Good evening from Busch Stadium…

Cardinals 9 Dodgers 6 and a quiet ninth inning for a change.

Let’s go:

– Cardinals slugger Ryan Ludwick hit his team-leading 29th homer of the season, this one off Dodgers starter Derek Lowe in the fourth inning. It wasn’t the biggest blow of the game; that was claimed by Albert Pujols, who had just circled the bases after hitting a grand slam. Ludwick followed with his own homer. But I make special note of the Luddy longball for a reason: he hit the HR on a curve. A curve thrown with Lowe ahead in the count.

– OK, so what’s the big deal about Ludwick slamming a curve over the fence? It’s worth mentioning because he’s been weak against that pitch.

– What’s the book on Ludwick? According to STATS, he’s batting .375 against fastballs this season. He’s absolutely murdering changeups, hitting a preposterous .563 against the slow stuff. Ludwick has two soft spots: coming into Wednesday’s game, he was hitting .227 against the curve, and .180 vs. the slider.

– Gametrack on MLB.com indentified the pitch as a slider … but Ludwick said it looked like a curve.

– Either way, it was a HR worth talking about. Because when he’s behind in the count, Ludwick hits .114 against the slider, and .200 against the curve. But he’s starting to hit those pitches now…

– And this is another example of Ludwick making progress. Pitchers found holes in his swing, at least in June, when Ludwick batted .228.

– But whatever holes were there, Ludwick seems to have closed them up … since July 2, he’s batting .360 with 13 homers in 114 at-bats. He has an OBP of .435 and a slugging percentage of .737 during this torrid stretch.

– Ludwick continues to thrive as the No. 4 hitter, behind Pujols.  In 161 ABs in the four hole, Ludwick is batting .329 with 16 homers and 42 RBIs.

Moving on, with a few other notes and observations:

– The best thing about Chris Perez’s first big-league save is that he got two of the five outs on his slider, which must be sharp. If it isn’t sharp, then Perez is one-dimensional.

– What, no standing ovation for Brian Falkenborg?

– Adam Kennedy is batting .311 since June 5. He had two more hits Wednesday.

– New Cardinal Felipe Lopez really hustled down the line while grounding out a couple of times… that’s what we wanted to see, because he wasn’t hustling in Washington.

– I have to admit: when Cardinals starter Joel Pineiro couldn’t hold an early lead, I thought he was headed to another disaster, but he hung in there.

– With the grand slam, Pujols pulled his average with runners in scoring position up to .311. From 2001-2007, Pujols batted .344 with RISP.  At the end of May, Pujols was batting only .256 with RISP, and at one point this season that average was .245.  But the hits with runners in scoring position are coming now. Pujols is being Pujols.

 Thanks for reading.

-B