LOS ANGELES -- The St. Louis Cardinals have three primary clubhouse leaders. They are the usual suspects, the championship holdovers Matt Holliday, Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina. Holliday tends to be the quietly intimidating presence, the lead-by-example type. Wainwright is the vocal one.

“Yadi’s everything,” Cardinals outfielder Stephen Piscotty said. “Everyone pays attention when he’s speaking.”

One person who had been paying attention lately was manager Mike Matheny, who sensed Molina was beginning to lose his patience with the Cardinals’ mediocre ways. Molina had argued with the plate umpire when he declined to grant him a timeout Saturday night and perhaps his angst continued to boil over later that night. Matheny cited Molina’s frustration as one of the reasons he was not in the starting lineup Sunday for just the third time in the Cardinals’ first 38 games.

“He wears all that on his sleeve,” Matheny had said.

Yadier Molina ripped the key two-run double in the seventh that put the Cardinals ahead for good. Molina's offense has been a welcome bonus. AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill

Molina didn’t exactly get the night off, it turns out. He said he started warming up in the fifth inning, moving between the indoor batting cage, the clubhouse and the dugout. In the seventh inning, Matheny called his name and he pinch-hit for Mike Leake, ripping the key two-run double in the Cardinals' 5-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers, then caught the final three innings.

Afterward, Molina -- who has played all 12 of his seasons in a St. Louis uniform and reached the postseason in all but three of them -- elaborated on his state of mind. The Cardinals entered Sunday just a game above .500 and barely in hailing distance of the first-place Chicago Cubs.

“Every time you lose a game, you’re frustrated. It doesn’t matter the way you lose. Losing is losing. You can’t be happy,” Molina said. “If you’re a winner, you can’t be happy every time you lose.”

Molina’s impact on the Cardinals’ pitching has always been difficult to quantify, but impossible to deny. This season, his impact on the Cardinals’ offense has been measurable and important. His .333 batting average is the best among major-league catchers, as are his 13 doubles. He is third in OPS and second in WAR to Kansas City’s young star, Salvador Perez.

Two months ago, the Cardinals had no idea they’d be getting all that. In fact, they had only a suspicion, not a certainty, that he would be their Opening Day catcher, much less an ironman who would be among their most consistent contact hitters.

Matheny said he thinks this is who Molina is as a hitter, while last season -- in which Molina had his lowest OPS in nine seasons -- was an aberration caused by weakness in his right thumb, which was injured in 2014. Molina had surgery on his left thumb twice last winter, the result of a September injury that he played through.

“It shows how much he was up against the wall last year, trying to make something work. Even though he’d been given the green light, he still didn’t have all the strength he wanted,” Matheny said. “When his body is right and he’s healthy, he has a great approach at the plate. He’s a very heady hitter.”

Molina admitted he didn’t expect to hit this well this early in his recovery. His brother, Bengie, said recently that Yadier continues to feel some pain in his left thumb, but it has been hard to tell from his numbers. He has yet to hit his first home run, but he is still slugging .439.

“I didn’t expect it to be that good,” Molina said. “I’m feeling good right now, so hopefully it stays that way.”

If nothing else, the Cardinals seem to have found a use for backup catcher Eric Fryer, who has caught three of Mike Leake’s past four starts. Few pitchers have ever minded working with Molina, who is in the conversation as the best defensive catcher of all-time, but Leake has found a bit of synergy with the seldom-used backup.

Leake finally has a bit of momentum in his season, with his past two starts his best as a Cardinal.

“He knows what he’s doing,” Leake said of Fryer. “It’s not like he’s a bad catcher. He thinks along, he’s got a grasp of pitching. It’s fun to have two catchers that are able to do that.”