Bernie’s Redbird Review: All Eyes On Dakota Hudson, Plus A Look At Early-Season Trends.

Welcome to the Redbird Review

It’s Monday, near noon, and today’s Pirates-Cardinals game has been postponed because of rain. Makes sense; the weather forecast warns of relentless rain for much of the day. To make up for the rainout the teams will play a split doubleheader on June 14 in St. Louis.

If the weather clears, the Cardinals and Royals will open a two-game series on Tuesday at Busch Stadium. An overworked STL bullpen will have an unexpected day of rest before the Royals hit town.

Manager Oli Marmol can do a rainout reset of his pitching plans.

Dakota Hudson was scheduled to start Monday. He’ll now go against KC on Tuesday, bumping Jordan Hicks from his planned start. Adam Wainwright will start Wednesday’s game vs. the Royals, working on his normal schedule. Hicks has been redirected to the bullpen for now but is in line to start Sunday in Milwaukee.

I know the Cardinals have played only three games, but …

There are always things to talk about, even this soon in the season. The usual caveats apply: It’s too early to reach conclusions, and going berserk over small sample sizes may be hazardous to your mental health. It’s OK to talk about what we’ve seen so far, because that’s all we have to work with.

Let’s go …

Eyes On Dakota Hudson: When Hudson makes his first start of the season on Tuesday, I’m primarily interested in two things: (1) after pitching a total of only 47.2 innings over the past two seasons, is Hudson ready to bring the consistent effectiveness? He looked good in his 8.2 IP near the end of the 2021 season, yes. But now he’s back in the rotation to stay and faces a more meaningful and strenuous test. (2) Can Dak provide innings ? That matters because the Cardinals received only 6.2 combined innings from Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz in their two starts over the weekend. The Cardinals would like to avoid putting too much of the load on the relievers — even if they are carrying 11 of them.

End The Trend: Early or not, you don’t want to see the Cardinals fall into the same pattern for a second consecutive season: having a rotation of one sure thing (Adam Wainwright) followed by a sequence of question marks. After Wainwright pitched six breezy shutout innings in Thursday’s season–opening win, Mikolas and Matz gave up nine earned runs in 6.2 combined innings (12.14 ERA) over the next two days.

At least Mikolas limited the damage to two runs in his 3.2 IP; it could have been much worse. Matz made a mess of his STL debut, getting whomped for nine hits and seven earned runs in three innings. In the two starts, Mikolas and Matz allowed a .473 onbase percentage and .611 slug. We saw way too much of this last season – Wainwright, then chaos – and this can’t happen again in 2022. So that puts a little more focus on Hudson’s season debut. Update: it seems that Matz had a blister develop on his pitching hand during the start against Pittsburgh. Mulligan? Don’t know. And if healthy Matz will have at least 30 more starts this season — so we’ll find out all that we need to know about him.

Letting One Get Away: You can’t win the first two games of the season by a combined 15-2 score, take a 3-0 lead on the Pirates on Sunday, and go onto lose the third game of the season 9-4. Matz was the biggest problem, of course. But the let’s not give the Cards offense a pass after scoring only one run over the final eight innings. Tip of the cap to Pittsburgh and all of that, but the Pirates (101 losses last season) shouldn’t be able to do that to the home team. What does it mean, if anything? I look at it this way: the Cardinals won the series, 2-1. That’s still a positive outcome … if a little disappointing.

Bully On The Bullpen: The Cardinals’ relievers are off to a vigorous start. They worked 14.1 innings over the first three games, logging more IP than the starters (12.2). The bullpen ERA through three games is 1.26; that ranks fourth in the majors. The only disappointment is a 10.5 percent walk rate. But the group didn’t allow the Pirates to do much with the runners, allowing only one hit and a walk when facing 12 batters with runners in scoring position.

Jake Woodford: Still underappreciated. In his last seven appearances going back to the start of September 2021, Woodford has a 2.27 ERA in 31.2 innings. He hasn’t allowed a homer, and opponents have batted .225 against him with a .557 OPS. His emphasis on the sinker has generated a 42% ground-ball rate over this time. After Matz imploded, Woodford entered and hushed the Pirates with three innings of scoreless relief. Woodford did his part, but by then the Cardinals hitters had succumbed to Pirates pitching. Woodford has value in the bullpen, and he’ll make the best of it. But as a general principle, I just don’t know why this team is so reluctant to make him a starter when they need a starter.

Easy As Counting 1-2-3-4: The top four spots of the St. Louis lineup figures to cause plenty of stress for opposing pitchers this season. In the first three games Dylan Carlson, Paul Goldschmidt, Tyler O’Neill and Nolan Arenado combined to hit .375 with a .463 OBP and .725 slug. That’s good for a 1.188 OPS. The fab four drove in 15 runs, scored 14 runs, hit five doubles and three homers, added four sacrifice flies, walked nine times and went 6 for 10 with 11 RBIs runners in scoring position.

The Designated Hitter Spot: Through three games: 1 for 13 (.077), one RBI and 1 for 4 with runners in scoring position.

Yadier Molina: His late start to spring training is probably a factor. But Molina is 1 for 12 through three games (.083) and has gone hitless in three at-bats with runners in scoring position. According to Statcast, Molina has only one hard-hit ball so far and has yet to barrel a pitch. His average exit velocity of 80 mph is well below his average of 87.4 mph since the advent of Statcast in 2015.

Paul Goldschmidt, Hall of Fame Candidate? Could be, according to baseball analyst Joe Sheehan. In his season preview of the Cardinals — he ranked them 13th overall — Sheehan had this to say about the St. Louis first baseman:

“At some point during the offseason I landed on Paul Goldschmidt and was floored to see that he’s over 50 bWAR through age 33. That’s 70% of a Hall of Fame career, and at 33 he was worth six wins for a playoff team. I have never, for a second, thought of Goldschmidt as a Hall of Famer, but two good years is going to push him close to 60 WAR, and that’s where your Hall case comes down to how much the voters like you.”

Paul DeJong: The haters will point to his first three games and see 2 for 10 and a .200 batting average. This, of course, excludes a few things. An opposite-field two-run homer. His two walks. An onbase percentage of .333 and a .500 slugging percentage in the series. Most important of all? Entering 2022, DeJong had a career rate of 16.3 percent in hitting fair batted balls to the opposite field. He spent the winter and spring on a project to refine his hitting approach, and that includes an effort to hit the ball to all fields. In the Pirates series DeJong went opposite field on 42.9% of his fair batted balls. That’s really encouraging. Let me add this: it isn’t just the opposite-field approach; DeJong has done well in the past when he hits the ball to the center of the field. So with a right-center approach — if DeJong sticks with it — should give him the foundation for an improved performance offensively.

Dylan Carlson, Where He Belongs: I advocated for him to bat leadoff last season because of an intelligent batting approach that would make pitchers work and lead to a good onbase percentage to set up RBI opportunities for teammates. Carlson was OK at leadoff last season but didn’t receive a full opportunity. And for him to be fully effective as a leadoff man, he must have full-time reps at the top of the lineup.  Carlson was on point during the Pittsburgh series, reaching base on 43 percent of his plate appearances, scoring four runs, stroking two doubles, lofting two sacrifice flies and driving in two runs.

Early-Season Pitching: An assortment of notable starting pitchers got clobbered in their first starts of the season. And when Brandon Woodruff, Gerrit Cole, Corbin Burnes, Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Julio Urias, Max Fried, Marco Gonzales, Nathan Eovaldi and Jon Gray get bopped around, it draws attention.

Indeed, there were some muggings in the early going. In the first 98 starts across the 2022 MLB season, 13 starters left their first outing with an ERA of 12.00 or higher. And 41 of the 98 had an ERA of 4.50 or higher. But so far the MLB starting-pitching ERA of 4.42 isn’t much higher than the overall 4.34 starter ERA for all of last season.

And a lot of starters have done well in their 2022 debuts. In fact, starters allowed no more than one earned run in 40 of the first 98 starts to the new year. Fielding Independent ERA (FIP) numbers don’t show a dramatic difference in the starting-pitching performance in the first month last season (4.04) compared to the first month this year (4.13) so far.

Current starters presumably will do better after building stamina. And that’s the difference we should be talking about. Innings. Pitches thrown. Managers are being careful with their starters – an expected development after a short spring training. Last season starters averaged 5.1 innings per assignment. So far this month that average is 4.5 innings.

And after an average of 83 pitches per start in 2021, the early average this season is 74 pitches per start. Because of that, we aren’t seeing many quality starts; only 13% have met the QS standard so far. (Last season MLB starting pitchers had a quality start percentage of 33%.)

As is the case with all early-season trends, give it time.

Checking In On The Memphis Redbirds: The Cards’ Triple A affiliate is off to a 3-3 start despite batting .206 with a .658 OPS as a team. What about prospects Juan Yepez and Nolan Gorman? They’re a combined 6 for 36 with 18 strikeouts. Yepez in particular seems overmatched; so far he’s 2 for 19 with 11 strikeouts. At least Brendan Donovan is batting .375 with a .944 OPS. We’ll see how everyone does once they settle into the season.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

Bernie invites you to listen to his opinionated sports-talk show on 590-AM The Fan, KFNS. It airs Monday through Thursday from 3-6 p.m. and Friday from 4-6 p.m. You can listen by streaming online or by downloading the “Bernie Show” podcast at 590thefan.com — the 590 app works great and is available in your preferred app store.

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All stats used here are sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Stathead, Bill James Online, Fielding Bible, Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball Net unless otherwise noted.