{"id":98634,"date":"2025-04-02T12:09:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:09:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=98634"},"modified":"2025-04-02T12:09:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:09:43","slug":"two-cardinals-starters-cardinals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/04\/02\/two-cardinals-starters-cardinals\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Cardinals Starters Still Hitless, but Team Isn’t Concerned"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five games into the season, both Masyn Winn and Willson Contreras have yet to record a hit. In the nine starts between the two of them, they are a combined 0-37. While the stretch is unsavory for the St. Louis Cardinals lineup<\/a>, there doesn’t seem to be panic in the dugout over it.<\/p>\n

Winn Continuing Spring Training Struggles<\/h3>\n

The season’s opening week looked similar to Winn’s<\/a> Spring Training campaign. In 55 Spring Training at-bats, Winn managed just four hits, striking out 16 times and walking four times. In 21 plate appearances this season, Winn has struck out eight times and walked thrice.<\/p>\n

After Monday’s 5-4 extra innings loss to the Los Angeles Angels, Winn said he’s frustrated, but confident he will turn it around.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just a long year. I\u2019m going to have stretches where I can\u2019t get out. I know that\u2019s going to come at some point,” Winn told reporters. “But to dwell on these first four games is going to be really tough. If I\u2019m really down on myself now, we\u2019ve got 158 more left. I definitely don\u2019t want to take it to heart too much now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Winn <\/a>has managed to make decent contact on several occasions during the slump. According to Baseball Savant, half of the balls Winn has put in play have been hard hit. He says he has been putting a lot of work in with coaches in the batting cages.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think within the next couple of days everything is going to click,” Winn said.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Positive Attitude on Winn’s Slump<\/h3>\n

The Cardinals opened the season with a three-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins. When Winn talked about his struggles with reporters on Monday, he told them winning was more important to him than his own personal statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m pissed off while we\u2019re winning that\u2019s just selfish,” Winn said. “I want to go out there and be a good teammate. Try to help the team win on defense if I can\u2019t offense and just go from there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Winn has been contributing well on defense. With the very small sample size, Winn already has an outs above average metric of one. That puts him in the top three percentile of league for fielding run value.<\/p>\n

After the Cardinals 9-7 extra inning loss to the Angels on Tuesday, manager Oliver Marmol<\/a> told reporters Winn is handling his offensive slump very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could easily get frustrated where one at bat leads to the next. Or at least how you play defense or your overall demeanor around the other guys, and you\u2019re getting zero of that,” Marmol said. “The guy is dialed in on defense. He\u2019s in the dugout doing what he normally does and bringing energy and excitement to the rest of the game, but it\u2019s not going his way offensively. But I feel like he\u2019s handling it really well.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Winn is entering his second full MLB season. He is the only shortstop on the Cardinals roster after the team elected to start their other shortstop options<\/a> in Triple-A.<\/p>\n

Contreras Swinging Hard During Slump<\/h3>\n

While Winn has been positioned at the bottom of the lineup, Contreras is in the heart of it. His 0-19 streak has featured eight strikeouts. Five times this season, he has had an at-bat with runners in scoring position. Every time he has struck out in that position. Contreras was supposed to get an off day on Tuesday, but the team needed him to sub in during extra innings. He took the game’s final at-bat as the tying run with a runner on second and struck out.<\/p>\n

Unlike Winn, Contreras enjoyed success in Spring Training. In 45 plate appearances this Spring, Contreras slashed .405\/.511\/.649. He hit two home runs, struck out seven times, and walked six times. All of this while getting his first game action at first base amid a position change<\/a> for the 32-year-old.<\/p>\n

While Contreras’ struggles have been costly for the Cardinals early on, there are some signs that things could turn around. For one, his bat speed has increased from 75.9 miles per hour last year to 76.8 this year. In a limited sample size, his bat speed this year puts him in the top three percentile for the League this season according to Baseball Savant. He’s also producing an optimal launch angle on 54 percent of the balls he’s put in play.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals can afford to give Contreras time to figure things out, as he is splitting time with Alec Burlson<\/a> at first base and DH.<\/p>\n

Main Photo Credits: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five games into the season, both Masyn Winn and Willson Contreras have yet to record a hit. In the nine starts between the two of them, they are a combined 0-37. While the stretch is unsavory for the St. Louis Cardinals lineup, there doesn’t seem to be panic in the dugout over it. Winn Continuing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5111,"featured_media":98648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[28578,156,3711,174,6420,1130,168,28735,1478],"class_list":["post-98634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardinals","tag-alec-burleson","tag-los-angeles-angels","tag-masyn-winn","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-oliver-marmol","tag-opening-day","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-thomas-saggese","tag-willson-contreras"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98634"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98651,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98634\/revisions\/98651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}