St. Louis Cardinals: Four moves to get Cards back in the NLCS

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ARLINGTON, TEXAS – MAY 19: Harrison Bader #48 of the St. Louis Cardinals celebrates after scoring a run against the Texas Rangers in the tenth inning at Globe Life Park in Arlington on May 19, 2019 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) /

The ‘speed lineup’: start Arozarena, Bader and Edman

If you can’t score runs the traditional way, your only choice is to manufacture ’em!

Putting Randy Arozarena in right field, Harrison Bader in center field and moving Tommy Edman back to third base would increase the team’s chances of beating out infield hits, bunting for a hit, stealing bases, putting on the hit-and-run or the run-on-contact, stretching singles into doubles, doubles into triples, and advancing on passed balls, wild-pitches and base overthrows.

And toss in Kolten Wong who is already at the top of the lineup and – voila! – you have an instant Running Redbirds.

A lineup of running rabbits would be a shock to Washington. And probably scare the bejeebus out of them. Right now nobody in the Cardinals lineup is scaring the bejeebus out of the Nationals.

What? Bader can’t hit?? Neither can anybody else right now. Let’s see what he can do. (Have him bunt all his at-bats?)

This lineup would also be very solid defensively. Sometimes, if you can’t make runs, preventing them is the next best thing.

Final thoughts

Are these changes an overreaction? To quote Ricky Roma played by Al Pacino in Glengarry Glenn Ross:

"“Perhaps. What isn’t? They’re an opportunity. That’s all they are. They’re an event. “"

Next. How to lose consecutive NLCS games. dark

I realize that there are not a whole lot of choices for manager Shildt. His roster is what it is. We did our best to come up with four things that might help. I realize that these moves could hurt the feelings of the players demoted. But, hopefully, all will be forgiven when one of these moves earns them their World Series rings.