JUPITER, Fla. • Former Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire, for three years the single-season record holder for home runs at 70, helped the World Series champion Cardinals lead the National League in batting average and runs scored last season — his second as the club's hitting coach.
Another less appetizing category in which the Cardinals led was grounding in to double plays. They smashed not only the club record but also the National League mark, with 169. Albert Pujols (29), Matt Holliday (21) and Yadier Molina (21) became the first 1-2-3 finishers in that category from the same team in league history.
But McGwire said Monday that statistic doesn't bother him.
"Not at all," he said. "We have a very contact-oriented lineup.
"There's two good things about it. One is that there always was somebody on base and, two, we had guys putting the ball in play. When you put the ball in play, good things happen.
"But the downside of it was that we had zero speed. So, what can you do?"
As new manager Mike Matheny concurred, leading the league in double plays was better than leading in strikeouts because nothing good can come of a strikeout.
"I'm not really that concerned about (the double plays)," Matheny said. "You look at on-base percentage and runs scored. What's the bottom line?
"Sure, they were frustrating to everybody. Was it an aberration? It could have been. I do think a lot of those balls were hard-hit balls, and we're going to continue to preach hitting on top of the ball and fight not to surrender with two strikes.
"We're not very happy if we're all talking about strikeouts when we're not at least putting pressure on the defense by putting the ball in play."
This is to say that Matheny won't be bunting to move runners over with Holliday, Molina, Lance Berkman, David Freese, Carlos Beltran or Allen Craig.
For only the second year since 1986, McGwire won't be wearing the same uniform as Tony La Russa, who managed McGwire in Oakland and St. Louis and then had the latter on his staff the last two years. La Russa has retired.
"You get to a time where things change, and he just felt it was time to go and move on," McGwire said.
McGwire is one of the few former A's players/coaches still with the Cardinals, but he said he made his decision independently of La Russa.
"I love teaching," McGwire said. "I understand the process of hitting. It takes a while to learn things. Working with the young kids over the years and watching them progress is going to be beautiful.
"Things don't happen overnight with hitting. It takes time. They've got great young talent here with their hitters and I'm very excited that (Matheny and general manager John Mozeliak) asked me back."
Matheny said he didn't have any doubt that McGwire enjoyed his job and hoped that McGwire would be able to fit his family (he has five children under 10) around it.
"He's really just hitting his stride; he's getting better every year," said Matheny, a teammate of McGwire in 2000 and 2001. "What we all need to do in our lives or businesses is to find that routine that makes us successful, and he had a successful year last year. Look at what the offense did."
After he quit the Cardinals following the 2001 season, leaving a $30 million, two-year offer on the table, McGwire dabbled in private hitting instruction near his southern California home and generally stayed out of the limelight.
The limelight became a glare in the winter of 2010 after he admitted past steroid use.
But now McGwire, his goatee gray instead of red, has retreated into relative anonymity again.
"I love it that way," he said. "That's the way I've always been. ... When I was a little kid, I always liked to sit in the back of the class so I wouldn't get noticed.
"And then, being a coach, it's not about you. It's about the players. It's about helping them and it's about passing on the knowledge."
In brief, McGwire has professed this philosophy at the big-league level:
"You sort of eliminate things you might want to talk about and you simplify it. Everybody hitting in the big leagues has the mechanics, but it's all about the mental side of the game. A lot of people don't understand that the mental side can take you from a good player to a very good player to a great player.
"Understanding the mental part of the game is all about knowing yourself, knowing the strike zone and studying the pitcher. I really understand how difficult it is to be successful at this level. but I really enjoy it because I know what it takes mentally to be successful. ...
"It's really never been talked about. At the lower levels of the minor leagues, everything is mechanical. But, with these kids here, their minds are going to get themselves out of a slump rather than them going in and looking at a video and trying to look at a mechanical problem."
McGwire, who will be assisted this season by former Cardinals teammate John Mabry, is comfortable with the teaching points of his job. It is the implementation and execution he agonizes over.
"It's not easy being a hitting coach because you have everyone on your mind all the time," he said. "The World Series was the most nerve-wracking thing I've ever been through. As a player, you're into your own game plan. As a coach, you're pulling for everybody, wanting everybody to be successful. I worry more as a coach than I ever did as a player.
"And there's always somebody who's not feeling good (about his hitting). There's never a day where everybody says, 'I've got it.':
One of the players McGwire probably helped the most last season was righthanded-hitting Allen Craig, who has a slight uppercut swing, similar to McGwire's.
Because of time missed from a broken kneecap — he is recovering from offseason surgery — Craig totaled just 200 at-bats last year, but he averaged .315 and drove in 40 runs with 11 home runs in roughly one-third a season.
That was before he exploded onto the postseason scene with three homers in the World Series, in addition to a couple of key run-scoring pinch singles.
"If you start thinking about what he can do with 500 or 600 at-bats, it's really exciting," McGwire said. "He has sort of a unique style of hitting, but it works. He understands where to get his body and where to get his hands into every position in order to hit the ball.
"Now it's a matter of him being tougher mentally and really sticking to his strike zone and understanding what that pitcher is trying to do. Every day."
When Craig returns, probably early in the season, he will augment the lineup that has lost Pujols but still has Holliday, Berkman, Molina and Freese.
And one more.
"Minus Albert, we've got Carlos Beltran," McGwire said. "He's not Albert, but he can put up numbers like Albert. Any time you can get a guy to hit 30 (homers) and 100 (runs batted in), that's pretty good."
Beltran accomplished those feats in the same season three times between 2004-07, though not since then as he has battled serious knee issues.
"You can't replace Albert," McGwire said. "I don't know if any team can ever replace Albert. But if you want to pick a guy that might throw up some numbers pretty close to Albert's, Carlos Beltran is a pretty good one."
McGwire has been spending his off hours this week working out with his sons, Max, 9 and Mason, 8, who can take their turns in the batting cage before they return to California next week where wife Stephanie, a Glen Carbon, Ill., native, is tending to 20-month-old triplets Marlo, Monet and Monroe.
The fact that McGwire's young sons never got to see their dad play, unlike 24-year-old Matt McGwire, is one of the reasons he returned to the game.
"They're happy I'm back in the game; I'm really happy I'm back," McGwire said. "They've asked me a few times, 'Dad, can you come back and maybe play?'
"If I was about 10 years younger (McGwire is 48), I'd say, 'Yeah.' I could still hit. But ... playing in a game at that level?
"No."
