The plight of recapping games in a bummer-ific season

If you have ever experienced springtime in St. Louis you have probably at some point gone outside and saw the pollen in the air. Maybe you have gone out to your car and seen the yellowish haze of pollen resting atop it. It gets rough here for pollen— even folks from other parts of the Midwest that I have met have commented on it. The pollen counts on Thursday and Friday were pretty high.

Perhaps this is just me, but I suspect this might be a common experience. When this time of year rolls around and my nose gets all stuffy, I think about all the times my nose wasn’t stuffy and how I took that for granted — how I took for granted that I could just breathe in through my nose and air would flow through without restriction. If I could only go back and tell myself then what I knew now — I would treasure those times more. I would be more grateful.

All this is to say that it is really tough to watch the Cardinals lose night after night. If I am being honest, I do not much care for it. I am far from someone who allows their mood to be dictated by the outcomes of sporting events, but I would much rather watch my favorite team win than lose, personally. I would certainly rather recap a game when they win. Because I am tired of recapping stinkers and because I feel rather ill at the moment, I think I am going to continue this recap a little differently. Besides, if you are still with me this far I feel pretty confident that you aren’t reading this for a play-by-play recap of this game, are you? If you are, my sincerest apologies. Here is my plan: let’s just quickly discuss how the runs were scored and then we will try think of three good and fun things about this game. Let’s see how that goes.

75% of the runs scored this game were scored in the first inning. I haven’t verified this —maybe it would make for an interesting post down the line, but it does at least feel like a lot of games the Cardinals are losing after the first inning. What had happened was Mike Trout walked, Hunter Renfroe singled, and Anthony Rendon singled to score Trout for the first run of the game. With two outs in the inning the all too common devastating home run happened off the bat of Taylor Ward. It was 4-0 Angels and that would be the score for most of the game.

The Cardinals got on the board in fifth inning after a groundout from Andrew Knizner scored Tyler O’Neill. The Angels got the run right back though when Zach Neto singled to score Brett Phillips. That made the score 5-1 and that was the final.

Some good things:

Guillermo Zuñiga made his Major League debut in this game. He pitched one clean inning with 2 strikeouts. He threw the top five fastest pitches with a sinker that is over 100 mph.

This is normally where I mention Paul Goldschmidt, but in a bit of a twist, it is actually Paul DeJong with the Cardinals hardest hit ball of evening per exit velocity. Unfortunately he swatted it right into the ground for 107 mph groundout.

Okay, that last one was kind of a bummer at the end so I’ll do another one. Paul Goldschmidt continues to be a moment of respite in the clogged nose that is this season. He went 1-4 with a double that he clobbered at 100 mph off the bat.

Dylan Carlson hit a ball 101 mph that went 371 feet, but was caught for an out. According Baseball Savant it had an expected batting average of .550 and would have been a home run in one ballpark: Wrigley Field.

I’ll do one more: Steven Matz led all pitchers in swings and misses with 13 on the game. After giving up the four runs in the first inning he seemed to mostly settle in. He would pitch 4 scoreless innings after that allowing 3 hits and 1 walk with 3 strikeouts.

Tomorrow Shohei Ohtani takes the mound against Miles Mikolas at 6:45 pm.