Game 24: Cardinals 10, Cubs 9

Photo courtesy of Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

Top Play (WPA): Joe Maddon used five relievers in tonight’s game, and tapped Zac Rosscup in the pivotal seventh after Pedro Strop failed to record an out. With runners at the corners and one out, Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong looped Rosscup’s 84 mph slider over Starlin Castro’s head, knotting the game at eight and setting up Tony Cruz’s go-ahead double (.244).

As Rian Watt has noted in an in-depth analysis, Rosscup’s slider velocity has improved this year, averaging a tick above 86, whereas his career average has been closer to 83. He’s also gone to the slider more often this season, accounting for over a third of his pitches. The newfound velocity and increased usage has produced results: he’s reduced walks, and overall improved upon his defensive independent stats. Rosscup has been most effective with the harder slider used more often. Tonight, he got burned on a below-average offering.

Mark Reynolds’ first-inning grand slam was, intuitively, the second-most impactful play of the game (.224). The home run helped swing the Cardinals’ win expectancy from 9 percent back to 41 percent, and immediately altered the tone of the game from “potential laugher” to “barnburner.”

Bottom Play (WPA): One of the factors that made this loss the young season’s most frustrating was the lack of missed opportunities identifiable as such. The night’s bottom play was Matt Carpenter’s two-out fly to left to end the sixth (-.072).

The Cubs’ bottom two plays: Anthony Rizzo’s first-inning fly out, before the Cubs tallied five runs against St. Louis starter Carlos Martinez (-.054); and Castro’s eighth-inning groundout following Kris Bryant and Miguel Montero’s walks (-.066). Maddon removed Castro before the bottom of the eighth, to move the pitcher’s spot in the order in anticipation of extra innings, giving Addison Russell his first taste of major-league shortstop.

Maddon may have had additional help making that decision due to Castro’s recent approach at the plate. While he added a solid RBI single in the first, he exhibited none of the patience that has served the team so well this year. He rolled over a pitch off the outside half of the plate for his eighth-inning groundout, a tendency that has driven his ISO down to .074, 50 points below his career average. Since Castro will never be a high OBP hitter, he must supplement his great contact ability with some power in order to be an above-average hitter. His hot start has cooled recently, resulting in a .249 TAv by game’s end. The rest of the lineup has been hitting well, excepting Jorge Soler, but a Castro who is driving pitches to the opposite field instead of rolling over them will nicely complement the remarkable on-base duo that precedes him (Rizzo and Bryant).

Key Moment: An 80-degree night in St. Louis helped balls jump off the bat and aided Rizzo’s second-inning solo homer to right, his fourth on the year (.106). Rizzo flicked his bat at a darting 85 mph Martinez offering, his impressive strength and the night’s warmth helping the ball clear the wall and returning some of the swagger the Cubs had lost in the bottom of the first.

Matt Trueblood recently wrote about the remarkably low percentage of pitches that Rizzo has seen in the strike zone and his stinginess when it comes to swinging at them. The tenor of the piece implied that “something’s gotta give,” and we may have seen an indication of that in this game. In the first, Rizzo unleashed on a 2-0 pitch after Martinez had walked Dexter Fowler and Chris Coghlan to lead off the game. While he didn’t connect, and while both pitches were certainly “hittable,” his first two at-bats suggest that Rizzo is not afraid to alter his approach to tap into his considerable power. A similar situation has confronted Joey Votto the past few seasons, on whom Rizzo has modeled his own approach. Rizzo has the strength, control, and youth to further hone that approach, which so far this season has yielded a 14.7 percent walk rate and 12.7 percent strikeout rate, both considerably better than league average.

Trend to Watch: Kris Bryant can’t stop getting on base. Four walks headlined his nightly on-base clinic, the most impressive of which came after he fell behind 0-2. The four free passes pushed his season total to 16, sixth in the NL—and he’s played at least eight fewer games than the players ahead him on the list. Bryant has swung at slightly fewer pitches outside the zone than league average (27 percent O-Swing%) and at slightly more in the zone (67.5 percent Z-Swing%), but he has made contact a full 17 points lower than league average on all pitches.

Before Spring Training, Jeff Sullivan at FanGraphs ruminated on “Kris Bryant’s One Offensive Question Mark,” comparing his minor-league swing and contact rates to a few major league antecedents. While Bryant’s comparable players ran the gamut—Jim Thome and Giancarlo Stanton on the good end, Wily Mo Peña on the bad—players have been able to sustain major-league success with contact rates under 70 percent.

One of the reasons that Bryant has been so valuable to the Cubs’ offense is his impeccable discipline, resulting in a .418 OBP. However, his .370 SLG falls considerably short of his PECOTA-projected .516, and I suspect that this is in large part due to his contact issues. Addison Russell has two home runs (tonight’s being a nice display of pull-side power), while we still wait for Bryant’s first, several weeks after his call up.

Coming Next: The Cubs look to snap a three-game losing streak and rebound from a maddening loss (how about those words in May?) as Kyle Hendricks (5.23 ERA/3.22 FIP) takes the mound against Tyler Lyons (4.42/3.62). The Cubs’ bullpen should be fresher than the Cardinals’, as Mike Matheny has ridden his relievers hard in the past few days, so look for the ‘pens to once again play a pivotal role as the clubs turn to their back-end starters. Soler should return to right field, but I would not be surprised to see Russell start at short, giving Castro a day off. Chris Denorfia’s hamstring injury likely means that Matt Szczur will receive a call (he left Iowa’s game in the eighth) over Arismendy Alcantara, despite Alcantara’s success post-demotion. Game time is 7:15 CT.