Cardinals vs Cubs material a month early! Ivan Herrera and Carson Kelly + Cardinals Hitter Rankings + a June outlook and more
Ivan Herrera is having a season that can only be described as legendary so far. His torrid start to the season has been mostly remembered by a 3 home run game which put the spotlight on him. After an unfortunate injury that derailed him for a few weeks, Herrera came back just as strong and has maintained a presence at the plate that can best be described as a threat to the other team. He gets hits, and he does it often. And he tends to collect them at opportune moments. No pitcher really wants to face Ivan Herrera right now.
He is in fact, hitting ridiculously. One could, if you set the leaderboards to a minimum of 75 plate appearances, even venture so far to state that Ivan Herrera is only bettered by Aaron Judge at hitting in 2025. Herrera looks like the best hitter in the National League so far, and he’s doing it while sharing catching duties. He may not be a true full time catcher, but I don’t want to just call him a DH either. So for the purpose of this writing, I am calling him the Cardinals catcher, or one of the many, Cardinals catchers, I should say.
You know what other MLB catcher is also hitting at an elite level? Ex-Cardinals prospect Carson Kelly! I think the plot line may have been forgotten or filed under total disbelief but Carson Kelly is running a .442 wOBA after a similarly limited 127 plate appearances. That’s right, Kelly only has 41 more plate appearances than Herrera.
So this comparison is not totally off base. Two NL Central catchers are somehow dominating the major leagues at hitting. Ivan Herrera is doing this by batting at a clip of .465 wOBA (better than hot hitting Freddie Freeman!). Using wRC+, another weighted statistic, shows that Herrera and Kelly are the #2 and #4 best hitters in MLB as well. But something just doesn’t seem right… how can these two random catchers be elite MLB hitters in 2025?
Ivan Herrera is having amazing BABIP outcomes, so that might not be sustainable at balls batted into play dropping 38.6% of the time. Carson Kelly actually looks unlucky with BABIP. But has 9 home runs and strong isolated power numbers (.311 ISO!). Kelly is walking a lot more and striking out a little less than Herrera. So why does that stat xwOBA prefer Herrera by a large margin?
Expected Outcome stats help to remove defense and ballpark from the equation to express the skill shown at the moment of batted ball contact. By looking at the exit velocity and launch angle of each batted ball, a Hit Probability is assigned based on the outcomes of comparable historic balls in play. By accumulating the expected outcomes of each batted ball with actual strikeouts, walks and hit by pitches, Expected Batting Average (xBA), Expected Slugging (xSLG), and (most importantly) Expected Weighted On-Base Average (xwOBA) tell the story of a player’s season based on quality of and amount of contact, not outcomes.
So for whatever reason Herrera drops from #2 hitter in MLB to #10 at .417 xwOBA, while Kelly drops to #24 at .397. Both still extremely good hitters! But maybe not top notch. Close enough! These however are two of the biggest difference between wOBA (weighted on base average) and xwOBA (expected weighted on base average) in MLB currently. So by all measure, it would appear that the two NL Central elite hitting catchers are both a bit of early season smoke and mirrors. However, due to the premium level of quality of contact by Herrera, he appears to be the lesser of the two mirages.
If one of the two should drop out of the picture of MVP or whatever, it’s probably going to be Carson Kelly. That just feels right anyway, but also, we have more superb hitting by Herrera to look forward to, even if he calms down a bit.
Neither are really really good defensive catchers, in fact the opposite. Neither are really a plus and many see Herrera as a DH. So I suppose the two are all the more comparable. That said, it is probably true that Kelly is more of a catcher than Herrera. But, Herrera has the edge on baserunning and is more of a pure hitter. Probably? He does only have 86 plate appearances I suppose.
Kelly might have a little more plate discipline but I just don’t see how he has become a powerful hitter overnight. Carson Kelly showed some signs of good ISO numbers during his first year in Arizona, but for the most part he isn’t known to be such a hitter. He is a big part of the Cubs top offense, but it’s not like he has more home run potential than his teammates. He just doesn’t play as often to match their home run totals. And why is that? The Cubs are platooning Carson Kelly effectively. He does not hit lefties too well, so he is limited to a nearly 3:1 ratio in plate appearances vs righties.
This absolutely means that Ivan Herrera is more of a pure, top flight hitter than Carson Kelly. Herrera somehow hits lefties better than righties so far, so I don’t think he really cares which side the ball is coming from. He just flat out hits. It hasn’t mattered at all whether the Cardinals are home or away, Ivan just hits. It also doesn’t matter what month it is. Herrera. Just. Hits. Does it matter if he’s the DH or positioned at catcher? Yes, Ivan hits EVEN MORE when he catches.
This may be more small sample size theater but so far, so good for Herrera. I think he has most of us convinced that he’s more of a hitter than any of us even realized. This season will tell if we have Albert Pujols (lite?) or just a damn good hitting catcher/designated hitter guy.
General Notes
- The Cardinals have two off days in June. One of them is on June 2nd, only a few days after the offday scheduled for Thursday May 29th. Monday June 16th is the other off day of the month! June means Royals, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Brewers, White Sox, Reds, CUBS, Guardians, and Pirates going into July. That Cubs series is a 4 game series the 23rd through the 26th: 3 weekday night games and a Thursday matinee.
- June sees us play 5 mediocre/decent teams, plus two premier teams, and the White Sox. Hopefully we can pad the wins to above 10 games over by end of month, considering it’s not the most difficult schedule. It is however, a grueling stretch nonetheless.
- Our amazing defensive numbers come from us being the rangiest team in MLB according to fangraphs. We don’t turn the double play exceptionally well or accel too much elsewhere. It almost seems that they must have a preternatural reaction time and read the ball extremely well?
- Our vaunted offense has cooled down quite a bit but is still quite ok, well above average. We might be lucky to see three players with over 20 home runs, but right now it would appear only Nootbaar will hit over 20 this season. I think Contreras will go on a run eventually and be more of a threat. Herrera might be a 4th player to hit 20 or more HR, but right now if Winn and Contreras reach 20, that would be a little bit of a stretch. I suppose Herrera could too though with 5 home runs and lost playing time. Arenado will have to surprise to reach 20, too. We might be lucky enough to just have Nootbaar reach 20 though!
Hitter Rankings
- Ivan Herrera 203 wRC+ with 25 RBI
- Brendan Donovan 142 wRC+ with 22 RBI
- Masyn Winn 115 wRC+ with 17 RBI
- Lars Nootbaar* 109 wRC+ with 25 RBI
- Alec Burleson 109 wRC+ with 16 RBI
- Victor Scott II 106 wRC+ with 19 RBI
- Willson Contreras 103 wRC+ with 28 RBI
- Nolan Arenado 90 wRC+ with 25 RBI
- Pedro Pages 72 wRC+ with 20 RBI (Jordan Walker also has 20 RBI)
*leads the team in home runs with 7
Narratives Shift
Earlier in the season we had no idea we would have this awesomely rangey defense, and the stories were more about how the hitting was so much better than the pitching, and if the bullpen could hold up. Now our starting pitching also cracks the top 10, which is where our hitting has been residing (mainly drawing strength from batting average). But what about our dangerous bullpen? It appears to be a strength again. By FIP, the Cardinals have the #8 bullpen in MLB. But what has been the most quality trait of our starting rotation? We have been keeping pressure off the bullpen because our starting pitching is going deep into games. Our bullpen has the 24th fewest innings pitched in MLB, which makes using fWAR to describe our bullpen pure folly.
The Cardinals rotation has pitched 300 innings exactly as of today. How about that? That’s the fifth most hard working rotation in MLB! Our starters are just going deeper into games now, and they’re doing it pretty consistently. They usually just give us a chance to win and eat innings while doing it! They haven’t been too flashy but they’re a top 10 rotation by ERA.
The most impressive players on the team however have been Herrera, Donovan, Winn, and Victor Scott II. How big of a find has VSII been?? What a major upgrade in center field! Same for Herrera, DH was a black hole of suck last year. Now with Ivan in that position half the time, it’s much improved over last season as well. And without Donovan and Winn on the team, I don’t even want to know where we would be. Probably around .500 at best.
The Cardinals are currently 3 games out from the Cubs who are still proving to be the best in the NL Central. Behind the Cardinals the teams are all .500 or less.
Album Hall of Fame
My Bloody Valentine – EPs the link is to the song “Drive It All Over Me” just in time for road trip season! For years I only listened to ‘Loveless’ but the EPs are even better!
My Bloody Valentine is by way of the UK (more Irish than English) and part of the 90s alternative rock explosion. They are like no other except all of their imitators try to sound like them, and don’t quite get there. They are known as one of if not the main band from the genre dubbed Shoegaze (because the musicians had so many effects pedals on the floor that early journalists on the scene thought they were gazing at their shoes).
Go see them live if you ever have a chance! Don’t hold your breath for a new album though, that will come out in 1 to 100 years, maybe. Last I heard it was going to be out by 2022 at the latest. And I guess there’s still unreleased recorded material from the 90s! What is Kevin Shields doing?!? I suppose whatever he pleases but the band is active yet AGAIN for playing live shows this year. So that is always something, isn’t it? I just want another album.