St. Louis Cardinals: Two players honored for recent performances

The St. Louis Cardinals have the been hotter than any other team lately and they have players being honored for their performances. Who was recognized?

Since the All-Star Break, the St. Louis Cardinals have been the hottest team in baseball and have been the best team in baseball with a record of 33-16 since that time. The pitching staff has gotten consistent, the bullpen has stayed hot, and the offense has just about been good enough to make things work and win some games.

Naturally, the hottest team in baseball has to have some of the players who are the hottest in the league and on Tuesday, two Cardinals were recognized for their recent performances.

Those two were Jack Flaherty, who won the NL Pitcher of the Month award for August, and Yadier Molina who is the NL Player of the Week for this past week. Just how good have these two been?

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Starting with Flaherty, he has been hot for longer than just the month of August as, since the ASB, he has just a 0.98 ERA. In the month of August though, Flaherty had a 0.71 ERA over six starts and 38.0 innings as struck out 47 and allowed just three earned runs all month long. Flaherty could give up three runs and still have a quality start going. Three runs over the whole month is insane.

For the month, Flaherty ranked first among NL pitchers in ERA and fWAR, second in innings pitched, and third in strikeouts. Wow.

As for Yadier Molina, since last Monday the 26th of August, Molina has batted .522 with a 1.751 OPS paired with four homers and three doubles over seven games. It was an amazing week for Molina which has continued his hot streak since his return off the IL on August 13th.

Flaherty has returned to clear ace status in the second half and has been huge for the starting staff and Molina has been an offensive powder keg in the past week as the team has stayed hot.

Both of these players are guys the Cardinals need to stay hot down the stretch to keep hold of the NL Central. They have done it so far and the results are palpable. Congrats two both of them on their performance.