BREAKFAST WITH BERNIE
Hello, and welcome to my new feature here at STL Sports Central: Breakfast with Bernie, which I’ll write early in the morning on most weekdays. I’ll serve up observations, opinions, notes, facts, stats, praise, cheap shots, randomness, and some weirdness as I have my first cuppa or two of the day. We’ll (mostly) go “Buffet” style to give you a chance to graze before I write a different column I’ll post later in the day. On most days, I’ll lead off with a Cards recap. There will be plenty of baseball information served here.
For the second consecutive evening, your St. Louis Cardinals turned Citi Field into their carnival grounds, soaking Mets pitchers with slams into the dunk tank, and using their heavy mallets to pound baseballs up the vertical track to ring the bell and win prizes.
By the time the Whack-a-Met game was over, the rambunctious Redbirds had collected a lot of runs and stuffed-animal trophies. Soto the Clown could only stand in left field and watch the Cardinals frolic.
Final score Tuesday: Cardinals, 7-0.
Final score Wednesday: Cardinals, 9-2.
Over 48 hours in Queens, the Cards incinerated the Mets’ $357 million payroll by outscoring the pitiful “Moneybawl” team 16-2.
The Cards’ sixth straight win lifted their season record to nine games over .500 at 37-28. The Birds previously got to nine over (28-19) on May 19. With the Brewers losing two in a row to the A’s, the Cardinals crept to within 3 and ½ games of first place in the NL Central.
Here are some of the reasons why the Cards went bam-time on the Mets again…
1. The Cardinals’ offense went berserk. Again. Homers by Nelson Velazquez, Jordan Walker and Alec Burleson. A haul of nine runs, 11 hits and four walks. During their six-game winning spree St. Louis has averaged 7 runs per game, batted .290, shaped an .858 OPS, walloped 21 extra-base hits and outscored opponents 42-16. Is that good?
2. Lineup balance. The first four spots in Oli Marmol’s lineup – JJ Wetherholt, Ivan Herrera, Burleson and Walker – combined for 7 hits in 18 at-bats, two home runs, five RBIs, two walks and six runs. And while the 5-6-7-8-9 slots in the batting order weren’t as bodacious, the group contributed four hits, two walks, four RBIs and three runs. And in many ways the biggest blow of the game came from Velazquez, the No. 7 hitter. His two-out, two-run homer in the third gave the Cards a 4-0 lead, busted the game open and broke the Mets. According to Baseball Reference, the Velazquez shot was the most impactful at-bat in the game, giving the Cardinals a win expectancy of 85%.
3. Jordan Walker, bigger than the empire state building. On a quiet night at the ballpark for the Mets and their defeated fans, J-Walk should have gotten a citation for a noise violation from the NYPD’s 110th Precinct. Walker had an early RBI single as a warm-up, then flexed for a thunderous three-run home run in the 4th to make it a four-RBI night.
— In his last six games Walker is 13- for 28 (.464) with four doubles, two bombs and eight RBIs. And he’s smashed at least one extra-base hit in his last five games.
— As the MLB dot com noted, Walker is only the third Cardinal in franchise history to have a combination of at least 30 extra-base hits, 50 RBIs and 10 stolen bases through their first 64 games in a season. The first two were Rogers Hornsby in 1922 and Ray Lankford in 1997.
— Walker has performed 58 percent above league average offensively on the road this season. He is one of only three NL hitters to have 10+ homers and a .600 slugging percentage or higher. The other two are Atlanta’s Matt Olson and Michael Harris II.
— Over his first 64 games in 2025, Walker had a .229 average, .321 slugging percentage, three homers and a .559 OPS.
— Over his first 64 games in 2026, Walker has a .303 average, .566 slug, .926 OPS and 17 home runs.
4. Andre Pallante, bounce-back season. The righty pitched well in Wednesday’s win, turning in another quality start by yielding two runs in six innings . Last year Pallante had a 5.31 ERA and a win-loss record of 6-15. (ouch). Through 13 starts this season he has a 7.4 record and 3.83 ERA.
The keys to his turnaround:
– Increased fastball velocity.
– A lot more chase on his slider and sinker.
– Pallante’s strikeout ratio of 7.3 Ks per nine innings isn’t imposing – but it’s the best of his career.
– A career-best 52.4 percent ground ball rate.
– With a more diverse pitch mix in 2025, Pallante is doing a better job of keeping hitters off balance and guessing. This is a cool stat: Pallante’s called-strike rate (18.8%) is the fifth best by a major-league starting pitcher this season.
– Pallante is limiting hard contact. The hard-hit rate against him ranks in the 82nd percentile, the average exit velocity on him is in the 73rd percentile, and the barrel rate on him (6.9%) is in the 69th percentile.
5. Third base platoon? Jose Fermin started at third base Wednesday and had two hits and an RBI. In his last nine games, Fermin has batted .370 with a .393 onbase rate and .444 slug. He has started two games at 3B in recent days, and profiles as a right-handed hitting alternative to the underperforming left-handed swinging Nolan Gorman. I’ll repeat: third base is not a crisis for the Cardinals. The team’s all-around offensive performance from the third base position is well below average and far from ideal … but … based on wRC+, the Redbirds are squeezing more offense from third base than six NL teams: Brewers, Padres, Phillies, Mets, Rockies and Reds.
Let’s make a short run at the buffet.
VENTI
— Please refrain from making these two silly suggestions that will NEVER happen: (1) Hey, move Jordan Walker to third base! And (2) Hey, move JJ Wetherholt to third base!
— Completely unnecessary. And stupid. Yeah, let’s mess with Walker’s head and disrupt him by transferring him to third base when he’s having such a phenomenal season doing what he’s doing. Walker is feeling comfortable and confident at the plate. So sure, it makes sense to risk getting him all screwed up again.
— And why the hell would anyone sane person think it’s a good idea to relocate Walker to 3B after he’s shown such substantial improvement with his right-field defense?
— Did you know that Walker is tied for 3rd among MLB right fielders with five defensive runs saved?
— Did you know that Walker, in the minors, was charged with 40 errors in 146 games when playing third base? And he hasn’t played third base in nearly four years. And that is what you want at third base?
— And why would the Cardinals be so spectacularly dumb by moving Wetherholt away from second base? He’s the best fielding second baseman in the majors, ranking No. 1 overall in outs above average and No. 1 in the NL with eight defensive runs saved. Wetherholt also has the best rating among MLB second basemen in double-plays runs saved above average. And by sliding Wetherholt to third, it breaks up the Cardinals’ fantastic double-play combo of JJ and shortstop Masyn Winn. And Winn has the best double-play rating among MLB shortstops.
— The Cardinals have turned more double plays than any team in the majors and Winn-Wetherholt are a huge reason for that. So yeah, it would be a brilliant move to split up JJ and Masyn when you have a pitching staff with the third-highest ground ball rate in the majors.
— This absolute and utterly bizarre obsession with replacing Gormon has reached maximum-cuckoo levels.
— Here’s a thought: maybe enjoy the Cardinals’ surprise package of a season?
STUFF & STUFF
— Magic number? Cardinals have a record of 30-5 when scoring at least five runs in a game this season.
— Ivan Herrera reached base on eight consecutive plate appearances over the first two games at Citi Field before making an out his last time up in Wednesday’s contest. Herrera’s .392 OBP this season is tied for third highest among NL hitters.
— Am I a bad person for not being excited about the World Cup?
— As Aaron Timms wrote at Defector: “Everything about this World Cup is designed to make you hate it. If you live here and you’re a soccer fan, tickets to games are a ripoff, fan zones are built to give you heatstroke, and Fox Sports’ soccer coverage is an unbroken insult to human intelligence.”
— More from Timms: “If you’re a local who’s not really into soccer but wants to be part of the fun, you’ll need to work hard to discover pockets of the host cities with any visible sign (flags, bunting, festive paraphernalia) that the World Cup (was) less than a week away. If you have match-day tickets and want to get to a stadium using public transport, you’ll probably need to sell a kidney to afford the bus or train fare. If you try walking, you’ll probably die (though you’ll keep both kidneys until the end, which may be an acceptable tradeoff). If you make it to a stadium alive, you won’t be able to bring your own water. If you have the genius idea of just watching the whole tournament on TV, once again, and I cannot stress this enough: That will be awful, too.
— Yeah, and this too from Timms; “If you care about quality soccer, FIFA’s decision to expand the tournament to 48 teams means you’ll have to endure a punishingly long group stage, then an inaugural World Cup “round of 32,” before you even get to the good stuff.”
— If I may add, this World Cup is sportswashing at its worst.
— I’ll definitely be watching the U.S. men’s team, and I’ve always rooted for the Three Lions in the World Cup. And sure, I won’t be able to resist the late stages of the tournament. But the price gouging, FIFA corruption and sportswashing efforts are sad and sick.
— Tim Reams, thanks for repping St. Louis, again, on the international soccer stage. What a superb soccer career Reams is having.
— After the Spurs gagged on a 29-point lead with remarkably careless play that gave the Knickerbockers the chance to pull off a shocking comeback win in Game 4, Charles Barkley said it best, calling San Antonio “the dumbest basketball team in the history of civilization.”
— Well. Probably so. At least in Game 4. Huge lead? Go ahead and fire all of those many 3s in the second half and miss 14 of 17 them to give the Knicks an opening. No need to play smart and protect the lead.
— Overall in the second half the Spurs made only eight shots from the floor for a 2nd half shooting percentage of 20.5% They were outscored 76-30 by the Knicks over the final two quarters and turned it over nine times.
— Wemby was 3 for 14 in the second half and missed two critical free throws late in panic time. This 7-4 nimble tower of a man missed 7 of 8 shots in the paint after halftime.
— Final note goes to the Cardinals and this awesome postgame quote from Jordan Walker: “I want to have a better year than I had last year. I don’t know if I wanted to prove everybody wrong. I want to show what I can do.”
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams.
Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball.
Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows.
And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.