Two bits of bad news for the Cardinals, one bit worse than the other. Most importantly, they're losing, and this is a playoff game, where you don't want to lose. So, that's a problem. And also, leading off the bottom of the fifth is the left-handed Jon Jay, going up against the left-handed Madison Bumgarner. So maybe that's not how you'd draw up the start of a comeback attempt, but then, there are other considerations. Like, say, look what Jay did just earlier in the second inning.
Taking some tough pitches against Bumgarner, Jay worked a full count before he drove a fastball away into left field for a line-drive single. Now, that was just a single, and Jay obviously didn't come around to score, but you might not realize the extent to which Jay excels at this part of the game.
This season, 209 batters came to the plate at least 400 times. Freddie Freeman was the leader in line-drive rate, at 31%. But there, in third place, you find Jay, at 28.3%. He also hit just one infield pop-up.
What if we extend to cover two seasons? The last two years, 350 batters came to the plate at least 400 times. Jay's tied for fourth in line-drive rate, at 27.4%. He's right there with Joey Votto. He's right there with Joe Mauer. Jay's never hit a lot of pop-ups, and lately he's blossomed in terms of his ability to hit the ball hard on a line.
So what that means is that a guy without much power is still able to be an above-average offensive contributor. Jay has established a career .345 batting average on balls in play (BABIP). Over the past 30 years, setting a minimum of 2,000 plate appearances, Mike Trout leads the way in BABIP, at .361. Jay is tied with Shin-Soo Choo for 11th, ahead of even Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs. Eras have changed and numbers have different baselines than they used to, so of course that's not a totally fair comparison, but it speaks well of Jay, is the point.
He doesn't walk a ton. He doesn't hit for a lot of power. He makes contact, but he doesn't run a microscopic strikeout rate. Yet Jay has a career 112 wRC+, meaning he's been 12% better than average as a hitter. He's been solid every season, including the last two, and because of his ability to put the good part of the bat on the ball, and because of his ability to spray the ball around to all fields, Jay doesn't get exposed against lefties, and he isn't a guy one is easily able to shift.
Jon Jay hasn't turned into a spectacular player. He's simply a good player, a reliable player, and his greatest strength is the simplest possible strength to understand: pretty often -- more often than normal -- he sees the ball and hits it hard somewhere. Now, when you think Jon Jay, you'll have a second thought to follow the first.
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