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Now, it’s just a bowling score.

“It’s kind of a forgotten thing, to be honest with you,” Toronto manager John Schneider said prior to a Blue Jays-Cardinals game at Busch last week.

So I asked Schneider: Compared to when you were growing up, what does hitting .300 mean today?

“I don’t know, ask Donnie,” Schneider said with a grin. “He was good at it.”

Indeed, Don Mattingly, the Toronto bench ����ֱ��, was good at it. He hit .300 for his career (.307).

“It’s definitely different, I think,” said Mattingly, who played for the Yankees from 1982-95. “With the pitching and the velocity and everything that’s going on with that, it’s tougher to hit .300, for sure. ... Brendan (Donovan), I’ve watched him over the years — if you can put the ball in play, you give yourself a chance. So it’s good to see.”

Yep, the original Donnie Baseball was impressed by the Cardinals’ Donnie Baseball. Understandably so. Back in the lineup Sunday after four games out with a toe injury, Donovan entered the day hitting .310 — the fourth-best batting average in the entire National League. He proceeded to go 2 for 4, upping his average to .313.

And even more impressive: He has 20 doubles this year, third-most in the National League.

“So he’s not just slapping balls and hitting singles,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “Like, he’s taken some really good at-bats.”

In 1995, 16 players hit .300 in the NL. In 2005, there were 15. In 2015, there were 11. But in 2025, there are five. And last year, there were only three!

These days, it’s just — figuratively and literally — a whole new ballgame.

With specialized relief pitchers — and starters not going as deep — hitters are facing a bullpen battalion of guys with triple-digit pitches and disgusting spin. And a hitter seldom sees the same reliever twice. And the arms are armed with more data than ever before — which explains where and how and when to pitch guys. ERAs are lowest they’ve been in a decade.

And check this out: Until 2016, there had never been a Major League Baseball season in which the league strikeouts-per-nine-innings average cracked eight. But since 2016, it’s been in the 8s every season.

Meanwhile, the batting average of all MLB players in 2025 is .245. The league average has been in the .240s in seven of the past eight years. But for the 45 years before that, every year, the league average was .250 or higher (sometimes much higher, even in the .270s).

And in the modern game, hitters are trying to slug more — and striking out has become more acceptable because of that approach. Oh, and prospects don’t often come through a system primarily as singles hitters.

The result of all of this?

“Hitting .300 is hard,” Schneider said. “With the way pitchers are today and the stuff they have and the way bullpens are deployed — you’re seeing a lot of different looks, a lot of different looks, a lot of different guys every day. ... I think people look at (on-base plus slugging percentage) a lot more than average.”

And so, with the depreciation of batting average, this is an appreciation of Brendan Donovan, whose beautiful batter’s box approach and lefty stroke has made him a possible All-Star.

Entering Sunday’s play, the five guys in the NL hitting .300 were the Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman (.339), the Padres’ Manny Machado (.318), the Dodgers’ Will Smith (.315), Donovan (.310) and the Diamondbacks’ Josh Naylor (.300). And so Donovan was the only NL player hitting .300 that’s not in the same division as the wretched Rockies.

How rare is a Cardinal hitting .300? From 2014 through 2024, only five times did a St. Louis player reach that milestone. Eleven seasons, five .300 hitters. Paul Goldschmidt did it twice (and had the highest average of the five — .317 — in his MVP year of 2022). And then Yadier Molina, Tommy Pham and Jose Martinez each hit .300 once.

Yet from 2003 to 2013, a Cardinal hit .300 in 24 instances. Yes, eight of the 24 were by Albert Pujols. But it still puts in perspective how different the game has become, even within this quarter-century.

“I really try not to be numbers-driven,” said Donovan, who hit .281, .284 and .278 in his first three MLB seasons. “If anything, I just try to look at the consistency of the at-bat. At the end of the day, I try to evaluate at-bats based off of — did I (swing) on good pitches? Did I hit him hard? And then, did I hit them at good angles?

“So obviously, it is a result-driven game, so (batting average) is something you will always hear about and see. But for me, I’ve noticed that when I’m focused on the (technical) things — like my routine is great or when I’m going on good pitches or tend to be hitting them on the line — I feel like the numbers always end up where they should be.”

Donovan has a .318 career BABIP (batting average on balls in play). This year, it’s at .351. That might regress, considering the league BABIP average is .300. But as we saw Sunday in the loss at Milwaukee, Donovan has such a smart approach to swings and batted balls. Heck, one of his hits went 75.9 mph, the other went 106.3.

“He’s been extremely (consistent) — I mean, you have to be to hit .300,” Marmol said. “But a lot of it is just the way he’s approaching his day. And there’s a real routine that he sticks to, and his regiment is pretty thorough. So to his credit, he takes his craft extremely serious, and he’s benefiting because of it. ...

“But (pitcher) stuff’s real. Matchups are real. Relievers are getting paid a lot more. You get some real firepower earlier in games. And to (hit .300) is more difficult today. So that’s why there’s less of it, and it’s more impressive when guys have the ability to actually do it — and also do it with putting some slug in there.”