FanPost

Boxscoring, July 11

There's not a great deal to discuss on a night where the Cardinals had all of three hits against Edwin Jackson. Oh wait yes there is.

Matt Holliday: 0-2

Holliday left Thursday's game because of hamstring tightness, which could linger throughout the summer and potentially create a hole in the Cardinals' lineup. There are a handful of people who hate passionately hate Matt Holliday, but their stupidity aside, taking out his bat - even if his numbers are pedestrian by the high standards he's set - will not be easily replaced.

The obvious move says the Cardinals will move Craig to left field and Adams to first base. On defense, they likely lose nothing. The offense will be dependent on Adams' ability to prove himself an everyday player.

If the Cardinals move Holliday to the disabled list, the call-up is fairly interesting. Oscar Taveras would have been an exciting choice, but he's on the disabled list. I've seen a suggestion that the Cardinals should bring up Wong, but Wong only comes up if you're not confident that Adams can succeed playing every day.

Holliday's injury would've been a sigh of relief for Ty Wigginton, who may have found himself playing more. If Holliday had to get injured, then we should be doing cartwheels and doing the Harlem Shake that it came after Wigginton was given an unconditional release.

David Freese: 1-3, 1 BB, 2 K

The type of person who believes players posses a "clutch" gene is also the type of person that would believe David Freese is distracted from not getting a long-term contract in the offseason. Since I'm not one for fairy tales, I think it's more likely that Freese, at 30, has already entered his decline phase. This season he's been a minus fielder, and whatever improvement he showed on the power side in 2011 and 2012 has disappeared into the same hole as Jon Jay's BABIP.

Freese is hitting for a career-high in ground balls, and with a .339 BABIP (it surprised me, too), there's a chance that his .735 OPS isn't even the floor. Which leads me to...

Edwin Jackson (W, 6-10): 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 5 SO

Jackson had not thrown seven innings since June 9. It might sound alarmist to panic over a team 20 games over .500 and leading its division, but there are red flags all over the place. The Cardinals' second half performance is hinging on Matt Carpenter's Joe Morgan impression, Yadier Molina's Ted Simmons impression, Carlos Beltran not repeating a second-half funk, Allen Craig and Matt Adams to continue pushing what is probably their 90th percentile projection, Matt Holliday getting healthy, and either Jon Jay or David Freese stepping up.

A lot has to go right for the Cardinals. They have achieved their record in no small part due to some outlier performances that can't be counted to continue.