Cardinals' rookie Joshua Báez has followed up his historic performance in his MLB debut -- three homers in his first three MLB at bats -- by going 0 for 15 with six strikeouts over his next three games. However, the quality of his contact continues to impress so far.
If you are just perusing box scores to see how Joshua Báez followed up his historic debut with three homers in the first three at bats of his MLB career, you might think that the Cardinals’ rookie slugger has crashed back to earth after being served a heaping helping of reality.
However, a deeper dive shows that the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Báez is still crushing baseballs – many of them even harder than his second and third homers in Saturday’s debut – but the rookie has been hitting into some tough luck in the three games since his jaw-dropping debut.
Since setting the sports world on fire by doing something no player in the history of the game has accomplished, Báez has gone a humbling 0 for 15 and six strikeouts. Three of those strikeouts came on Sunday in Chicago when the Cardinals breezed to an 11-4 win over the rival Cubs.
Whereas Báez was so locked in for his debut that he didn’t swing and miss once in four at bats, he has swung and missed 11 times over the last three games.
Still, the underlying metrics on Báez look good through his first four games. His hard-hit rate (balls with an exit-velocity of at least 95 mph) is 75 percent, while his average exit velocity sits at 99.2 mph and his average bat speed is 79 mph. To bring some perspective to those numbers, 6-foot-6, 250-pound teammate Jordan Walker has a 47.4 percent hard-hit rate, a 92.6 mph average exit velocity and a 79.2 mph average bat speed.
The Cardinals were so comfortable with the rookie’s early plate approach that they batted him leadoff in Monday’s Game 1 victory over the Reds – one where Báez opened the game by getting hit on the shin by an overcooked slider and he came around to score on Alec Burleson’s two-run double. Báez, 23, went 0 for 4 with a strikeout in that 2-1 victory for the Cardinals, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t seeing the ball well.
Báez drilled a changeup 107.1 mph in the second inning, but it was snared by Reds’ center fielder Dane Myers. In the sixth inning, Báez’s 106 mph grounder was right at Reds’ shortstop Elly De La Cruz, who turned it into an inning-ending force out. The seventh inning showed just how unlucky Báez was when he drilled a ball 111.9 mph only to see Reds’ Gold Glove third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes snag it and throw to first for the out.
In Monday’s nightcap – a game the Cardinals lost 6-5 when the shorthanded bullpen allowed a game-tying homer with two outs in the ninth and a winning run in the 10th – Báez saw some of the swing-and-miss from his Triple-A season at Memphis seep into his game. He struck out in the eighth and 10th innings, swinging and missing five times in those last two at bats. However, his sixth inning fly out left the bat at 104.6 mph, traveled 387 feet to the warning track and moved Walker from second base to third where he would score later in the inning.
Cardinals’ manager Oliver Marmol pointed out that there were adjustments made by Báez during his six years in the Minor League that helped him go from a player that hit the ball on the ground often to one who started lifting it for long homers. In time, Marmol thinks Báez will make that adjustment at the MLB level.
“There are some things that he’s done with our Minor League guys to become the player that he is today,” Marmol told ESPN on Sunday. “But credit to him, man because he has put in the work. This is a guy who is extremely dedicated and confident in what he does, and we’re starting to see some of that now.”
Nothing, of course, can detract from the way that Báez started his career in grand fashion on Saturday in the Cardinals’ 8-4 defeat of the Cubs. Promoted to the big leagues after crushing 34 homers at Triple-A Memphis, Báez was ready for the first fastball he saw at the big-league level, smashing Matthew Boyd’s first offering 449 feet and nearly completely out of Wrigley Field. That swat allowed Báez to become just the fifth player in the storied history of the Cardinals to homer on his first pitch in the big leagues.
In the fourth inning, Báez showed some moxy when he battled back from an 0-2 count and pulled a 3-2 changeup into the bleachers in left field. That allowed him to become baseball’s third player ever to homer in his first two at bats.
Then, in the sixth inning, Báez showed off some versatility while making MLB history. The slugger stayed on wide slider and went with the pitch by driving it over the wall in right-center. It gave Báez three homers in his first three MLB at bats, giving him the distinction of doing something that none of the previous 23,752 Major League players before him had ever done.
“Definitely the greatest debut, it really was and it was one of those games where you need to take a step back and just enjoy what you were watching,” Marmol told ESPN the day after the Báez feat. “I felt like our entire dugout, including myself, was able to do that. He’s the first one to do that and that’s pretty special. He goes pull-side (with the second homer) and then back-side (with the third homer). It was a cool moment for him, and he had his family and friends here and it was a special moment for them as well.”
