To be honest, going into the Pirates series, the Cards had kind of sucked. If I were going to use weather phenomena to describe it, I’d use my local one and call it a hurricane. Missouri folks might call it a tornado. (Don’t worry about scale here people. The point is: disaster.)
Well, one bright spot so far has been Mike Leake.
It’s no secret that I haven’t been a fan of Leake, though more so for his contract than his baseball skills. When he’s on, he’s an above average pitcher. The problem is, we spent ace-like money to get him, not above average pitcher money.
I’ll stop my rant there as I’ve devoted plenty of time to it already in previous posts.
So far this season, we’re getting the above average pitcher.
In his most recent start against the Pirates, he allowed 7 hits and only struck out one, not exactly ace-like, but he only allowed one run over 6 1/3 innings. It’s not how you get the results, but the fact that you get them I guess. If he only struck out one per game the rest of the season and kept winning, I can happily live with that. Well so far he’s 2-1 with an 0.84 ERA for the season,with a 0.844 WHIP. Shiny.
Will he keep it up? I think that depends on the defense. As we all know, he’s not a flamethrower, but he does pound the zone and throw a ton of strikes. Well strikes are in the hitters zone, so he will give up his share on contact, particularly ground balls, so the defense needs to be on its toes when he pitches. This is also why Kolten Eong needs to start when he pitches, platoon be darned. Who’s ever the better 3B Jhonny, Jedd Gyorko, or heck even Greg Garcia, needs to be out there too. We need to back Leake up. We do that, and he might just have a chance of having a much better season than his own hurricane last season
As always, thanks for reading.