The premise of this article isn’t something that I can actually prove, but it’s something that is interesting to think about. The King of Total Bases last year was Shohei Ohtani, who is pretty fast! And faster than his AL counterpart, Aaron Judge. Since those two have both speed and power, they may not be the best comparison. And their total base totals weren’t all that different. They are both ahead of third place, Cal Raleigh by over 20 bases, and hit less home runs. So maybe speed has slightly more of a correlation with total bases?
Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso are both slower than Raleigh and occupy #4 and #5 in the total bases contest. Junior Caminero had the sixth most total bases, and is slower than #7 Bobby Witt Jr. #8 Julio Rodriguez is also really fast, though! So we have the top two arriving at their total base total through both speed and power, Raleigh, Schwarber, and Caminero arrive at total base production through power, while Witt and Rodriguez get there more with their high speed running.
Then you have players like Byron Buxton, Corbin Carroll, Shea Langeliers, and George Springer showcasing both speed and power again. Eugenio Suarez, Juan Soto, and Michael Busch are more isolated power guys, not so fleet of foot. So you definitely have different ways of getting to a good total base total. I am seeing a slight advantage to just having a ton of raw power, to being super fast. But it may not be that cut and dry. And I am not looking at many players. What do you think? It should be an interesting discussion.
For the Cardinals, we lost our fastest player with power, Willson Contreras, so a healthy Ivan Herrera would be our total base producer if he can play a full season, and he would do it with power not speed. Alec Burleson is probably a little faster than people realize, but still, I wouldn’t say he’s producing total bases because he’s all that fast. Our speed-oriented guys need to get on base more. Whether it’s through power or speed or both, we need more offensive producers on the team. And speed only counts if you can hit the ball, while I suppose the same could be said for power! I’m looking at you Gorman and Walker. Both of them hit the ball harder than anybody when they actually connect. But can they do it more often? They must if they will have an MLB career.
Here are some interesting thoughts about a similar topic, OBP vs ISO: https://baseballmagazine.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/on-base-percentage-versus-power-which-means-more/
And also, how speed can effect ISO: https://tht.fangraphs.com/how-speed-affects-isolated-power/
2025 Year End Music List continued
Last week I listed my best albums of 2025, start to finish bangers. I’ll list them again here but I have added a couple albums to what I listed last week.
- Holy Scum – ‘All We Have Is Never’ industrial tinged noise rock with shoegaze overtones?
- Lychgate – ‘Precipice’ black metal meets an actual pipe organ and the avant garde!
- Grails – ‘Miracle Music’ the soundtrack of the most interesting day of your life, maybe
- Dax Riggs – ‘7 Songs for Spiders’ good grungy rock stories from the singer of acid bath
- Neptunian Maximalism – ‘Le Sacre Du Soleil Invaincu’ is an utterly mind blowing voyage into sound
- Tortoise – ‘Touch’ Chicago’s flagship post-rock band returns after a long hiatus and does not disappoint
- Yowie – ‘Taking Umbrage’ longtime St Louis math rock stalwart also returns after a lengthy hiatus with perhaps their most confounding and mindblowing album yet!
- Stratford Rise – self titled EP (punk/noise rock)
- Easterlin – ‘Angel’s New Noise’ EP (shoegaze?)
I have youtube and bandcamp links to all of those in last week’s article. To that list of 7 LPs and 2 EPs I need to add more metal! I never got around to checking out the new Imperial Triumphant album, a heavy dose of NYC avant-garde metal, with guest drum appearances by Dave Lombardo (Slayer) and Tomas Haake (Meshuggah).
Hear it in 24-bit audio! (bandcamp). Or on youtube. The recording, mix, and mastering turn me on just as much as the music and performances on this album. It sounds so real! for a heavy metal album. The production on this serves to make the band practically sound like they’re playing in your room. All too often production can ruin a band’s sound or make it boring. This just reveals how awesome the band actually is.
I also need to add a couple more Chicago indie bands, I’m happy to hear the indie rock sound going back to its roots and rocking out more! FACS makes my best albums list through their masterpiece ‘Wish Defense’. The other band is called Lifeguard which I’ll mention in the Honorable section.
Then I also have to add this captivating avant black metal album from a band called Martröð. Perhaps what makes this band most unique is that they’re from Iceland AND the U.S.! Their music absolutely smokes though:
Rarely does an album come flying out of the speakers like this one did, winning me over before the first song was over! If you like fast, atmospheric heavy metal, this is for you! Absolutely incredible in speed and intensity while still being heartfelt and straddling that line between melodies and absolute dissonance.
Honorable Mentions
These are all fantastic albums in their own right, but didn’t quite make the tip top perfect album list, as I might’ve skipped over songs from time to time when not wanting to hear the whole thing. Perhaps my main criteria here is if I really liked at least half the album. Usually more than that, but depending on how good the tracks were. It’s more of an art than a science, reviewing music… you may know some of these from 2025. Or maybe not!
- Swans – ‘Birthing’ I probably should have put this in the Best of 2025, but since Michael Gira been doing this type of album for a while now, I’m a little bit burned out on the style, maybe? Not really, but there are a lot of really long tracks on here, making it a not-so-go-to album, even if maybe a few years down the road I’ll be thinking of it as their best. It’s a wonderful album, but maybe a bit too longform to sit through very often. There’s a lot to digest here.
- Mary Halvorsen – ‘About Ghosts’ was NPR music’s jazz album of the year and I agree, I love it! Not sure if it’s the best jazz album of the year but it’s very much worth hearing. Again, this should probably be in the best of! But I was being super picky this year.
- Haunted Horses – ‘Dweller’ ANOTHER album that I probably should’ve put in the Best Of 2025! Noise rock with a dab of sludge punk thrown in but done really, REALLY well. This one might be more of a grower, just found it recently but it won me over right away. https://hauntedhorses.bandcamp.com/album/dweller
- Nourished By Time – ‘The Passionate Ones’ grabbed me right away because of the soulful voice, interesting music production and beat programming, and is my favorite soul/rnb adjacent release hailing from Baltimore, MD. I didn’t love every track but over the half album had me hooked pretty much instantly! And these aren’t my key genres, it’s just good music.
- Cheer Accident – ‘Admission’ my favorite band from Chicago returns with yet another amazing album, one of the strongest discographies of all time! This one leans more on straight up rock songs with strong vocals and songwriting. There is still a lot going on with this album, and it is impossible for Cheer Accident to totally ditch prog rock and the avant-garde, but this might be their most overall straightforward album yet, and they did it well!
- Earth Ball – ‘Outside Over There’ included because this album is so all over the place in both style and compositional approaches, or maybe it’s just a big improv session but what I like most is that I cannot really tell what is going on with this! There’s a lot of talent and energy here and you’ll just have to hear it. It’s jazz, punk, jam, and more, but mostly psychedelic and memorable somehow, because it’s just careening around the room and at least a little unpredictable, but somehow totally listenable. They’re not doing rocket science here or over there.
- Sallow Moth – ‘Mossbane Lantern’ narrowly missing the best of 2025 by the narrowest margins (I think it’s too weird for most people) but it’s some of the most creative heavy metal I’ve ever heard! Will definitely make my heavy metal best of list. But keep in mind, this is thinking man’s metal. Genre: avant-garde. Despite its totally bizarre complexity, I found myself putting nearly every song off this album onto my best songs of 2025 playlist.
- Cloutchaser – ‘Spongebob’ a totally different variety of thinking man’s metal! More like math rock meets cartoon music with in your face drumming! For fans of Hella and Don Caballero.
- Tulpa – ‘Plum Pinball’ is a really interesting punk album that often steps out of the genre in many different ways but overall it gives me punk or post-punk vibes, but also a timeless sound has been created here that sounds a bit more underground 80s and 90s than it sounds like 2025, which is cool with me. Very highly recommended if you like creative but noisy pop-esque rock songs. You will hear a lot of different influences going into this band’s sound.
- Lifeguard – ‘Ripped and Torn’ that other Chicago indie rock band I mentioned along with FACS. This album is nearly as good but not quite that level of awesome. Still worth checking out! An impressive debut.
- Matmos – ‘Metallic Life Review’ I haven’t really decided yet, but this might be my electronic music album of the year! Matmos have been known for creating albums all based around one concept or sampling source, and this time they sampled actual metallic objects and sculptures as source material, so this album is more metal than the genre of metal in a lot of ways! But still sounds like heady experimental music like the other albums in the Matmos catalog, they been at it a while now! Masters of sound.
- The Mars Volta – ‘Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio’ I enjoyed this album far more than its predecessor, their big comeback album that sounded a bit too pop for my tastes. And this is better than their last couple releases before they shut down for a while. I like it because it is full of percussion but done in a different way than they have done it in the past. It has sort of a lo-fi quality to the production, which somehow doesn’t take away from the experience at all. A nice surprise and a not very promoted release!
- EP Honorable Mention: Barren Path – ‘Grieving’ 13 minutes and 43 seconds of absolutely scorching grindcore! But this could also be considered as a full album because there are 10+ songs. *for those unfamiliar with the genre, it’s rare for a grindcore track to crack 2 minutes and some bands write a lot of songs under 1 minute! Whatever the case, EP or LP, this release is exemplary of the genre and superb!
There’s a few more I might throw on there but that’s enough already! I listened to a bunch of other stuff but these are the cream of the crop for 2025. Thanks for reading! I’ll have one more installment next week detailing anything I overlooked as well as my favorite individual tracks. And hopefully some good Cardinals news!
