Game 74 Recap: Cardinals 4 Cubs 1

Top Play (WPA): Coming into the bottom of the fourth inning, the game was tied at one and Jason Hammel was getting by with erratic stuff. He hadn’t looked quite the same since returning from a lengthy rain delay (one hour and 49 minutes, to be precise) just before the bottom of the second inning. This inning, however, his erratic control got the best of him.

Jhonny Peralta led off the inning with a line-drive double, and Jason Heyward followed with a double to score Peralta and break the tie at 2-1 (.120). Hammel struck out Randal Grichuk, but Yadier Molina doubled to right field to break the score open at 3-1.

Hammel would get out of the inning and come back out for the fifth, but Kolten Wong’s leadoff double would knock Hammel from the game in favor of James Russell. Wong would come around to score on (you guessed it) a double by Matt Carpenter, bringing the score to 4-1, which would also end up being the final tally on the evening.

I hate to complain about natural events ruining things for the Cubs, but Hammel threw eight of his 11 pitches for strikes in the first inning and was hitting his spots with regularity. Once he came back out after a nearly two-hour delay, he was struggling to hit his spots and the Cardinals eventually took advantage. Carlos Martinez had to pitch under the same conditions, however, and also looked a bit erratic at first. But the Cubs simply couldn’t figure out how to get to Martinez, and he settled in and appeared to get stronger as the game went on, regularly pumping his heat in the upper 90s.

Bottom Play (WPA): When Martinez did come out to pitch in the top of the third inning, Dexter Fowler ran the count full before hitting a double to right field. Martinez then unleashed a wild pitch during the at-bat with Kris Bryant, who had a perfect opportunity to drive in a run with just a fly ball or a ground ball. But Bryant struck out swinging (-.055) on a ball in the dirt, which is strikeout number 13 for Bryant since his 12-game hitting streak came to an end, a span of 10 games. During that time, Bryant is hitting .147/.250/.353.

Anthony Rizzo did pick up the slack for Bryant, driving a line out to left field that allowed Fowler to tag and come home. That tied the game at one, but it was the only run the Cubs would score all night. They’ve now scored seven runs in their last six games, going 1-5 over that span.

Key Moment: The big thing to take away from this game is that Neil Ramirez returned from the disabled list. He came on to pitch in the seventh inning and faced Jon Jay, Greg Garcia, and Wong. He got a line out to left from Jay on two pitches, and then struck out Garcia and Wong. He threw eleven pitches in total, and although his fastball didn’t hit his usual 95-97, he still looked sharp. Here is a plot for the velocity on his pitches, with seven of them being fastballs and the four at the bottom representing the curveballs that he threw.

Having Ramirez back represents the beginning of what is hopefully a slew of returns from players who are currently on the disabled list. All of the talk during the national broadcast of last night’s game was about how the Cardinals keep winning in spite of injuries, but it’s been overlooked that the Cubs have stayed in the Wild Card race despite the inconsistency of Jon Lester and the injuries to Ramirez, Jorge Soler, Javier Baez, Mike Olt, Tommy La Stella, Tsuyoshi Wada, Zac Rosscup, and Jacob Turner.

Trend to Watch: It’s no secret that Starlin Castro has struggled at the plate this season. But there are a few interesting things to note about his slash line.

The drop in BABIP is .041, and yet he’s placing a higher percentage of pitches in play because of his lower strikeout rate. Just a cursory look at this might suggest that he’s had some bad luck, and that could be a small part of it. But the greater problem is the types of balls in play that Castro has had this year. Castro continues to struggle with quality contact; here are his career numbers on balls in play.

The big thing that jumps out is that Castro’s line drive percentage for his career is 20 percent, but he’s down to just 15.5 percent this season. His ground ball percentage is way up, from 45.3 in 2014 to 56.3 this season. This matters because, historically, players have a very high batting average on line drives but very low average on ground balls. It also doesn’t help matters that 17.1 percent of the fly balls Castro has hit are of the infield pop-up variety, compared to his career rate of 8.1 percent.

You’ll also notice at the very end it lists whether the contact is hit “soft,” “medium,” or “hard.” Castro’s making way more soft contact than he normally does, while making way less hard contact. If he is going to get back to the guy from 2014 again he’s, going to need to make adjustments. Whether it be adjusting to the types of pitches he swings at or adjusting his swing to be more conducive to line drives and fly balls, he needs to figure out what he needs to do differently at the plate. Otherwise, these problems are likely to continue.

Coming Up Next: The Cubs (39-35) have a merciful day off today while they head to New York to start a three-game series with the Mets (40-37) tomorrow. Kyle Hendricks (4.46 ERA/3.75 FIP/5.02 DRA) matches up against Jon Niese (4.12 ERA/4.43 FIP/6.28 DRA), who popped up in trade rumors involving the Cubs over the weekend. After their series with the Mets, the Cubs have a stretch of 23 of the next 27 against under .500 teams. During that time, it’s expected that they should get Soler and Olt back. If the Cubs are going to make a serious run at a Wild Card spot, this will be a very important stretch of the season.

Lead photo courtesy of Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports