The St. Louis Cardinals claw out a victory from the jaws of defeat, but only after clawing out defeat from the jaws of victory

15/05/2024

Could you imagine facing a pitcher a like Ryan Helsey? He is obviously very talented; he throws over 100 mph fastballs at the top of the strike zone and follows that up with 90 mph sliders that move almost like a curveball, dropping down to the bottom of the zone. That would be tough enough, but the man was just chucking the pitches home, or at least that is how it seemed watching him pitch tonight. I did look up his pitch tempo after this game and according to Baseball Savant, his average pitch tempo is 17 seconds between pitches, which is pretty average. I even manually timed some with a stopwatch and the time between pitches for tonight’s game was also around 17 seconds. Watching him though, it does not look like he is dawdling or second-guessing. He catches the ball, gets his sign, and throws confidently home and that — even more so than the velocity of the pitch — is the most intimidating thing of all.

So Helsey mowed down the Los Angeles Angels in the ninth, with the exception of a weak single that came back to him up the middle, to preserve the 7-6 lead. How the team got to that point is a story I think best summed up by this win expectancy graph courtesy of Fangraphs because it is a wild one:

The St. Louis Cardinals put up 5 of their 7 runs in the second and third innings and they did it with mostly small ball. In the second inning Dylan Carlson singled, was pushed to second after a Nolan Gorman walk, advanced to third after a lineout off the bat of Pedro Pagés, and then scored on a wild pitch. Gorman advanced to third on the wild pitch and then scored on a fielder’s choice and throwing error at home plate by Angels third baseman Cole Tucker.

The Cardinals added to their 2-run lead in the third inning. Paul Goldschmidt and Alec Burleson singled and stole third and second base, respectively. A walk from Dylan Carlson loaded the bases and a double from Pagés cleared them to give the Cardinals a 5-0 lead.

The Angles began their comeback in the bottom of the third, however. They scored one run after a triple and a single to cut the lead to 4 runs. The big damage was done the following inning when Logan O’Hoppe hit a 409-foot home run with two runners on to make the score 5-4. In what was otherwise a fantastic night for Sonny Gray — 9 strikeouts with 16 whiffs and 21 called strikes — this two-strike sinker left up in the middle of the zone is a haunting reminder of just how quickly a game can turn for a pitcher. The Angles tacked on another run in fifth to tie the game and it looked like the Cardinals might be on the ropes.

In what has so far been an admittedly unimpressive Cardinals season there have been two main standouts for the team: the first has been Sonny Gray, who has been the ace at the top of the rotation the Cardinals so badly needed in 2023, and the second has been the bullpen. While the normally reliable Gray stumbled a bit — really one pitch he likely wishes he could redo — the bullpen held steady... with a little help from some baffling decisions from the Angels.

It is almost time to talk about those red bars in that win expectancy graph. After a nail-biting bottom of the sixth where Gray issued his only two walks of the game to face a bases loaded, two-outs situation that he escaped with a strikeout, the Cardinals re-took the lead on two-run homer from Burleson. John King pitched in relief of Gray, Ryan Fernandez pitched in relief of King and allowed an inherited run to score. JoJo Romero relived him for the eighth.

The broadcast was really talking up Romero, which he certainly deserves, but in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but feel like the universe was setting him up with the praise. My suspicious were pretty quickly proved correct after he allowed a double and back-to-back walks to load the bases with one out. Down a run, with the bases loaded and one out, the Angels elected to attempt a suicide squeeze. Luis Guillorme, the second hitter in the Angels lineup, missed the bunt and the runner was out at home. Guillorme then struck out and the threat ended.

Now, I don’t want to unpack this too much because this is a Cardinals blog and this is not really about them, but this play was a 24.8% change in win expectancy and I cannot help myself. I looked at Luis Guillorme’s stats. He has a career 94 wRC+ and a 64 wRC+ in 2024. A squeeze play with him, especially in the lefty versus lefty situation might not have been as bad of an idea as it originally looked (ignoring that a successful squeeze would only tie the game when the run expectancy while swinging away is more than one run). The bigger mistake, in my opinion, is one that happened before the game even began: batting him second in the order. I can only assume the reasoning for that, and my guess is it is an old-school manager tactic to put someone that “can handle the bat” in the second spot in the lineup. Ron Washington seems like a manager that would do that. *shrugs*

On top of that, as I was writing this recap, Washington doubled down on the choice in his post-game comments. He stated that, and to be clear, I am paraphrasing, “there wasn’t anything wrong with his [Washington’s] decision, Guillorme just didn’t get the job done”. Well alrighty then.

The Cardinals held on to win, really scraping by the seat of their pants on this one. Pedro Pagés got his first career hit. He also made some huge stops behind the plate — it takes guts to keep calling sliders with the bases loaded, but that is Romero’s best pitch and it was key in escaping the jam. Alec Burleson had a big day going 3-5 with two RBI and two runs scored.

The series continues tomorrow at 8:07 pm CT.