TOWER GROVE — After the Cardinals sleepwalked to one run Thursday night at AT&T Park and have not exactly electrified scoreboards with offense this season, this may come as a surprise: The Cardinals have the fifth-most at-bats (89) with runners in scoring position (RISP) so far this season.

Mainly due to Albert Pujols, they have the fourth-most plate appearances with runners in scoring position (111). And, when ranked by RISP at-bats, the Cardinals have three of the top 13 hitters in baseball.

The runners are on. They aren’t coming in.

The Cardinals rank 20th in the majors in RISP batting average (.236), 19th in RISP on-base percentage (.349), and — stop if this looks familiar — 24th in RISP slugging percentage (.326). It’s so early in the season (too, too early), but the Cardinals RISP numbers aren’t too different from last year, and offense has to be an asset for this team because pitching cannot be asked to hold a sub-3.00 ERA for the rest of the month, let alone the rest of the season.

The Cardinals’ pitchers, after all, have held teams to/faced teams that have three of the averages lower than the Cardinals’:

• San Francisco … .227
• Houston … .185
• Colorado … .181

As mentioned above and in today’s paper, one reason for this is obvious: Avoiding Pujols. Pujols has five at-bats this season with runners in scoring position and five walks with runners in scoring positions. Only Eric Byrnes as many RISP walks as Pujols, and that tie is broken with this number: RISP on-base percentage. Byrnes is .375. Pujols’ is .700. Both of Pujols’ home runs were solo shots, and he’s yet to have an extra-base hits with runners on.

But two of the players who hit around him have had plenty of chances. Troy Glaus leads baseball entering play today with 16 RISP at-bats. Rick Ankiel isn’t far behind with 14 RISP at-bats.

Both are in the top five in baseball, and here is what that group has done with RISP:

PLAYER … AB … XB HITS … RBI … BA/OBP/SLG

Troy Glaus … 16 … 2 … 7 … .313/.333/.438

Alfonso Soriano … 14 … 0 … 2 … .214/.389/.214

Rick Ankiel … 14 … 2 … 5 … .286/.333/.571

Jose Bautista … 13 … 0 … 4 … .077/.235/.077

Matt Holliday … 13 … 2 … 6 … .385/.467/.769

And that brings us to Brian Barton.

The news in this morning’s paper that Barton will start tonight against Barry Zito sent me to the scorebook. Barton brings a .417 average into the start tonight and a .444 average this season against lefthanders. Research I did for this afternoon’s newsletter as Barton’s stats against lefty pitchers for this season and last at a .305 batting average and a .397 slugging percentage in 131 at-bats.

But where Barton really stood out when he started the three games against Washington last weekend was the scoring chances that he gave the Cardinals. His speed allows him to score from first on an extra-base hit, as he did when Ankiel smoked a double.

That got me thinking about what impact Barton had on the offense, even briefly.

It felt like the Cardinals haven’t had a more consistent string of offensive threats than they had last weekend against Washington, when Barton was the leadoff hitter. But was that the case? The Cardinals have had run-scoring rallies in 27 of the 85 innings they’ve played this season. Barton has played 16 innings, as a starter and the Cardinals have had scoring rallies in seven of them for 11 runs.

Barton has been a part of three, for a total of five runs.

It was while paging through the scorebook and counting up that information that I noticed another name always in the middle of the scoring rallies: Ankiel.

Of the 27 innings that the Cardinals have scored at least a run this season, Ankiel has had a role in 13 of them. That could be a base hit, that could be actually driving a run in or it could be advancing a runner who ultimately scores. Those 13 rallies that Ankiel has had a part in have produced 18 of the Cardinals’ 40 runs so far.  

So he has had the opportunities with 15 RISP plate appearances (seventh-most in baseball; behind Glaus’ 18 on the team). He’s had the production with a .571 RISP slugging percentage. It’s early, but there might be the RISPy indicator for the Cardinals offense.

And, now I realize … probably should have called this entry the Ankiel Factor.

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