Birdy Bullets: The good and bad of Jordan Walker so far, Gorman's glove, on (not) booing DeWitt, in praise of Herrera, the schedule ahead, and more
Quick-hitters on all manner of early-season Cardinals matters? You've come to the right place
While leaving the grocery store the other day, I passed a gentleman in the parking lot dutifully bent under the hood of his late-model Crown Vic. (At this point, you’ll agree this brief anecdote is already off to a fine start.) As I made the corner toward my own, demonstrably lesser mode of conveyance I saw something that stopped me cold. On the deeply tinted back window of that Crown Vic was, in flowing branded script, the logo of the Ford Thunderbird. For those struggling to process this, I’ll state the bald reality of it all: A car’s back window was declaring to the world a model of car, a T-bird, which that car, a Crown Vic, was plainly not. The “there is beauty everywhere you look” chestnut is typically a rank falsehood, but on this one day in the Hy-Vee parking lot it rang truer than anything I’ve ever known.
There is wisdom here. Are the Cardinals presently 6-7 (Crown Vic) or, say, 10-3 (T-bird back window, tinted darker than un-mirrored shades of a Crown Vic-driving highway patrolman)? If you own, lease, or hold squatter’s rights over a thing – and that describes our relationship to the Cardinals – then it is whatever you say it is.
Now let’s hit a smattering of things related to our 10-3 St. Louis Cardinals, in bullet-point format for today’s busy sales professional …
I find it a bit weird that John Mozeliak got booed during intros prior to the home opener, but Bill DeWitt Jr. got applause. I realize Mo occasionally has a condescending air about him, and that tends not to play well with fans. Still, most of the Cardinals’ issues in recent years can be traced back to ownership’s decreasing willingness to invest in the on-field product. There’s an aspect of paternalism to fans’ relationship with team owners that probably accounts for this on some level. I think that’s been diminished in recent years, but there’s still a touch of it. I’m not a booing sort, but if I were I’d hold my opprobrium for the guy whose hands are upon the purse strings.
It’s hard to call a five-inning start an example of “connoisseur’s pitching,” but Sonny Gray’s Birds debut was just that. He twirled five scoreless against a Phillies lineup that should be within the NL’s top quartile of offensive attacks. Along the way, he struck out five, walked none, and recorded more ground-outs than fly-outs. Gray’s velocity was almost in line with his 2023 levels, which is notable given his hamstring injury and the fact that his ramp-up was complicated by weather issues in the days leading up to his activation. Also impressive in light of his abnormal spring was that he commanded five pitches and thus was able to go at the Phillies with his usual deep-repertoire approach. He dropped in four curves for called strikes, one of them to Bryce Harper on a full count that was an excellent example of a bold pitch call meeting perfect execution. Gray’s ace moment of the night came when he was able to tease out an inning-ending double play with his last pitch of the night – and first pitch after an Oli Marmol mound visit that seemed like it was going to end Gray’s night.
One pleasant unintended consequence of the Pitchcom system for communication between battery-mates is that the pitcher will occasionally confirm the catcher’s pitch call while not even remotely looking in the direction of home plate. Kyle Gibson appears to be quite adept at this. This is pleasing because it allows one to imagine some level of pitcher-catcher telepathy.
Nolan Gorman has by and large looked much more confident and smooth at second base, minus that muffed grounder against the Phillies on Monday night. He already had an excellent arm by the standards of second basemen, and now the footwork and instincts seem to be coming along nicely. Statcast puts him at zero outs above average thus far, and that’s growth. I have high hopes for him to be eventual low plus fielder at the position.
Victor Scott II has given us some truly electric moments thus far, but I think he needs time at Triple-A when depth in center permits such a thing. His struggles at the plate, if they persist, will demand it. While Scott’s swing decisions have been good, he’s just not even close to reaching base enough to take advantage of mega-elite speed. Wednesday’s brutal misplay notwithstanding, he’s been an obvious asset in center, but the glove and wheels aren’t enough to make up for the bat right now.
I suspect that waiting for a mutual period of evaluation before seriously discussing a contract extension with Paul Goldschmidt will prove prudent from the club standpoint. I’m not going to overreact to 13 games, but Goldbird’s bat looks visibly slower to me thus far. That’s not surprising given that he’s a 36-year-old first baseman.
I don’t often wander into this kind of “analysis,” but Iván Herrera just looks like A Dude to me. His carriage, demeanor, body language all seem plucked from a player much older and much more established. This is to say nothing of his excellent production thus far – production that his quality-of-contact indicators say should be much better than it already is. The setup to his swing continues to remind me of a right-handed Matt Olson, but I’ll try to resist the urge to predict a similar power ceiling. Herrera’s also pretty fast by the standards of his position. How jarring is it for us after all these years to see a catcher making it down the line with some degree of haste?
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