Baseball will baffle you. On July 20th at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the Cardinals took the field for the bottom of the ninth inning with a 6-1 lead over the Chicago Cubs. The visitors won the game with a six-run rally. The very next day, the Cards faced a pitcher (Kyle Hendricks) who owns a career record of 12-3 against them. And St. Louis won (in extra innings).
On a larger scale, the 2021 Memphis Redbirds are playing baffling baseball. On July 9th, after a loss to the Louisville Bats in the first game of a doubleheader, the Cardinals’ Triple-A affiliate sported a record of 21-36, dead last in Triple-A’s Southeast Division. They won the second game that night in Kentucky and have proceeded to win their next 14 games, establishing a new franchise record for winning streaks and evening their record at 36-36. The Redbirds have passed two teams (Charlotte and Norfolk) in their seven-team division with two more (Gwinnett and Jacksonville) now firmly in their sights. (As of Monday they remain 14 games behind the first-place Durham Bulls.)
Making the record-breaking streak all the more baffling is the fact that the previous standard of 11 straight wins was established by the 2017 Redbirds, a team that won 91 games — the most by a Memphis pro team since 1948 — and the Pacific Coast League championship. The current Redbirds are, for now, still outside any contenders’ circle for postseason hardware.
How, you might ask, did the Redbirds turn things around so dramatically, and for such a sustained stretch of baseball? You’d have to tour the entire clubhouse at AutoZone Park for your answers. No fewer than 10 pitchers have earned wins during the winning streak (Connor Thomas, Connor Jones, and Angel Rondon each posted two and Austin Warner notched three). Eight different hitters have homered during the streak, with Juan Yepez, Conner Capel, and the recently promoted Nolan Gorman each drilling four. Memphis has won six games by a single run during the streak and six times held their opponent to fewer than two runs. Since the sport was invented, pitching and timely home runs have been contributing factors to lengthy winning streaks. Nothing different here.
And there’s this: The Redbirds have beaten up on a pair of Triple-A baseball’s weak sisters. All 15 wins have come against the Louisville Bats (an affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds) and Norfolk Tides (Baltimore Orioles), cellar-dwellers in the Midwest and Southeast divisions, respectively. But that’s hardly to diminish the streak. Good teams beat the clubs they should. Few championships have been won losing to bottom-feeders. The Redbirds found themselves blessed with a soft stretch on their schedule and they made the most of it. (Gwinnett visits AutoZone Park this week aiming to end the Redbirds’ streak. The Stripers are one game ahead of Memphis in the standings and have won eight of 12 meetings this season.)
We’ve seen this kind of about-face before, as recently as 2019, Ben Johnson’s first season as Redbirds manager. On July 17, 2019, Memphis found itself near the bottom of the PCL standings with a record of 38-59. The Redbirds proceeded to win 30 of their next 39 games to reach the .500 mark (68-68). They had a chance to win their division but dropped three of their final four games to the Iowa Cubs. The current roster would be wise to listen to Johnson as the “dog days” of August approach.
Ten series remain for the 2021 Redbirds, five at AutoZone Park and five on the road. How far can a history-making streak be extended? Sixteen games? Twenty? Even when it’s over, fun baseball awaits, perhaps with more history — even of the baffling variety — to be made. How a team plays at the end of a season, after all, has long been more memorable than how it plays at the beginning.
