The St. Louis Cardinals are finally starting to get healthy, with Randal Grichuk, Matt Adams and Jon Jay all back from the disabled list, and Matt Holliday possibly back as soon as next week.
But when I asked Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak what that all means for Stephen Piscotty, he gave the only answer he possibly could.
"It's hard to imagine him not being an everyday player right now," Mozeliak said by phone Thursday.
The Cardinals have had a hard-to-imagine season, overcoming all those injuries and more (don't forget Adam Wainwright) to have baseball's best record while playing in baseball's best division. But when you list the reasons they've been able to do it (don't forget the Adam Wainwright-less starting rotation owns baseball's best ERA), the emergence of Piscotty as an offensive force has to be near the top of the list.
Longtime St. Louis columnist Bernie Miklasz wrote Thursday morning at 101sports.com that Piscotty has been the most valuable Cardinal in the second half of the season. Mozeliak didn't rush to disagree.
"He really has had a tremendous impact on our club," Mozeliak said.
The Cardinals have been so good, and have won so much, it's easy to think from the outside they've been coasting to the National League Central title, that no one player or one game has really been that big. But if you saw their game against the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday, you know that's not true.
The Cardinals had lost two of three to the Pittsburgh Pirates and two in a row to the Cubs, and in the eighth inning Wednesday they had just two hits and trailed the Cubs 3-1. By the end of the day, their lead over the Pirates could have been down to 3.5 games, with the Cubs just 5.5 games behind.
On the Cardinals telecast, Dan McLaughlin and Tim McCarver were talking about how there was going to be a real pennant race in the Central (albeit one where the second- and third-place teams would go to the Wild Card Game). All was glum—right up until Piscotty's two-run double over Dexter Fowler's head in center field put the Cardinals in front.
When I suggested it could have been the team's biggest hit of the season, again Mozeliak didn't disagree.
"It gave us oxygen," he said.
The Piscotty story is a nice one because it's proof that sometimes teams handle prospect promotions well, and sometimes those prospects understand what they need to do to have big league success.
He was the 36th overall draft pick out of Stanford in 2012, and he was a spring training star in 2014, but he never complained when the Cardinals sent him to Triple-A Memphis and left him there. Others sometimes complained for him (Miklasz wrote a column headlined, "Will Piscotty retire in Memphis?"), but all involved said Piscotty realized he needed time to adjust his swing to have the power necessary to be a productive corner outfielder in the major leagues.
He did it last winter, getting out of his crouch to stand more upright at the plate, allowing his swing to explode and allowing him to elevate the ball when he had a chance. His slugging percentage at Memphis jumped nearly 70 points in one year, to .475, and it's been even better (.527) since his July 21 call-up to the Cardinals.
It's still a small sample, but Piscotty has a higher slugging percentage than Andrew McCutchen, Manny Machado, Carlos Correa and Kris Bryant, among others.
Anyway, when agent Brodie Van Wagenen called Piscotty around the All-Star break this year and asked if he felt ready for the big leagues, the answer was, "Yes, I'm ready now."
The Cardinals agreed. Not long after that, Holliday reinjured his quad, and Piscotty took over in left field.
He has basically stayed there, starting 31 of the Cardinals' last 42 games in left. The nice thing for the Cardinals is Holliday's return won't force an either/or decision for manager Mike Matheny, because Piscotty can also play center field, right field or first base (and has started games at all three already).
Piscotty has settled in batting second in the Cardinals order, giving the top of the lineup a needed boost.
He was actually a third baseman at Stanford, where he studied atmosphere and energy engineering (solar wind power and renewable energy, he told MLB.com). He talks like a Stanford guy, as he did Wednesday when explaining to reporters (including Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) why the Cardinals' mini-slump against the Pirates and Cubs wasn't such a bad thing.
"Sometimes things just have to flush out," Piscotty said. "Sometimes for a market, the healthiest thing is a correction. Things hit the fan and it recovers."
And sometimes, it takes a few injuries for teams to find out what they have. Sometimes a guy like Stephen Piscotty gets into the lineup, maybe a little ahead of schedule.
And sometimes, once he gets in, they find it's hard to imagine ever taking him out.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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