Power, absent during regular season, saves Cardinals in NLDS – CBSSports.com

So the Cardinals are power hitters now? That’s weird. (USATSI)

A win or even a lot of wins is never reducible to a single aspect. In the NLDS, the Cardinals prevailed over the Dodgers in four games for a variety of reasons, but perhaps chief among those reasons was that they hit for power.

Consider that the Cardinals homered in each of the four games and tallied seven homers for the series. They also hit six doubles and slugged a robust .452 for the series. That’s thumping the ball against what was one of the NL’s better staffs in the regular season. That’s also very much out of character for the 2014 Cardinals.

During the regular season, the Cardinals didn’t hit for power. At all. They ranked last in the NL in home runs with 105, 10th in slugging percentage with a mark of .369 (versus a league average of .383), 11th in total bases. As well, the Cardinals ranked 14th in Isolated Power (behind only the denizens of Petco Park) and last in the NL in home runs as a percentage of fly balls. Again: They just didn’t have any thunder.

That changed, of course, much to the Dodgers’ chagrin. So what happened? First and foremost, we’re talking about four games, which in baseball makes for a vanishingly small sample. Over such a brief span, the random can hold sway, and that’s part of the Cardinals’ uncharacteristic power outburst. There are perhaps other considerations, though.

First, the Dodger staff, while good overall, is somewhat power-prone. This season, they gave up the fifth-most homers of any NL staff, and they also had the fifth highest HR/fly ball rate. So there’s that. As well, it’s worth noting there’s the lefty factor.

In the NLDS, left-handers pitched 60.8 percent of the Dodgers’ innings, and the Cardinals, it turns out, have a bit more pop against port-siders than they do overall. Specifically, during the regular season the Cardinals ranked a more respectable seventh in the NL in slugging percentage against lefties and sixth in Isolated Power versus lefties. So while pretty punchless overall, the Cardinals are actually a bit better than the league mean in terms of power against left-handed pitching. That likely played a role in their NLDS outburst.

As you’re surely aware, there’s a tidy line of thinking that goes around this time of year, one that posits that “small ball” offenses are best equipped to succeed in October. In the Cardinals’ case, though, some out-of-character power is the primary reason they’re headed to the NLCS for a fourth straight year.

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