This Cardinals offense is better than anyone saw coming

The St. Louis Cardinals are off to a strong start this year. They’re riding an especially hot streak against Pittsburgh and the almighty Dodgers, and have been winning at a surprising clip even though their pitching staff ranks near the bottom of the league in most metrics. It doesn’t take an Artemis astronaut to conclude that this team is winning at this point in the season due to a robust offensive performance. What areas are they excelling in exactly? Thanks for asking – one month into the season, here are three areas the Cardinals are excelling in.

Hitting homers like the ‘27 Yankees (or some slightly lesser equivalent)

This team is tied for fourth in team home runs. I’m not sure there’s been a more surprising start than Anthony Reyes dominating the Tigers in the ‘06 World Series (what a time to be alive!). A pair of 23-year-old lineup mainstays are leading the way – Jordan Walker has 10 (after hitting 11 combined the last two years) and JJ Wetherholt has 7 dingers. These are the kinds of core contributions you need to be at the top of the league in team homers, but they’ve got guys chipping in all over the roster: Burly, Groman, and Nathan Church have all slammed five homers in the first month. While Herrera has added 4 (and his power bat isn’t even fully operational yet this season). Pages seems to be able to opportunistically jump on pitches to add 3 himself and a smattering of other guys have gone deep, too.

These homers mind you are coming in April before the weather heats up. Throw in the fact that their home stadium is the pitcher-friendly Busch Stadium and you have an offensive recipe with some truly unexpected flavors developing in St. Louis. While an offense can’t subsist on only homers to score runs, it’s clear that lightning bolts from the sky can really change a scoreboard in a hurry. Who knew? Somebody should’ve told Mo this late in his tenure. (I agree, that was a cheap shot. But, the team is so fun right now we can just overlook it, right?)

Top of the order OBP

The Cardinals rank 11th in team OBP, which is still in the top half of the league. Somewhat surprisingly, they’re only a collective 19th in walk rate because it feels like these guys are grinding at-bats and pitch counts, up and down the lineup. When you zoom into individual performances though, Ivan Herrera (9th), Jordan Walker (33rd), Alec Burleson (49th) and JJ Wetherholt (60th) are all in the top 60 for OBP in all of the MLB. The fact that this core four is on base so much leads to this team punching above its weight when it comes to OBP (and also highlights a place where the rest of the offense is lacking – but this is a list of what’s going well!).

The fact that Wetherholt is doing this one month into his rookie season is beyond exciting. His elite approach and calm plate demeanor are quite convincing when you start to consider if this skill will maintain for his career. Spoiler alert: it’s going to. Obviously, there will be ups and downs, but this kid was built in a baseball lab to get on base. We talked about where his ceiling is in the latest episode of Redbird Rundown if you want even more Wetherholt talk – and who doesn’t? Apple and Spotify!

Running the bases

Fangraphs has the Cardinals ranked 7th in baserunning value. This is a remarkable ranking considering Victor Scott II has not really contributed all that much because of his severe lack of an ability to get on base thus far this season (yikes!). It should surprise no one that JJ Wetherholt gallops to the head of the pack with a baserunning value in the 95th percentile despite only possessing 60th percentile sprint speed. Jordan Walker is also blazing a trail on the basepaths with his 92nd percentile sprint speed (he’s literally a high-speed freight train – it’s awesome to watch), clocking in at a very healthy 89th percentile for baserunning value. All told, this team runs the bases in intelligent fashion, taking extra bases when they can. They’re 12th in stolen bases and 23rd in caught stealing. They’re doing yeoman’s work adding extra runs where they can.

The Cardinals rank as one of the best lineups in baseball one month into the season

What does this all add up to? Well, winning baseball, obviously! But also, a top 7 offense in the MLB. The bulk of the work is being done by the first four hitters in the lineup, but that’s fairly standard across the league. What’s tantalizing to think about is if they can add 1-2 more solidly above-average bats to this lineup while keeping that top four rolling. That’s admittedly a lot of ifs this early in the season, but if that happens – this is one of the very best lineups in the world (galaxy, universe???), and I’m not sure anyone thought that would be the base coming into a rebuilding year.

Regardless of what happens from here, it’s been very fun to watch and let’s hope it continues! Thanks for reading!

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