Lineup Changes Give St. Louis New Offensive Look

The offense for the St. Louis Cardinals is starting to fire on all cylinders. One reason no one seems to know that the offense for the St, Louis Cardinals is the National League’s second most prolific is due to so much of it coming from players who nobody has ever heard of.

Thursday night, St. Louis finally had its up and coming young talent thrust into the spotlight. Cardinals manager Mike Matheny took Aledmys Diaz from deep in the batting order to the No. 2 spot in the batting order.

He used one of his team’s purest hitters in Stephen Piscotty at the cleanup spot, which has been a black hole during the first quarter of the season and the end results were a 13-7 win over Colorado.

Of course one game does not make a season, but everyone liked the look and the Cardinals manager indicated he would give it another shot or two.

He is not one to announce the starting lineup for the next day the night before, but when the first four hitters in the lineup combined to hit 8 for 18 including four doubles, one homer and nine runs batted in, the question seemed almost silly, but nevertheless was asked twice.

Diaz was hitting .376 in his first three dozen major league games and most of that was from the No. 7 or No. 8 spot.

Matt Carpenter one of St. Louis’ top hitters said the players kind of wondered when Diaz would be hitting in a more prominent spot in their batting order.

Matheny said he is going to give the shortstop, who is just 25, more opportunities when he sees things he likes. After Diaz reached base twice, scored a pair of runs and drove one in, it would seem to be good things being done, after only his second game batting in the top third of the Cardinals lineup.

Carpenter was the big bat on the night hitting three hits for extra bases and driving home six runs.

The fact the leadoff hitter for St. Louis has knocked in 32 runs in just the first quarter of the season speaks to the depth of the lineup for St. Louis, including that Diaz was also getting on based very frequently ahead of Carpenter in the last third of the batting order.

Heading into the game on Thursday, cleanup hitters for the Cardinals had the worst OPS at .605 in the majors. The average in the majors is .769. On Thursday, Piscotty had 3 hits in 4 at bats and knocked in two runs.

The changes worked on Thursday, the question is for how long with the offensive wave continue.