform at the very least at their career norms the rest of the second half if they are going to have a chance at going far in the playoffs or even getting in at first.

The biggest player that all this starts with is Paul Goldschmidt. In the first half, Goldy was almost exactly a league-average hitter with an OPS of .769 with 16 bombs. That OPS is about the top end fo what the team would hope to get out of a player like Harrison Bader, not the one they just signed to a five-year extension after trading for him over the offseason.

In July though, Goldy went on a tear and hit for a .308/.360/.725 with 11 homers. He was a clear catalyst in helping the team go 16-9 in the month and regain first place in the NL Central.

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On August 1st, I wrote an article here digging in a little deeper into Goldy’s success in July, but basically, the conclusion was he fixed his swing path and got more lift on the ball and has looked better at the plate clearly.

Cardinals fans weren’t the only ones to notice Goldschmidt’s hot month though as he has been named the National League Player of the Month.

This is a nice honor and I’m sure when Goldschmidt is asked about it he will deflect and pass off the gratification as a great leader like he is should do, but in thinking about it, he is stepping up exactly when the team needs him to.

He was the best batter in the NL in the month of July. Coming into the month, the team was hovering at .500 and looking for a purpose. Now they are in first place and just took a hard-fought series at home against the Cubs.

Goldy has stepped up and hopefully can stay hot. While the front office didn’t do anything to help the team on their end, it doesn’t mean that this team, led by Goldschmidt can’t make it to the playoffs.

This is Goldy’s first time winning this award with the Cardinals and hopefully, it’s the first of many over his time here in St. Louis. The last time Goldschmidt won the award was in June of 2018.

As Derrick Goold noted on twitter, Goldschmidt was the first Cardinal to win this award since Matt Carpenter did it a calendar year before. Wouldn’t it be nice to get that Carpenter back…