Even during winning streak, Marmol is tempted to tinker with Cardinals’ lineup
Part of why the daily lineup remains an object of fixation and fascination for every baseball team is that it’s one part of the job that seemingly every fan and observer feels like they could handle. Writing down nine names in order is a relatively simple task before considering the things which go into that construction, and since each lineup is a fixed, pure distillation of a manager’s thinking at a specific moment in time, there are always built-in talking points available.
Even those in the job aren’t immune to that thinking.
The St. Louis Cardinals are in the midst of one of their hottest stretches of the last five years, and even their manager acknowledged Saturday that the temptation to tinker can be hard to avoid.
“From time to time, there is [temptation],” Oli Marmol admitted. “But you want to be smart about how you do it, and if you do it, it’s not just for a day, right?...The changes we’ve made we’ve held for a while, so it would be something like that.”
Indeed, what has become the recent everyday lineup is not one that might’ve been easy to predict at the beginning of the season, nor one that reflects all the current conventional wisdom. There are personal touches littered throughout which inform decisions like Masyn Winn hitting second, Willson Contreras hitting fifth, and Iván Herrera hitting sixth as he continues to put up an absolutely torrid start to the season, even after missing a month with a bone bruise in his knee.
“In a perfect world, if you look at how Contreras looked leaving spring training, you throw him in that two spot all day, every day,” Marmol said. “It just happened to work out that way.”
Contreras hit second in each of the Cardinals’ first seven games, and he recorded a hit in none of them. He stayed in that spot for nearly all of April, but starting with the April 30th doubleheader matchup with the Cincinnati Reds, has hit almost exclusively fifth, with two brief cameos hitting fourth.
Over that stretch, his batting average has jumped from .216 to .261 entering play on Saturday. He has more runs batted in than strikeouts in that same span, and his OPS has nudged north of 1.100. That’s not all due to his placement in the lineup, but it’s difficult to argue with results.
“He’s the same guy as when he was hitting .100 not too long ago. In the dugout, in the clubhouse, you couldn’t tell that he was struggling,” Marmol said of Contreras. “He’s the same guy now that he’s having success, and that’s really good to model for some other guys.”
Similarly, after a tough spring training, Winn opened the season hitting ninth. As the year’s first lineup was posted and it became clear that it would be a regular assignment, Winn begrudgingly acknowledged that there wouldn’t be a conversation about why he’d been moved down in the order if he’d done more to earn his keep at the top. He struggled out of the gate in much the same way Contreras did, starting the year 0-for-20.
Over 19 starts in which he hit exclusively ninth, Winn recorded a paltry .619 OPS. His shift happened on the same day as Contreras’s; moving the first baseman down meant someone else had to move up. He responded with two home runs in the first game of the same doubleheader, and has been off like a rocket ever since.
In his first 14 games this year batting second, Winn posted an outlandish .642 slugging percentage – notably higher than his combined on base and slugging percentage from the nine hole – and has scored 14 runs. A team which can get a run per game from a spot high in their lineup is a team that is likely to see success, and that stretch has coincided with a 11-3 record from the Cardinals with Winn batting second.
“Masyn, we felt like he gets a little bit of a jolt when he’s up at the top,” Marmol said. “We put him in the leadoff spot last year, and that’s worked out well, and it gives Contreras a breather, but still in a position where he can drive in some runs. So I think it worked out for both of them.”
The lineup, though, is in part defined by its absences as well as its order. This nine-game road trip has seen the Cardinals match up with an unusual amount of left-handed starters, facing two each in Washington, Philadelphia and Kansas City.
That impacts players like Alec Burleson and Nolan Gorman, who might otherwise be soaking up some of the designated hitter at bats which have been portioned out to Herrera, who would be behind the plate catching more often with more righties on the mound.
The scheduling anomaly has given the Cardinals the opportunity to reinforce their commitment to Jordan Walker simply by matter of necessity and his hitting on the right side of the platoon. Those chances may even out in the coming weeks, and the discussions will begin anew over who’s hitting where they should be, and when. For now, though, the tinkering has been held at bay, and riding out a fortunate stretch means staying locked in with stability.
“There has to be a rotation that makes sense, but we’re trying to figure out what that looks like,” Marmol said. “At some point, someone’s not going to get as many [at bats] as they would like. We can only hit nine guys, by rule.”
The order of the nine remains up for perpetual debate.
