The most important at-bat in the second game of the National League Championship Series didn't come from Oscar Taveras or Matt Adams, who hit the home runs in the seventh and eighth innings that pulled the St. Louis Cardinals from behind and gave them the lead.
It didn't come from Joe Panik, the rookie second baseman for the San Francisco Giants who drew a two-out walk in the ninth, the fourth ball of which was a wild pitch from Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal, wild enough that the tying run scored all the way from second base.
And odd as it might seem, it didn't even come from little second baseman Kolten Wong of the Cardinals, who ended this thing Sunday night with a laser of a homer to right off San Francisco's Sergio Romo, whose second pitch in the ninth ended up in the seats, the difference in a 5-4 St. Louis victory that tied the series.
Forget about that bit of bedlam for a moment. No, the most important at-bat came in the sixth inning of a game the Cardinals trailed 3-2. No outs, man on first, veteran lefty Jeremy Affeldt on the mound for San Francisco, Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina stepping to the plate.
They deify their ballplayers here, affixing statues outside Busch Stadium for the greats, Musial and Smith and Dean and the rest. Some day, Molina will have a statue there. Whether those who stop by it, who snap their pictures next to it, will remember his contributions to the 2014 postseason is unclear. In that at-bat in the sixth, Molina drilled a grounder to second, an easy and no-doubt double play. He never moved from the batter's box.
So put aside the sigh of relief Wong provided. What are the Cardinals' prospects going forward if Molina - diagnosed with a strained left oblique - can't play?
The two catchers in this series, Molina and Buster Posey of the Giants, also happen to be the most indispensable parts of their respective teams. 'You look at St. Louis and their success,' San Francisco Manager Bruce Bochy said before the game. 'Well, I think you have to give Molina a lot of credit for what he does for them, and we say the same thing about our guy, Buster.'
This wasn't just a sixth-place hitter hobbling to the bench, down the tunnel. This wasn't just some light-hitting catcher. This was the Cardinals' heart, and 46,262 went silent. The obliques, rib-cage muscles, are so important in so many baseball motions, throwing and hitting - not to mention breathing. There is an off day to further reassess, but if Molina is not behind the plate in Tuesday's Game 3, who is picking the Cardinals to survive?
Tony Cruz, Molina's replacement Sunday night, allowed a passed ball in his first inning of work. The Cardinals also have veteran A.J. Pierzynski, a castoff from Boston, on the postseason roster. Neither is Molina offensively. Neither is Molina defensively. Pick a player the Cardinals were less prepared to lose. Can't do it.
This comes, too, at a time when St. Louis is under scrutiny for its baffling offense. The Cardinals ranked ninth in the National League in runs scored with 619, perhaps not an alarmingly low position. But consider that last year, when they reached the World Series, they scored 783 - a full run a game more - and led the league by 77 runs. Consider, too, that their total this season is the franchise's lowest for a season not interrupted by labor strife since 1990, the year Wong was born. And that, given their 2013 shortstop was Pete Kozma and their 2014 shortstop is Jhonny Peralta, they made a personnel improvement.
In some ways, that success wasn't sustainable. A key factor: The 2013 Cardinals hit .330 with runners in scoring position, a ridiculous number that is the best since such data was first available, back in 1974. The 2014 Cardinals: a back-to-earth-with-a-thud .254 in those same situations.
'For whatever reason, this is one of those years where it's the same group of guys trying to do the same thing and working to get even better,' Cardinals Manager Mike Matheny said before the series started. 'It comes easier sometimes than others.'
So after getting shut out by Giants lefty Madison Bumgarner in Game 1, the Busch crowd was understandably uneasy Sunday night. The Cardinals had scored two or fewer runs 57 times in the regular season, more than a third of their games. Since busting out for 10 runs in their postseason opener against Clayton Kershaw, they had scored eight runs in four games.
And yet Matheny didn't change up his lineup, other than to move the left-handed-hitting Jon Jay up and the right-handed-hitting Randal Grichuk down. 'We're not really at that point of needing to shake things up,' Matheny said. And then Matheny defended his hitting coach, John Mabry.
'Fortunately, he stayed with what he knew was right,' Matheny said. 'And the guys continued to work to improve, and nobody was doing the major overhauls, like we were talking about, for no reason, just to appease people on the outside. He stayed the course and kept trying to make the minor adjustments that needed to be made. And in the end, what's this game about? It's about scoring more runs than the other club, and we figured out a way to do that more often than not.'
They figured it out again Sunday night but barely. Trailing 2-1 after Carpenter's third-inning homer, Molina was in the middle of a first-and-second, nobody-out rally in the fourth when Matheny, oddly, asked him to bunt. He did, but Bochy countered by walking Wong intentionally to load the bases. The Cardinals tied the game on Grichuk's bases-loaded single, but Matheny let Lynn hit for himself, and they left the bases loaded.
Yet they figured out a way to win because Taveras, the rookie who has been criticized for his work ethic at times, crushed a change-up from reliever Jean Machi into the right-field seats in the seventh and because Adams crushed Hunter Strickland's offering into a deeper spot an inning later. And Wong blasted an offering from Romo that just cleared the wall in right yet was the biggest of them all.
Now, with the series off to San Francisco for three games, the Cardinals may have to figure it out without Molina, a much more difficult task.
Posted by Unknown on Sunday, October 12, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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