How Cardinals hot-wired the matchups they wanted so Kyle Leahy could ice the Phillies

Are streaking Cardinals ready for their (national) closeup?

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“The discussion around the Cardinals will be similar to one you and I are having right now,” says Rich Waltz, broadcaster for Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball. “Who are these guys and where are they headed? Are the pieces they’ve got good enough?”

The Cardinals reach the nation’s capital riding a five-game winning streak, back at .500 for the first time in three weeks, and about to embark on what could be a defining three-city road trip. There to great them is a national broadcast as the Cardinals appear for the first time this season on Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball. Waltz will be at Nationals Park with Ryan Spillborghs and Tricia Whitaker to call the game. As he prepared for it, Waltz joined St. Louis Post-Dispatch baseball writer Derrick Goold for a brand new Best Podcast in Baseball recorded in Washington. 

The discuss the Cardinals’ winning streak coming out of a strong home stand and the curse of being stuck in the middle, which one baseball executive once called “quicksand.”

Waltz also describes how broadcasting baseball is evolving, not just with the new rules but with new views — some of which only baseball, of the major professional sports, can provide the viewer.

The Best Podcast in Baseball, brought to you weekly by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is in its 13th season as one of the leading baseball podcasts and among the top-rated for Cardinals conversation. It is a production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com, and Derrick Goold.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

PHILADELPHIA — It did not take long into his first, brief glimpse of the majors for Kyle Leahy to learn how bullpens are managed and what he did not want to become as a reliever.

“I saw how much matchups are important,” he said late Monday night. “I told myself that offseason I want to be a guy who can get both sides (of the plate) out. I don’t want to pigeonhole myself into being a righty specialist and only come in a certain situation in a certain game.”

The Cardinals have a nine-game winning streak as proof.

In a gambit made possible because of the rotation’s lengthy starts over the weekend, the Cardinals lured the Philadelphia Phillies into a choice that hot-wired the matchups the Cardinals preferred late if they had the lead. It was Leahy that made it possible, and his ability to retire even the most name-brand left-handed hitters. A crisp, compelling ball game Monday between a team expected to contend and one suddenly rewriting expectations hinged on manipulating the game for such matchups. The Cardinals engineered the ones they wanted for their bullpen, and Masyn Winn got the one he preferred against a lefty reliever from the Phillies.

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Winn’s solo home run off lefty Matt Strahm in the seventh inning was the deciding run in the Cardinals’ 3-2 victory at Citizens Bank Park.

The bullpen was the difference.

“A win like that gives that group some good confidence,” manager Oliver Marmol said, “knowing they can hang with anybody.”

In the first test of the Cardinals’ longest winning streak since they sizzled to 17 consecutive in 2021, they faced one of the National League’s elite club. The Cardinals constructed their limited offense around solo home runs from Winn and Ivan Herrera and a daring bit of baserunning by Nolan Arenado to create their first run. Matthew Liberatore pitched 5 1/3 innings and matched Phillies lefty Cristopher Sanchez inning for inning as the two sides seesawed through two lead-taking rallies by the Cardinals and two game-tying responses from the Phillies.

In the sixth inning, the Phillies just tied the score, 2-2, when Liberatore allowed a single to Alec Bohm, a right-handed hitter.

Up came the point in the Phillies’ lineup the Cardinals wanted to shape.

Philadelphia wrote the lineup to face lefty Liberatore and had five consecutive right-handed batters due up. Without Phil Maton for the evening, Marmol wanted to use Leahy for multiple innings and invite the Phillies to unload their bench of left-handed bats against him only to be vulnerable to lefty JoJo Romero later.

Everybody in the rocking ballpark – with 42,513 tickets sold – knows the Cardinals are steering the game toward closer Ryan Helsley. The are inevitably some officials and fans affiliated with the Phillies watching the game and envisioning doing the same after the trade deadline. Lurking on the Phillies’ bench to face the right-handed Helsley were three left-handed hitters for the back third of the lineup.

Why wait to get them into the game?

Leahy’s availability and ability to go multiple innings put him into the game in the sixth and forced the Phillies to make a choice. If Phillies manager Rob Thomson unloaded their left-handed bats in that inning, then the Cardinals had lefty Romero set to face them in a latter inning with even more potentially at stake. The Phillies leaned left and marched out their pinch-hitters.

“That was the game,” Marmol said. “He’s a guy who can handle that workload and takes pride in being able to do that. Him being able to get a taste of that today in that environment it’s good to build off of it. Being able to use him when the game can be flipped is nice to have. …

“We felt like our best chance to keep our score was to bring him in when we did.”

Leahy (1-0) retired both left-handed pinch-hitters he faced in the sixth to leave two runners stranded and keep a tie game intact.

Another pitching-hitter opened the seventh inning, and Leahy retired him too to bring the inning back around the top with at-bats against two of the top left-handed hitters in the majors, former MVP Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. Although Leahy would be working deep into his second and then third inning, these were the matchups that Marmol wanted. Harper and Schwarber have been “out of their minds” against lefties this season, Marmol said, so he wanted to counter with the right-hander who can throw a bit of everything and has held left-handed batters to a .077 average and .192 slugging percentage.

Leahy has a starter’s mix in a reliever’s window.

“A lot of relievers only have two pitches, and it’s really the starters who have the whole kitchen sink,” Winn said. “If you have a reliever coming in with a bunch of different pitches, it’s hard. One guy one day could be throwing all curveballs and the next throwing all cutters.”

Leahy landed five different pitches, got at least one swing and missed four of them. He threw 11 four-seam fastballs and the Phillies did not put one of them in play. That’s partially because he fed them a dozen sliders and they also had the sinker to at least acknowledge as a pitch they might see. Leahy also had as many swings and misses on the curveball as he had balls put in play on it.

To end the seventh, Leahy fell behind 2-0 to Harper.

The right-hander then coaxed a swing from Harper on a 91.6-mph slider and then dropped a 91.1-mph changeup to give a similar look with a wildly different movement. On the 2-2 pitch, Leahy froze Harper with an 89.7-mph slider stayed in the zone without veering into his shins. He said later that he gained a “gut feeling” about the finishing pitch and got that from “just reading the hitters and knowing to use all of the pitches I do have.”

“I don’t know a lot of guys who are coming out of the bullpen with a feel for all the things that he’s coming in with,” Liberatore said. “You can’t really count anything out in any count. And now he’s throwing that sinker with the four-seam. It’s special to watch what he’s doing right now.”

“This is what I wake up for,” Leahy said.

The kid from Boulder, Colorado, pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings, but it only ended that way with help from Romero and the assignment for him orchestrated for him by the moves of the sixth inning.

Longest Cardinals win streaks

A look at the Cardinals’ longest win streaks in the wild card era (since 1995).

Streak

Year

17

2021

11

2001

10

2001

9

2025

9

2004

9

2001

When Romero entered with two on, two outs, and a one-run lead thanks to Winn’s homer, the Phillies had spent their bench and were likely stuck with three left-handed batters to go against the former Philadelphia reliever. It didn’t get that far. Romero got a fly out from Bryson Stott so that the Phillies’ infielder entered the sixth and flew out twice as part of the Cardinals’ 3 2/3 scoreless innings from the bullpen.

The timing of Winn’s homer rewarded Leahy and came as a tidy contrast to the matchups the Cardinals rigged vs. the one Winn scored.

Winn slugged .500 against lefties last season and nine of his 15 homers came against left-handed pitching. This season he’s hit as well off of lefties as lefties have hit off of Leahy – a .077 average to go with a .077 slugging percentage. Still, Winn has insisted that he sees the pitches well from lefties, and he repeated that description Monday night. Strahm had not allowed a home run in any of his previous 15 2/3 innings this season. Winn studied how the lefty reliever pitched to right-hander Jose Barrero and set his approach accordingly.

“I was just sitting dead-read (for) something up in the zone,” he said. “Took a hack. Probably doesn’t get out of Busch. Here the ball flies, so I’m glad I hit it here.”

Winn hit a 91.4-mph elevated fastball from the lefty.

They helped two relievers get out of two jams to add up to the obvious.

“Tonight it means we won the game,” Liberatore said. “Those two innings don’t go the way that they did – obviously, I trust in our lineup and our ability to punch back when we get hit. But who knows what that game looks like. We had to scratch and claw for every run that we scored. To have guys who come in and you put your faith in to shut the door, that’s huge.”

Photos: Cardinals extend win streak to 9 by topping Phillies