Paul Goldschmidt Is the Offensive Drive for First Place St. Louis
Paul Goldschmidt is no stranger to being a power bat, and he has homered in six straight games for the first place St. Louis Cardinals.
While stars like Paul DeJong and Kolten Wong make their presence known both defensively and offensively, it’s safe to give Goldy the team MVP of the week in the offensive category.
Rise to First
The Cardinals stayed in third the majority of this season. They hope to break a three-year playoff drought. There’s no doubt that Goldschmidt has the bat to help try and end that skid.
As of Sunday night, Goldschmidt has 24 home runs and 56 RBI while batting .256 on the year. He’s been cold somewhat for the majority of the season. Now he seems to be heating up, much to the delight of skipper Mike Shildt.
Cardinals fans expected big things when Goldschmidt came via trade from the Arizona Diamondbacks this year. He came with the departure of big name power bat first baseman Luke Voit to the New York Yankees.
Despite Goldschmidt gifting Cardinals fans with a nice power show, it was hard to get there. Goldschmidt has struggled the majority of the season before. He posted up a .744 OPS and batted .260 before going off offensively. For sure, fans wanted the Arizona version of him, not this Cardinals one before the six home run slugfest.
Cubs Will Probably Keep Cardinals Out of Playoffs
The Cardinals biggest threat this season to complete in the playoffs is still the Chicago Cubs. It is more than likely the Cards will miss the playoffs for the fourth year. Too many Cardinals aren’t meeting expectations. They are underperforming too much to be seen as a legitimate contention team. With too many Cardinals not exactly living up to their season bests despite being a first place team in such a competitive division, it’s going to be tough for them to pull off anything extraordinary.
Outlook
To say the least, Goldschmidt’s nice power hitting as of late lead the Cardinals to some competitive play that put them atop the highly close contested NL Central for the first time in a long time this season. Skipper Mike Shildt was desperate for Goldschmidt to start hitting. At one point he sent him a text message, giving him a day off to rediscover his swing. Goldschmidt found a batting cage, put in some work, and the end result was nice. Goldschmidt has well deserved NL player of the week. He went from a cool first baseman to scorching on fire even if it took a few months.
Whether it will lead his St. Louis Cardinals to the playoffs and end the rough three years is one thing. Hopefully he keeps it up, and the Cardinals can certainly use his bat to propel to stay in first. However if it leads them very far or not, it’s certainly nice to see Goldschmidt beginning to hit! While that streak ended at six games in Sunday’s loss to Houston, one must give credit where credit is due.
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