The Cardinals 7 hitters are puttin’ in work - A Hunt and Peck

MLB.com recently published an article reviewing all the “secret weapons” of the teams in the NL Central. Some of them are performances from specific players or groups of players, some are an approach... Mostly it is just a clever way to discuss the performance of the teams so far.

It has me thinking, though — dangerous, I know. Who or what is the Cardinals Secret Weapon? I won’t give away what the article said, but I do not think I agree, necessarily. If I were being extremely straightforward with this I would say their Secret Weapon is Paul DeJong. All week we have disected why that is the case. If I wanted to pick a cuter answer, similar to the article, I am tempted to say something like “The Cardinals 7th place hitter is their secret weapon”.

The Cardinals seventh-place hitters are collectively batting .328/.432/.623 with a 200 sOPS+, per Baseball Reference. Kolten Wong, Dexter Fowler, Harrison Bader, and Jose Martinez all have at bats in that spot. Putting in most of the work is Wong, who in 43 plate appearances has hit two doubles, a triple, and four homers, good for a .364/.463/.848 slash line and a 267 sOPS+. Fowler has also put in work in that spot, though in a much more limited sample of 18 plate appearances. In that time he has slashed .375/.444/.438 with a 156 sOPS+. Bader and Martinez with 14 and 1 plate appearances, respectively, have much less impressive numbers batting in the 7-hole.

This basically turned into a roundabout way of praising Kolten Wong, who has been excellent this season so far. The Cardinals are fortunate to have several players putting up good numbers, especially as some players with higher offensive expectations are in a funk. This means there are lot of”Secret Weapons” to chose from. What would you call the Cardinals Secret Weapon?

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