Paul Goldschmidt and the Cardinals Just Might Be the Most Exciting Team in MLB

Does it make sense to establish that the St. LouisCardinals have a reputation for being boring first?

Yes, why? Is it? They know it. If you run a search for "Cardinals boring", you'll find a wide range of results from forums to posts on the internet.

The president of baseball operations told Bob Nightengale of USA Today that they were boring.

The fact that the Redbirds won 100 games that year is proof that being entertaining and good are not mutually inclusive. Despite their bland rap, the Cards won the most games of any National League team between 2000 and 2021, even if they weren't great. There was something to the oft-mocked and vaguely defined Cardinal Way.

There's something different about this year's team, despite all the familiar faces that are still in theCardinals' dugout on a daily basis. Something special.

The Cards finished the season with a 32-23 record. Their 12-5 run in their last 17 games has put them within half a game of the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central. Milwaukee's plus-26 run differential is not as good as St. Louis'.

This is business as usual for the Cards, but they're also fun to watch. Specific and quantifiable ways to some extents, but also in ways that are not to other extents.

I love that corner infield duo.

Nolan Arenado was making it impossible to ignore him back in April. The veteran third baseman had one of the best months of his career in which he hit five home runs and was named the NL Player of the month.

The spotlight has been taken from Arenado by Paul Goldschmidt.

He hit.408 with 10 home runs and 33 runs driven in in May to win the Player of the Month award. He's only the ninth player in history to do it in May, and the first to hit all three of them in a single month.

He's still hot in June. He is still hot in June.

St. Louis Cardinals @Cardinals

GOLDY GONE! pic.twitter.com/VV1CsGcfKq

Goldschmidt is working on a season unlike any of the ones he had in his days as an All-Star with the Arizona D-backs. He's on pace for over 200 hits and 30 home runs, and his.343 average,.423 on- base percentage and 1.031 OPS are each tops in the National League.

Arenado, who was a five-time All-Star for the Colorado Rockies before coming to St. Louis last year, cooled off around the time that Goldschmidt caught fire, but has started warming up again.

If this continues, the Goldschmidt-Arenado duo will be the two-headed monster that the Cards have been waiting for.

I love that emerging slobber.

Nolan Gorman leads the Triple-A International League in batting average at.333 and he has 15 home runs.

He hasn't played for the Memphis Redbirds in over a month.

Those numbers made Gorman, 22, preordained to be a handful for major league pitchers, and that's proven to be the case as he's posted a.950 OPS and three home runs over his first 14 games.

Cheap is not one of the words one could use to describe a home run.

On May 28, he hit his first career home run. The average distance on all of his batting balls comes out to 243 feet. It's the best such mark in baseball.

That's a lot of power for a guy who isn't very tall and doesn't have a lot of strength. It has always been there, even as a draft prospect, with Law noting that Gorman had 80 grade power potential even as a draft prospect.

I love that arm.

Ryan Helsley is perhaps baseball's best pure power pitcher and he is part of a pitching staff that is mostly centered on veteran finesse types.

Even though he's shared the pen with an excellent closer, Helsley has been able to separate himself from the pack in allowing just one earned run on six hits and five walks through 21.2 appearances.

He's struck out 30 batters, including 15 on a pitch that he's run as high as 103 mph.

The 99th percentile for spin rate is also where Helsley's Heater is located. The hitters are just 2-for-37 against it.

Josh Hader has 18 saves and a 0.00ERA. He's the best hurler in the National League with an expected batting average of.087.

I love defense and base running.

There is a case to be made that the Cards defense has improved over the course of the last two years. It was ranked second in efficiency and 14th in defensive runs saved last year.

The eye test is very helpful to the defense of theCardinals.

In Arenado, Goldschmidt and Tommy Edman, the Redbirds have Gold Glovers in three of the four spots on their infield.

The highlight reel editors have been busy.

It is possible that they are not as busy as Edman has kept them.

Harrison Bader is one of the most rangy center fielders in baseball, and he's not the only one who uses his arm to punish runners. The entire outfield of the Cards is tied for second with 12 assists, with Brendan Donovan accounting for three of them in just 87innings.

Yet the team's best arm is still behind the plate, where Yadier Molina continues to make ridiculous throws as he approaches his 40th birthday.

Other teams would like to have their own catcher when they play the Cards.

It would be easier to shut down the running game that has produced an MLB-best 44 stolen bases. 34 percent of the runners the team puts on end up scoring, and St. Louis base runners take an extra base on hits more than half the time they get the chance.

I love that vibe.

"Fun" is not always a reflection of the abilities of individual players or of a team as a whole. It's a vibe that the Cards didn't have before. Their boring reputation was created by something resembling mechanical precision.

The former catcher said those guys are like robots. You don't know who they are because they all play the same way. They are all doing well.

The best example of how much the Cards have changed is not Goldschmidt's hitting or Arenado's defense.

Albert Pujols is going to pitch on May 15.

Just a week later on May 22nd, Molina will take the mound for a pitching appearance of his own.

Before this year, position players were not allowed to pitch. Mike Shildt allowed just one position player to take the mound in the two years he was manager.

With two of the most celebrated players in the history of the franchise, Oliver Marmol has already gone to that well twice. That speaks to how casually the skipper is operating, and yet he's doing so while also commanding respect from the club's trio of foremost veterans.

He was being groomed to be the manager according to Wainwright.

Pujols said that the man has a lot of wisdom. It's more than what you think.

It would be a huge mistake to ignore what Pujols has meant to the team. He put together a resume worthy of the Hall of Fame after 21 seasons in the majors. The lighter side of the man is coming through in his return to St. Louis.

Pujols told Rogers to have fun. I'm happy to be back where it all began.

It's tempting to conclude that the Cardinal Way is dead. Maybe that is going too far. Perhaps it has evolved.

One thing that is not boring is this new form.

Baseball reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant provide the statistics.