MINNEAPOLIS _ It's become customary for Cardinals manager Mike Matheny to let his position players know who is in the lineup and where before the game, often with a message he sends to their phones the night before. It allows the hitters to prepare some and never arrive at the ballpark surprised.
No such text came Tuesday night.
Or Wednesday morning at Target Field.
The lineup needed a shock.
"No one knew the lineup until we got to the field," said Matt Carpenter, who checked to find himself batting seventh, the lowest he had hit in a game he started since July 22, 2015. "It's just when you're not producing _ it's a production game, it's results-oriented, and you're not going to continue to hit third if you're struggling. They're going to move you. I think it was like that: It is what it is. Just go play."
For the past week as the Cardinals' offense wheezed and pressure squeezed, Matheny had said he would try anything necessary "to change things up." Turns out the Cardinals knew what they needed all along. Two pivotal hitters had to change things back. Carpenter lashed three hits and doubled twice to pair with Dexter Fowler's two hits and four times on base. Fowler staked the Cardinals to a two-run lead and the lineup built upon it for a 7-5 victory against Lance Lynn and the Minnesota Twins.
The Cardinals started this road trip ebulliently because of a nine-run outpouring against the Padres. That was the breakthrough, many said. It proved to be a castle built out of the sand of five homers. The tide shifted. The offense wilted. The win Wednesday had more substance, a better foundation. The Cardinals nicked Lynn (1-4) for singles early, added doubles to the structure later, and capped the scoring off with a solo homer by Tommy Pham. They took the lead and never lost it _ because they added to it.
The Twins knocked starter Miles Mikolas from the game before the end of the fifth and got the tying run on base in the eighth inning with the bases loaded against setup man Greg Holland. Closer Bud Norris retired the final five batters for his ninth save. The win kept the Twins from sweeping the four-game interleague series.
Every spot in the order save for Marcell Ozuna reached base. Six Cardinals had an RBI. And, for the first time since April 17, Fowler and Carpenter each reached base twice in the same game.
"Hits, in general, have escaped me for awhile now," Carpenter said. "You take one swing and it can click for you and you roll off a couple of hits in a row. A couple weeks in a row turns into a month, and then the next thing you look up and you've had a good season. That's just how the game is. Hopefully this was that day for me."
Carpenter entered Wednesday's game hitless in his previous 22 at-bats, the longest active streak on the team. Fowler had gone hitless in his previous nine, but he had missed three out of the past four games to spend time in the cage searching for his swing. Both veterans had the same description of what they chased.
They were seeking that "click."
They found it in different ways Wednesday. Carpenter's came with a swing. Fowler got his with a take. In the first inning, Lynn allowed a single and gave a walk and a wild pitch, offering up a rally. He tried to take it back. Lynn struck out the next two batters to bring No. 5 hitter Fowler to the plate with two outs and two runners in scoring position. He took Lynn's first pitch, a 94 mph fastball, for a ball. But Fowler felt in rhythm to hit it. He saw it, timed it, and never lost his balance tracking it. Asked when last he felt that sensation, he paused.
"Feels like eternity," said Fowler, who started the day with a .146 average. "When you take a pitch like I took that first pitch, I knew I was in the right position. You're on the right path when you take pitches like that. You're not off balance. You're not gliding. You're in a good position to hit on the take. That's a good sign."
Two pitches later came a good result.
Fowler whistled a two-RBI single to center that scored as many runs with one swing as the Cardinals had total in the previous 27 innings against the Twins.
At the back end of the lineup, Carpenter led off the second inning with a flyout to left field. He ended the third with a strikeout. That dropped him to 16 for 116 this season, at .138. He had 12 games this season with one hit and was working on a 24th without one. Lynn was out after three innings, and Carpenter faced a reliever and a defensive shift in the sixth. He stung a line drive to left field for a single.
It was the kind of hit Matheny described earlier in the morning as the one that got Carpenter's average into the .300s and a spot in the majors.
Matheny then was asked what came next.
"He starts hitting a lot of doubles," Matheny answered.
That's what Carpenter did in the game. In his next two at-bats, Carpenter laced doubles to right-center and right field. In the span of three at-bats he raised his average to .160, and his RBI double in seventh off a lefty pushed the lead to 6-3. Matheny said those are the swings that look familiar and "we haven't seen in awhile." The manager, aware of the scrutiny on hitting coaches John Mabry and Bill Mueller, did not rebuke the criticism. He said "people point fingers every day (and) that's part of the world we live in." He defended the work his coaches have been doing with batters, the individualized approaches they've presented each hitter, and the hint Mabry gave that Carpenter was on the verge.
"They don't want any credit," Matheny said before the game. "They know when blame comes they're big enough to wear that."
The Cardinals continue to lag in the league when it comes to doubles and triples _ no team has hit fewer _ and games have been sunk by tempests of strikeouts. Matheny stressed that the team cannot outrun its meek offensive start or hide from it. But his message cannot change.
How it's delivered does.
"I think it's the rest of the world that needs to be proved, not me," Matheny said. "I know it's going to happen. I just want those guys to trust themselves, not buy into the doubt. That's my continual message to them. I don't want them to start doubting what they have because we're that kind of team. Thirteen hits. Seven runs. And a whole lot damage out there. That to me is the team that we're going to be. Just willing it to happen. It's not wishing."
