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. And if I’m a little late it’ll be “Brunch with Bernie.” I’ll serve up observations, opinions, notes, facts, stats, praise, cheap shots, randomness, and some weirdness as I have my first cuppa or two or three of the day. At times we’ll go “buffet” style for morning grazing, and later in the day I’ll author a new column. On most days, I’ll lead off with a Cards recap. There will be plenty of baseball information served here. I have to go with a shorter version today because of time constraints.
Let’s get started…
Cardinals 3, Padres 0.
That’s just a score.
The big story on Monday evening was the performance of big red, Dustin May, who dominated the Padres with a merciless one-hit shutout to thrust the Cardinals to a 3-0 victory at Busch Stadium.
Hey, get out your “May Day” puns. I’ll start.
– The Cardinals declared May Day on Monday, and Dustin May responded by making the overwhelmed Padres say, ‘May we please get a hit?’”
– Monday was definitely May Day, and Dustin May pitched such a clean, precise one‑hit shutout that relievers in the St. Louis bullpen spent the night playing Uno.
I’m sorry. That’s corny, yes? On purpose. I’m trying to wake up, dammit.
Here’s why the Cardinals chucked the Padres on an eventful evening at the ballpark.
1. Dustin May, of course: Just get out of his way, Padres, and go take a seat. It was a command performance by the fiery righty, who has sharpened his way into peak form. May faced 28 Padres and only two reached base – both in the seventh inning – on a walk to Fernando Tatis Jr. and a ground-ball single by Manny Machado. May punched out nine Padres for added emphasis.
How great was May's signature moment as a Cardinal? He posted a 99 game score, the updated Tom Tango version that’s listed in the game logs at FanGraphs.
By posting a 99, May matched the game score of Bob Gibson's epic 17-strikeout performance against the Tigers in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series. Gibson allowed 5 hits in that game, so May's 1-hit stinginess enabled him to finish with the exact same game score despite having 8 fewer strikeouts than Gibby.
The 99 game score tied May for 9th by a Cards starter during the expansion era, which began in 1961. That includes regular-season and postseason games.
After getting muscled in his first two starts as a Cardinal, here’s what May has done in his last 12 starts:
+ 9 quality starts, tied for second in the majors since April 10.
+ 2.54 ERA, eighth-best in the NL.
+ 2.2 fWAR, tied for 5th in MLB.
+ Average game score of 63; well above the 50 league-average threshold.
+ 0.36 home runs yielded per 9 innings, the fourth-lowest rate by a MLB starter since April 10.
+ In the 12 starts opponents have done little to harm May, batting .208 with a .267 on-base rate and .283 slugging percentage.
In his last four starts, May has been nicked for four earned runs in 27 and ⅔ innings for a 1.30 ERA. In this four-start stretch May has struck out 33 percent of batters faced and twice got in range of a no-hitter.
What a wonderful signing by Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. The Cards are paying May a salary of $12.5 million this year, and according to the FanGraphs valuations his performance has been worth $16.5 million. And that’s in just 14 starts.
Speaking of value … May looms as a popular trade acquisition among contending teams that have legit pennant and World Series aspirations but have an urgent need for a quality starter.
2. May’s pitch arsenal was ruthless and on point. According to the data at TJStats, May bedeviled the Padres with six varieties of pitches: 31 four-seam fastballs, 25 sinkers, 19 sweepers, 19 cutters, four changeups and three curve balls. All six were rated above average in this game, with May’s sweeper being the most impressive at 27% above average. May’s formidable mix caused a 43.6% chase rate by Padres hitters, and he had a fantastic whiff-swing rate of 30.6%. It was just a terrific display of pitching by a dude who has turned into one of the best NL starting pitchers without many people realizing it. During one phase of Monday’s game May struck out seven of 12 Padres that came to the plate. May notched the strikeouts with two four-seam fastballs, two cutters, a sinker, a changeup and a sweeper. May had so many pitches working, he put the Padres off balance for much of the competition.
3. Jimmy Crooks had an impactful, impressive night. Not that May needed much external help – he was in another realm – but clearly the pitcher and rookie catcher had chemistry and a dynamic rhythm going in this one. I referenced the outstanding pitch mix, and Crooks certainly played a role in shaping it. And in the bottom of the fourth, in a scoreless contest, Crooks disturbed the peace with a two-out double that brought in Lars Nootbaar and Masyn Winn for a 2-0 lead.
4. The 5-6-7-8-9 spots of the STL lineup is much stronger. In the 10 games since Nootbaar came off the IL to join the band on June 5, a Cardinal weakness has turned into a sturdy Cardinal nexus.
Before June 5, the 5-6-7-8-9 sequence on manager Oli Marmol’s lineup card collectively generated a .618 OPS and a 74 wRC+ – and that was 26 percent below league average offensively, ranking 28th. Since June 5th, those lineup spots have combined for a .758 OPS and a wRC+ that’s 16 percent above league average offensively. (Ranking 7th in MLB.) The word that comes to mind is “transformation.”
5. The defense had May’s back. Nootbaar prevented a hit with a charging, diving catch in left field. Shortstop Winn, the NL’s reigning gold glove winner, ended the top of the 7th with a dynamite 6-3 double play. His ridiculous, exciting throw to first baseman Alec Burleson was the second-best pitching performance of Monday night.
The Ending: With the win the Cardinals improved to 39-31 and have the sixth-best winning percentage (.557) in the majors and is fourth-best in the NL. The Cardinals’ playoff odds at FanGraphs increased to 50.2 percent. And their percentage of probability for grabbing a wild-card spot (41.4%) is the second highest in the NL behind the Phillies.
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 STL Sports Central, 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.