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The St. Louis Cardinals got above the .500 mark with their 9-4 win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday. St. Louis has had a respectable 11-game run to climb the NL Central. Moreover, Alec Burleson revealed Matt Carpenter's two-word message that has allowed the right fielder to have a performance ascent.
Alec Burleson went nearly nine months without hitting a home run going into the Cardinals' late April series against the New York Mets. However, he broke his streak with a homer on April 26th, and he attributed his snap to Matt Carpenter's blunt advice.
“Do damage,” Carpenter told Burleson before the Cardinals started the Mets series, per MLB.com's John Denton.
However, the story does not end there. Burleson hit two home runs in an MLB game for the first time and had a career-high five RBIs in the Cardinals' win over the Giants on Saturday. The right fielder recalled Carpenter's words when he gave reporters insight into what fueled his big day.
“Carp kind of said the same thing that the organization and the coaching staff had been saying — do damage,” Burleson said. “My bat-to-ball skills with two strikes are pretty good, but it was different hearing [the hitting advice] from him. It was different hearing it from somebody who plays the game and has done it for a long time. It was nothing new, but it was different coming from a guy like that.”
Matt Carpenter is in his 14th MLB season, so the veteran hitter's advice to Burleson meant a lot, and it was effective. Burleson helped Spearhead the Cardinals' offensive attack, which also translated to a stout defensive stand against San Francisco.
Ex-St. Louis pitcher Jordan Hicks and Oliver Marmol provided further insight into the intense battle from Saturday.
The Cardinals are in high spirits after their Giants victory
Jordan Hicks pitched four innings on Saturday but admitted he ran out of gas due to the high temperatures.
“I would say my legs were pretty dead after the third,” Hicks said. “I could always see it when I was on the Cardinals, that the other pitchers looked like they were pretty dead out there [because of the heat]. You get them up to 20-30 pitches in an inning, that’s when we usually did our damage when I was with the Cardinals.”
“It made sense in that [fourth] inning. I got two outs, and then [Dylan Carlson] goes down and gets a pitch, Masyn [Winn] puts a good swing on one and then a solid pitch, but Burleson puts a good swing on a fastball… I got beat by the long ball today,” Hicks added.
Alec Burleson gave Hicks and the Giants a hard time on Saturday. Oliver Marmol revealed that Burleson's intense performances are coupled with what John Denton described as “an infectious energy.”
“Even in the clubhouse, he’s a little bit of a goof in a good way,” Marmol joked. “He keeps it light and he doesn’t take himself too serious. And he plays that way. He’ll get frustrated from time to time but he plays the game with that enthusiasm. It rubs off on other guys.”
It will be interesting to how Burleson, Matt Carpenter, and the rest of the team continue to perform as they push for a 2024 postseason spot.
