ST. LOUIS -- St. Louis Cardinals management predicted the team would have power this spring. Nobody seemed to believe it.
In April, the Cardinals came out swinging hard, but it seemed to come against inferior pitching and felt like it might be a fluke. It wasn’t. By the All-Star break, the power kept coming unchecked, but perhaps it would flag in the heat of August and beyond? If anything, the Cardinals' ability to hit home runs has ramped up.
The Cardinals hit three more home runs in an 8-1 win over the New York Mets, gaining them a little more breathing room in the wild-card race.
In the team's 25 games in August, just four players -- Randal Grichuk, Brandon Moss, Jedd Gyorko and Stephen Piscotty -- have provided 22 home runs. It's the first time the Cardinals have had four players with at least five home runs in August since 1998, the year Mark McGwire made the old Busch Stadium look like a dollhouse.
At long last, they have found their identity. It's pure brawn. Piscotty also mashed a home run, a two-run shot, and Matt Carpenter led off the first inning with a solo shot to right. The Cardinals have 177 home runs, the most in the National League, and it's not close.
It's not exactly a style that is associated with winning around here, but it has worked at times in the past. The Cardinals have a 1½-game lead for the second wild-card spot, and the Mets now are teetering, 4½ games behind. The Cardinals' weapon of choice, home runs with men on base, is becoming more obvious by the day.
"I love watching them mash," manager Mike Matheny said. "Watching these guys be able to put up crooked numbers in any inning, to get on base and have great at-bats to get on base and then the home runs behind them, those are important for us."
The latest version of Grichuk, the unfettered one, has become the embodiment of this new Cardinals’ style. In the 11 games since he came back from Triple-A and met with Matheny at Wrigley Field's cramped manager's office to learn the team wanted to grant him the freedom do it his way, he has managed 13 hits. One of them was a single. Six were doubles, one was a triple and five were home runs.
"I think a teacher will tell you there's always a key to every student," Matheny said.
It would appear this is who Grichuk is, at least for now. He has walked once. He has struck out 15 times, including all four times he batted in Sunday's game. He was asked what the best version of himself as a hitter is these days.
"I think just going out there and trying to hit the ball hard, trying to barrel balls up," he said. "I think swings and misses are part of my game. It's going to happen. Just barreling balls up in the strike zone and not let swings and misses outside the strike zone affect the next swing and the next pitch that's in the zone."
It hasn't been entirely mental. He also made a change to his swing that finally began bearing fruit when the team was in Houston early last week. He has worked on trying to get it to click with hitting coaches John Mabry and Derrick May.
"The way the ball is coming off his bat, it's always impressive, but there was something just a little bit different," Piscotty said of Grichuk. "A couple guys noticed it. I could tell he got to where he wanted to be mechanically, and I think when that happens you tend to play chess with the pitcher and that sort of thing. I know how hard that is to do when you don't feel mechanically sound."
The fact the Cardinals are accepting of Grichuk's all-or-nothing approach now could tell us they have accepted that they might have to try to bash their way to a World Series.
It would work better if it were coupled with good pitching. Lately, the only reliable starter the Cardinals have is Carlos Martinez, who looks more and more like the man the Cardinals would line up for a wild-card game, whether it's at Busch Stadium or somewhere else.
Martinez continues to do what the Cardinals want him to do: forget strikeouts and get ground balls. It has allowed him to pitch deep into games. It took him only 79 pitches to get through seven innings in Houston, and it took him 97 pitches to get through eight Tuesday. He got inning-ending double plays to get out of jams twice. The fact he had only five strikeouts might not endear him to the analytics crowd, but now that the Cardinals have tidied up their defense, it has worked.
Martinez (12-7) got 24 outs, and 14 of them came on the ground. Martinez leads the National League with 27 double plays.
