ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - It's no secret that the Cardinals' offense has been feast-or-famine so far this season.
All you have to do is look at a schedule of results to show that the team's run totals fluctuate from high to low on an almost-daily basis. Just in the last week, the Cardinals had back-to-back games that went from 14 to 0 runs scored (April 13-14)... and another this past weekend from 9 to 0 (April 17-18).
The players, staff and front office will tell you that they're hitting the ball hard, making hard contact, just running into some bad luck. That's typically met with an eye roll from some observers. But a deeper look at the stats shows the team isn't necessarily wrong about that claim.
Statcast metrics show, for example, that the Cardinals rank third among all MLB teams in percentage of hard-hit balls (43.3%). They're seventh in average exit velocity (89.7 mph).
"It's been something that we've been tracking for multiple years now," Cardinals manager Mike Shildt told me on his KMOX radio show Sunday. "Look, everyone wants results. We know we're in a result-oriented business. The reality is, if you don't have good processes in a very, very, very thin margin game... your results will not be there."
Shildt explained the process in depth, without giving away too much information. But it's that valuable information, the numbers you don't see in a box score, that the Cardinals are counting on to predict what the future holds.
"We use analytics for multiple things," Shildt said. "The highlight of it is, it really illustrates what we need to work on the most. It creates more efficient plans for how we get ready individually and as a group. And the second thing it does is help you understand strategy as well, from my seat."
They began to work on a plan to cut down on strikeouts.
"We looked up years ago and realized we had a team that chased a lot out of the zone," Shiildt said. "It swung and missed a fair amount. What's the first thing (that) needs to happen? We need to be in the zone more."
The Cardinals made a point to recognize pitches and wait for something in the strike zone before pouncing.
"So our walk rate went up, our strikeout rate went down," Shildt told me. "No one likes a strikeout, Tom. Trust me. We want to put the ball in play. But with the stuff these guys are throwing today, it's just out there. Guys are going to have their strikeouts."
Case in point, the Phillies' Aaron Nola, on Sunday afternoon, silencing a Cardinals team that cracked four home runs the previous game. Nola went the distance, striking out 10 Cardinals in a 2-0 victory.
"Hitting's hard," Shildt said, then referenced Hall of Famer Ted Williams, a lifetime .344 hitter: "Get a good pitch to hit, put a good swing on it, hit it as hard as you can, that's all you can do."
And what about strategy against the defensive shift, a common tactic most teams now employ?
"You know, they shifted Ted Williams," Shildt points out. "I don't think maybe people know that as much. It's not like this is some necessarily new thing. Now, it's more mainstream, obviously. But it's a process."
Shildt insists the process is working.
"We want to get the ball in the zone more, we now have," Shildt says. "We want to hit the ball as hard we we can. The harder you hit it, the less reaction time (the fielders have), the more it gets in the gap, the better chance it has to get out of the ballpark. We can measure all these different things."
Over the long haul, the Cardinals believe they will see hits, runs, RBI's, slugging percentage -- the back-of-the-baseball stats -- increase as they stay true to the "process."
"We've moved the needle slowly," Shildt acknowledges. "I know it feels glacial, I get it, to get to a point where we now are controlling the strike zone better, getting our good swings off in the zone, hitting the ball hard. And after that? Look, if we could do more, if we could control it? We'd love to. But man, if we know that process is good?"
Shildt believes, at that point, anything is possible. He compares the hard-contact, high exit velocity to elite offenses around the league. It's something the Cardinals have strived to be since crunching the analytics: an offense with the expectation of being elite.
"We want to be elite in everything we do," Shildt said. "And we work our tails off, it's our job. We have to maintain it, which we understand, but we have now gotten to that level where elite offenses have been the last several years: high exit velocity, high hard-hit contact. Higher walk rates, lower strikeout rates. We've gotten there, and sometimes the results aren't there."
But that doesn't mean the Cardinals are straying from the process anytime soon.
"This game, we love it," Shildt says, "(but) it can be really, really hard and frustrating. Because you can do a lot of things well and not get rewarded and still have to answer to a result that isn't favorable some days.
"We recognize that's part of the gig as well."
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