May 18—SAN DIEGO — The competing dynamics of batting eighth in a National League lineup, a spot in which an opponent often can sidestep a hitter to face the pitcher, makes it a spot that rewards — and teaches — discipline while also being an absolutely lousy place for a hitter to find his swing if there are few pitches worth a swing.
Familiar with that location in the lineup and its intrinsic frustrations, Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader has adopted an approach with the bat that sounds adapted from his glove.
“Play the ball,” Bader said last weekend, speaking with the Post-Dispatch near the visitors’ dugout at Petco Park. “Play the ball just means, especially being in the eight hole, you can go to the plate and wonder if they’re going to pitch to you or if they’re going to nibble and be out of the zone. Play the ball. Take out every other emotion and make it purely physical. Don’t wonder.
“I’m better off as a baseball player when I’m reacting, not predicting.”
As predicted
The Cardinals reached the quarter point of their season with a humbling weekend against the Padres, and it’s not overreacting to suggest the first 41 games have gone as predicted. At 23-18, with a two-game lead in the NL Central, the Cardinals are an expected contender, but incomplete. Their success radiates out from the rotation, as designed.
“Not rocket science,” manager Mike Shildt said of the calculus connecting strong starting pitching to success.
When the starting pitchers have provided steady, reliable outings, the defense shines, the offense seems more consistent, and the bullpen genuinely is. When the starters falter, weekends like the one in San Diego happen. All the league-leading walks and wild pitches and hit batters — 237 giveaway bases, combined — have sabotaged several games.
The Cardinals are good enough to get away with such mistakes in sweeps of Colorado and Pittsburgh, but they lead to getting swept by would-be peers like the Padres.
At their best, the Cardinals are a multi-tasking team that is not likely to overwhelm an opponent in a rush as much as win the game granularly by outlasting, outworking, or outwaiting. They’re not an avalanche.
They are quicksand.
“We’ve done it a lot of different ways — and a strength of ours is our depth throughout the lineup and throughout the team,” first baseman Paul Goldschmidt said while sitting in the team’s dugout at Petco. “You want guys to go off, carry the team, but guys throughout our lineup offer different ways to win. Pitching. Defense. Baserunning. Look at the best teams and they’re going to win in a lot of different ways because at some point one part of the game is going to struggle. So it’s nice for us to have another part of the game to pick it up, for lack of a better term.”
The Cardinals’ coaching staff gets biweekly audits of the team to spot trends, identify persisting flaws, or highlight consistent strengths. The gush of walks and ragged, abbreviated starts will be mentioned prominently in the updated reports and first-quarter grades Shildt and his staff were set to review at the start of this week. A correction is urgent.
‘Inconsistent’ offense
Less ostentatious than the walks but just as important to the first quarter is what Shildt referred to as the team’s development consistency in the “inconsistent” — offense. Through the major leagues scoring and hitting are eroding — alarmingly so — but the Cardinals are seeing flickers of what their offense can be.
It has been too isolated around the top of the order, with Goldschmidt and third baseman Nolan Arenado combining to go 23 for 72 (.319) with runners in scoring position and the remainder of the players going 41 for 216 (.190) with 59 strikeouts. That explains how often the Cardinals have had a batter pitched around in those spots. They lead the majors with 15 intentional walks with runners in scoring position and have 47 walks total in those spots.
Bader knows what it’s like to be avoided.
And how, like the team, not being one-dimensional can unlock an individual’s game.
“If I’m focusing on one thing and I’m constantly trying to do only one thing at the plate, and I’m not producing in that one facet of my swing or in my game, then I’m kind of (spitting) in the wind,” Bader said. “I’m not helping my team win. Understanding what my job is in that eight hole — I’m leading off an inning, or there are already two outs and I’m trying to turn it over — it all comes down to letting the game come to you. Allow your skills to play. Reel it all in. Just play that baseball.”
Bader has mentor
Bader’s difficulty with righthanded pitching, breaking balls and especially breaking balls from righthander pitchers prompted an offseason assignment for the Gold Glove-caliber outfielder. Shildt described the goal as “candidly, the biggest emphasis of the offseason (was) being able to wing at balls in the zone against righthanded pitching.”
To hone that swing, Bader sought out a former batting champ.
The Cardinals’ center fielder moved this offseason to Arizona and spent time working with for mer hitting coach Bill Mueller. One of the Cardinals’ coaches when Bader was a rookie, in 2018, Mueller, a St. Louis native, led the American League in hitting in 2003, and he was widely respected by peers for his relentless pursuit of his swing and command of the strike zone.
He played the ball, as Bader would say.
In Mueller, Bader also found someone who he could relate to in size, style of play, and draw energy from.
“I liked being around that type of energy,” Bader said, “especially in the offseason.”
Bader spoke generally about the work he did with Mueller, but some of it revisited the work they did back in 2018, before Mueller was dismissed as part of Cardinals manager Mike Matheny’s firing. The goal was to sharpen the physical act of identifying pitches, knowing the strike zone, and swinging. The rest, which Bader called “emotions,” was just noise. Through that work, and then an abundance of at-bats during his monthlong recovery from the forearm injury that interrupted spring, Bader has found a way to blend the dimensions of his game.
He’s reached base in 15 of his 16 games since returning from the injured list. He’s been willing to take a walk, and he’s been able to punish a mistake.
On Saturday, deep in the Cardinals’ dud against the Padres, Bader batted eighth and faced a righthanded reliever who had clearly read a scouting report. Pierce Johnson threw Bader six consecutive curveballs. Bader missed on two to fall behind 1-2. He ignored two to get back ahead in the count, 3-2. The next one he saw he put in the seats for his fourth homer of the season. Bader has three homers off breaking balls and two off righthanders so far this season in 46 at-bats. He had two total in 81 at-bats vs. righthanders last season.
“It’s just a mental switch,” he said. “Just attacking the ball. Nothing to it. Winning every pitch. Knowing what they want to do to me, and making sure I keep my zone, not his.”
At No. 8, Bader has hit .313 with a .405 on-base percentage and a .905 on-base plus slugging percentage. His production puts him among the top five in that lineup spot the NL.
It hints at the length the Cardinals must go to advance their offense.
With Miles Mikolas set to rejoin the rotation this week and Carlos Martinez on the mend, the Cardinals should stem some of the wild, wild walk problem with returning personnel who can control the strike zone and know how to command more innings. That will have a trickle-down effect that aids the bullpen.
Offensively, there is a trickleup aspect to decentralize the production. It is rare, as Shildt said, to have “all eight guys at their optimal every day. We’ll ride that. We’ll strive for it.” But when they do not have it, depth is the best buttress to avoid inconsistency.
That reaches all the way to eighth, where it’s not always a homer on a breaking ball that shifts a game but taking a slider for a walk that just turns the lineup over.
“Keeping it super simple,” Bader said after batting practice Sunday. “It could be 2-2 or 3-2 — at some point the pitch is going to show up where you want it to show up and it’s just a matter of buying pitches or buying time and staying in the pocket and being ready. From an offensive standpoint, from an individual standpoint, that’s the M.O. of this team. Playing in a lineup like that can be awesome. We’re best when we can all reflect each other.”
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