Bernie’s Redbird Review: The Cardinals kept going despite all the dangers, posting a solid 16-12 record in June.

THE REDBIRD REVIEW

The Cardinals finished June with a 16-12 record.

All in all, that’s pretty good.

The 16-12 certainly represents progress and is the best June mark by a Cardinal team since 2015. June has been a tough month for St. Louis baseball teams. Excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020, the Cardinals have had just four winning Junes in the past 17 seasons.

So I think his 16-12 vintage for June is pretty good. Not great, not amazing, and not particularly exciting. But we could use other terms to describe their June. They were resilient. Stubborn. Determined. They didn’t let adversity stop them. In times of need, they almost always summoned the necessary response.

The Cardinals regularly came up with victories that gave them a series win, a three-game sweep or avoided the disappointment of losing a four-game set.

* In back-to-back series early in the month, the Cardinals won the third game in Philadelphia and then in Houston to avoid a three-game sweep.

* In June, the Cardinals twice won the fourth game of a series against Colorado and Cincinnati to salvage a 2–2 series split rather than dropping three of four.

* In two consecutive series later in the month, the Cards defeated the Pirates and Cubs in the third game and recorded a 2–1 series victory.

* The Cardinals won the second game of a doubleheader to win the series 2-1.

The Cardinals failed in only one of those scenarios, losing Game 3 in Miami on June 19. The winner of that game would also win the series, 2-1. So that was a setback for St. Louis. But in every other “must win” situation — to win a series, salvage a four-game split or deny an opponent’s bid for a three-game sweep — the Cardinals went 7-0. That mark was the difference between a pretty good month and a very bad one. bad month.

The boys rallied for a 12-4 record in their last 16 games of May, and needed to keep winning in June rather than fall into a slump. It wasn’t easy, but they put together a winning month.

On May 11, the Cardinals had gone into deep shit with a 15-24 record. It looked gloomy. At that point, the soundtrack would have been a Springsteen classic – “Darkness On The Edge Of Town.”

June was a Bee Gees song for the Cardinals: “Stayin’ Alive.”

The period from June 16-12 gave them more oxygen and was part of a crucial sprint to the best record of NL (28-16) since May 12.

Yes, I realize the 16-12 isn’t exactly rolling thunder. And their .571 June winning percentage was simply the sixth best in the National League. But the NL had quite a few teams that warmed up in June, and the other side gets paid to win games. The Cardinals were fine, but five other teams were better. Not a big problem.

Before either of you get into a “Hey, Bernie, we gotta have a higher standard than this,” If you are reading this, I would gently encourage you to take a deep breath.

Thank you.

Now that the heads are cleared, you can consider a few things that could have blown your Cardinals up in June. The Cardinals didn’t let that happen, and in my eyes the 16-12 record was more than acceptable.

— The Cardinals were 27-28 at the end of May. And while they failed to dent the grim Brewers in first place in June, the Cards did increase their winning percentage from .490 to .518 that month. After missing the NL wild-card trifecta for the first two months of the season, the Cardinals moved into third place in June. Their position is obviously precarious, as the NL wild-card race is a tight and tight one. A bad run could put the Cardinals in a less favorable position. But given the way the wild-card derby has played out thus far, a bad week isn’t likely to seriously hurt the Cardinals (or any other contender) in this wild-card survivor game.

— The Cardinals trailed No. 1 wild-card resident Atlanta by five games at the end of May. They cut that down to 3 and ½ games. In the NL Central rankings, the second-place Cardinals extended their lead over the Pirates, Reds and Cubs. The Cardinals are still 6 and ½ games behind the Brewers, but no other resident of the NL Central is closer than 9 and ½ games behind the first. And the Cardinals

— The Cardinals had a winning month despite getting little from three expected “big gun” hitters: Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado and Nolan Gorman. I think most of us expected more reliable power from Gorman and above-average slugging – if not scary slugging – from Goldschmidt and Arenado going into the season. But expectations were wrong.

— Goldschmidt hit .231 in June with a .272 onbase rate and a .372 slugging percentage for a sub-par .642 OPS. He had only seven extra-base hits for the month. Based on his wRC+, Goldy was 16 percent below league average offensively in June.

— Gorman went through an extreme downturn in June. He had six homers for the month, but only two after June 4. In his final 24 games of the month, Gorman hit .083 with 37 strikeouts in 84 at-bats (44%). Gorman’s onbase rate (.209) and slugging percentage (.323) in June were alarming. Gorman’s slugging percentage peaked at .508 on June 4, but has fallen 185 points since then.

— Arenado hit for a solid average (.273) and even finished a tick above league average offensively with his wRC+ for June. But Arenado had just two homers and eight RBIs for the month, and his slugging percentage hasn’t been above .400 since April 17 (.403).

— This month, Goldschmidt, Arenado and Gorman combined for just two hits in 28 at-bats with runners in scoring position (.071).

— Masyn Winn cooled off in June. Through the first two months, the rookie shortstop hit .306 with a .346 OBP and .438 slug, striking out just 15.6 percent of his plate appearances. Winn hit .255 in June. And while that’s a marked drop from his .306 BA through the first two months, the real issues have been his declining onbase percentage (.292) and slugging (.377). And his strikeout rate for June zoomed to 26.5 percent. According to wRC+, Winn was 25 percent above league average offensively through the end of May, but performed nine percent below average in June. A certain degree of flattening was inevitable. Hopefully for Winn and the Cardinals, he will have a strong performance two weeks before the All-Star break.

— The Cardinals averaged just 4.03 runs per game in June, just a hair better than their subpar average (3.9) over the first two months. St. Louis’ pitching staff is under a lot of pressure to limit runs and give the team a chance to win low-scoring games. The starting pitchers and relievers don’t have much room to fail, and the hitters rarely bail them out on bad pitching days. The offense is stuck in mediocrity mode, ranking no better than 14th in meaningful categories in June. According to wRC+, the Cardinals were 3 percent below league average offensively in June, tied for 16th overall.

— The Injury Factor: The Cardinals played most of June without Willson Contreras in the lineup as he healed and rehabbed from a forearm fracture that knocked him out on May 7. Contreras is back, but he’s starting off slowly, batting .174 in his first 23 plate appearances this month. That’s not surprising, and he’ll need time to get back into the swing of things. Lars Nootbaar (oblique) and Tommy Edman (wrist) both missed the entire month of June. Nootbaar’s absence was particularly detrimental to the STL offense. In his final 14 games of May before the injury, Noot was averaging .340, posting a .441 OBP and slugging .520 for a .961 OPS.

— The team’s defense had a rough patch in June, with the Cardinals allowing 19 unearned runs that month. But aside from giving up five unearned runs in Saturday’s home loss to Cincinnati, St. Louis’ defense rebounded nicely and was much sharper during the final two weeks of June.

Considering everything that went wrong, the Cardinals have no need to apologize for their .518 winning percentage in June. Due to several key factors, the Cardinals had a winning month instead of a losing month.

+ Brendan Donovan and Alec Burleson stepped up to lead the offense in a time of dire need. In the June 28 games, the duo combined for 59 hits, a .286 average, 11 home runs, 36 RBIs, 28 runs scored, five steals and an offensive wRC+ that was 32 percent above the league average. With runners in scoring position, Burleson and Donovan combined for a combined .339 batting average and 23 RBIs.

+ Center fielder Michael Siani roamed the outfield with great defense, hitting .277 with a .415 slug in June. Among Cardinals with at least 70 plate appearances in June, Siani ranked second in batting average, fourth in slugging and fourth in OPS.

+ There was a solid starting pitcher who consistently provided chances to win games.

+ There was some powerful arm work from the bullpen. In June, the Cardinals were 12-2 when leading a game through six innings, 12-1 when leading through seven innings, and a perfect 14-0 when holding a lead into the ninth. Ryan Helsley earned his 30th save of the season in Sunday’s 2-0 win over the Reds.

The Cardinals showed the necessary buoyancy to recover from shaky stretches. They opened June 0-2-1 in their first three series, but lost only one series the rest of the month, going 4-1-1. They’re in good shape, but they desperately need a transfusion on offense. And that will be a challenge.

Thank you for reading …

–Bernie

Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023 and has been providing informed opinions and perspectives on St. Louis sports through his columns, radio shows and podcasts since 1985.

Follow Bernie on Threads @miklaszb

For weekly Cards talk, listen to the “Seeing Red” podcast with Will Leitch and Miklasz. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. Follow @seeingredpod on X for a direct link.

Unless otherwise noted, the statistics I use in my baseball columns come from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, StatHead, Baseball Savant, Baseball Prospectus, Brooks Baseball Net, and Sports Info Solutions.

Bernie Miklasz

For the past 36 years, Bernie Miklasz has entertained, enlightened and connected with generations of St. Louis sports fans.

Although best known for his voice as the chief sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch for 26 years, Bernie has also written for The Athletic, Dallas Morning News and Baltimore News American. Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023 and has hosted radio shows in St. Louis, Dallas, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Bernie, his wife Kirsten, and their cats live in the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood of St. Louis.

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