SI:AM | The Chase for 700 (and the NL Central Crown)

Plus, breaking news on the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. The Cardinals are leaving the Brewers in the dust.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏈 Why the NFLPA president retired early

🏟️ Bowl game projections, Vol. 1

😔 It’ll be a while before we see Chet in the NBA

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Albert Pujols and the Cardinals are on a tear

The Cardinals lost to the Cubs last night, but they’re still one of the hottest teams in baseball.

St. Louis is 21–9 since the All-Star break, including 17–5 this month. On Aug. 2, the Cards were two games behind the Brewers in the NL Central. Now they have a 5½-game lead. So how are they doing it? It’s easy: They’re hitting and pitching way better than they have all season.

As a team, the Cardinals have an .876 OPS in August. That’s more than 100 points better than their second-best month (.754 in May). They’ve scored an average of 5.9 runs per game (better than the 5.2 they scored in May). This month, the Cardinals are leading the majors in home runs, batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.

And at the same time, they’re pitching lights out, too. Opponents are slugging just .331 against St. Louis this month, the lowest of any month this season. The Cards’ ERA this month is 3.51, higher than the 3.22 they allowed during the notoriously low-offense month of April but about a half run better than last month.

If you want to point to a couple of players who are leading the way, that’s easy. Among pitchers, the man of the hour is Jordan Montgomery. The Cards acquired him from the Yankees at the trade deadline in exchange for injured outfielder Harrison Bader. Since then, he’s been practically unhittable. After pitching to a respectable 3.69 ERA in 21 starts for New York, he’s allowed just a single run in four starts with his new team. On Monday, he needed just 99 pitches to throw a complete-game shutout.

The guy everyone is paying the most attention to, though, is Albert Pujols—and for good reason. He’s hitting like he did before he left St. Louis a decade ago. The Cardinals’ signing Pujols for his final season was a feel-good story, but no one could have expected that he would play as well as he has. Pujols hadn’t been a league-average hitter by OPS+ since 2016. I was worried when the Cards signed him that he would struggle and they might have to find a graceful way for him to step aside for the good of the team, and during the first half of the season it looked like that might be the case. In June, he had just two extra-base hits in 42 plate appearances and he posted a putrid .158/.214/.211 slash line.

But he’s turned things around dramatically since the All-Star break, and especially since the calendar flipped to August. His slash line this month is a preposterous .432/.490/.977, and seven of his 19 hits have been homers.

It’s the home run binge that’s really making headlines. The 700-homer milestone that previously seemed unattainable is now a distinct possibility. He’s sitting at 693 with 38 games to play. Seven homers in six weeks doesn’t seem impossible considering the way he’s swinging the bat lately, especially against lefties. He’s mashed southpaws this season, launching 10 of his 14 homers off of them while hitting .398 with a 1.242 OPS.

The Cardinals are facing some lousy competition down the stretch. Only 13 of their final 38 games are against teams with playoff hopes, and 21 of them are against the three worst teams in the National League (the Reds, Pirates and Nationals). That’s a lot of opportunities for Pujols to smack homers and for the Cardinals to pick up easy wins and pad their lead in the division.

The best of Sports Illustrated

For today’s Daily Cover, Alex Prewitt spoke with JC Tretter, the longtime Browns center and current president of the NFLPA who believes his role with the union is keeping teams from signing him:

Released by the Browns in mid-March, four days after he was elected to a second two-year term as president of the NFL Players Association, Tretter hit free agency intending to return for a 10th campaign before retiring. His “short list” of dream destinations was topped by the Panthers, as he has a longstanding relationship with offensive line coach James Campen; the Cowboys, “because I feel like if you’re going to play one last year, that environment would be fun”; and the Vikings, because he cheered for them as a child and “wanted to put a bow on my childhood.” But, Tretter says, none of the seven teams that his camp contacted reciprocated his interest. “Minnesota never returned our call,” he says.

Pat Forde visited the rural Indiana retreat center that Luke Fickell transforms into Cincinnati’s training camp every summer. … Will Laws bids a not-so-fond farewell to Arte Moreno, whose ownership of the Angels has been mostly disastrous. … Mark Bechtel pays tribute to former Chiefs quarterback Len Dawson, who died this week at age 87. … Richard Johnson predicted the matchups for all 41 of this season’s college football bowl games. … Big-money changes look like they’re coming to the PGA Tour, Bob Harig writes.

Around the sports world

Thunder rookie Chet Holmgren is reportedly expected to miss the entire season after injuring his foot in a pro-am game in Seattle. … The Cowboys will be without offensive lineman Tyron Smith for a while after he suffered a serious injury in practice. … Rich Rodriguez, now coaching at FCS Jacksonville State, accused his opening-game opponent of spying. … The Dolphins are reportedly shopping their starting tight end on the trade market. … The Lakers are reportedly trading for Patrick Beverley, meaning he’ll be teammates with his old foe Russell Westbrook. … MLB teams will face all 29 other teams for the first time in 2023.

The top five...

… moments in baseball yesterday:

5. A home run robbery in the Little League World Series.

4. Aristides Aquino’s throw to nail a runner at home.

3. Matt Chapman’s backhanded flip to start a double play.

2. Pujols giving his jersey to a young fan behind the dugout.

1. Oneil Cruz crushing a single 122.4 mph (the highest exit velocity of any batted ball since Statcast was introduced in 2015)

SIQ

Roughly how long did it take Matthew Webb to complete the first observed, unassisted swim across the English Channel on this day in 1875?

• 14 hours
• 18 hours
• 22 hours
• 26 hours

Yesterday’s SIQ: Who scored the most points for the U.S. Olympic team in the 2008 men’s gold medal basketball game?

Answer: Dwyane Wade. He dropped a game-high 27 points on 9-of-12 shooting. Kobe Bryant (20 points), LeBron James (14), Chris Paul (13) and Carmelo Anthony (13) were the other U.S. players who scored in double figures. For Spain, Rudy Fernández had 22 points and Pau Gasol had 21.

Wade was the leading scorer for the “Redeem Team” during the tournament, averaging 16 points per game. It was a far cry from his limited role on the disappointing 2004 team.

To understand why the Beijing team was so much better than the Athens team, you don’t have to look much further than the difference between the leading scorers, Wade and Allen Iverson. A.I. was wildly inefficient, averaging 13.8 points on 37.8% shooting while playing more minutes per game (27.1) than anybody else. Wade, on the other hand, was as efficient a scorer as you can be. He shot 67.1% from the floor, including a staggering 73.6% on two-point attempts, while coming off the bench. How often is the sixth man a team’s leading scorer?

“When you have Dwyane Wade saying he'll come off the bench and be the leading scorer off the bench—Chris Paul came off the bench on that team,” Jim Boeheim, who was an assistant during the Olympics, said in a radio interview this week. “Guys didn't care who scored or how much they scored, they just wanted to win.”

From the Vault: Aug. 25, 2014

Al Tielemans/Sports Illustrated

Mo’ne Davis was the talk of the Little League World Series in 2014. After her two-hit, complete game shutout against a team of boys from Nashville in Williamsport, she ended up on the cover of Sports Illustrated, with a story written by Albert Chen.

The cover photo is one of my favorites from recent years. It was taken by Al Tielemans, who told Wilton Jackson in a recent edition of SI’s Full Frame newsletter about the experience of shooting her in Williamsport.

“She always viewed herself as another kid and that’s what she’s doing here,” Tielemans said. “Kids would ask for a picture with her, and she would be silly with them in photos as a kid would. When parents and older people would ask for photos, she thought it was crazy. There was no doubt that she was the center of attention, but she didn’t seek it out.”

Davis is now 21 and entering her senior year at Hampton University in Virginia, where she plays as an infielder on the softball team. She was fourth on the team last season with 16 runs driven in. In 2019, when she decided to attend Hampton, she told Shemar Woods why she had gravitated toward the historically Black institution:

As for what brought her to Hampton, a historically Black university, Davis wanted to attend a school where she was in the majority, not the minority, after attending a largely white school since the second grade. Though she is in some ways like any teenager—she stays up all night and can sleep all day on the family couch (her bed is covered in laundry); she just got her driver's license; she snacks questionably (Doritos dipped in cream cheese is a favorite)—she has been a role model long enough to understand that her choices carry weight. “I think more people are going to start coming to HBCUs,” she says.

She’s majoring in communications and hopes to host her own sports interview show after she graduates.

Check out more of SI’s archives and historic images at vault.si.com.

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