So there's the first names out of the high hat of Walt : Adam Kennedy and Kip Wells. At least it sounds better than last off season!

Once again the Cardinals pick up another one of their draft picks, as Kennedy was the 1st round number 20 pick back in 1997. In 1999 he made his Major League debut with the Cards and in March 2000 he was traded to the Angels with Kent Bottenfield in return for Jim Edmonds.

Of course Kennedy is now reunited with former righthand David Eckstein, which definitely should be a huge benefit over the uncertain and unsteady second base situation last season. Looking at the fielding of last season's Cardinals vs Kennedy last season, Kennedy's numbers per 1000 innings are lower by quite a margin. However, this also includes errors : 7.9 per 1000 against 11.9, which is over 30% less! Less speed, more precision, I would say.

                Inn     PO  A   E   DP  Fpct    Range   PO/k    A/k E/k     DP/k
Cardinals 2006  1429    340 492 17  127 .980    5.24    238     344 11.9    89
Kennedy 2006    1141    205 361 9   76  .984    4.26    180     316 7.9     67

Offensively it's a simple story. Put Kennedy's numbers against those of Aaron Miles and Ronnie Belliard and let the numbers do the talking.

            Avg     OBP     Slg     SB  HR  AB  R   RBI
Kennedy     .273    .334    .384    16  4   451 50  55

Miles       .263    .324    .347    2   2   426 48  30
Belliard    .237    .295    .371    0   5   194 20  23

Kip Wells then. His record isn't overly impressive with 57-74 in 8 years and everything he has led the league in was negative (walks and losses in 2005 and wild pitches in 2001), but you have yo keep in mind that of the 8 years he only pitched for a winning team twice. With a winning percentage of .422 in his 4 full years in Pittsburgh against the team's .442, there is reason for caution, but it's not completely hopeless. It's quite similar to Sidney Ponson's .429 over 1999-2003 in Baltimore. Oops, wrong example ;) Hey, he might be like Frank Tanana : 31-49 in 3.5 years with the Rangers followed by 51-37 in the following 3.5 years in Detroit between 1982 and 1988.

While looking at the above, I noticed that only 3 Cardinal pitchers broke the 100 innings mark this year, Carpenter, Marquis and Suppan. 100 innings, not 200! That's the first World Series winning team with less than 4 pitchers in triple digits since.... the 1889 New York Giants! Between the two only the 1997 Indians reached the World Series.

What's very curious is that between 1901 and 1990 there were only 6 teams who had less than 4 pitchers over 100 innings (excluding 1981). Since 1990 there have been 28 of which 12 between 1995-1997! The tendency towards less endurance actually started around 1980. Then the average number of innings pitched was 97 (from starters to closers). This steeply declined to 72 by 1990 and over the last 10 years has been hovering between 64 and 69. Meanwhile the number of games for pitchers who ended up with between 50 and 100 innings has been on a steady incline, suggesting the development of bullpen usage.

Labels: Baseball, Cardinals

I suppose it's time to release these bits. Not good enough to evolve into decent posts in their own right, but also too interesting to simply throw away. Been working on this over the past weeks on and off. Hell, when I started the bit on the 1987 Cardinals, the 2006 Cardinals were still playing the Padres. Now they're the 2006 World Series Champs! Yeah! Isn't winning just so much better when all so called experts predict an easy exit in the division series?

-------------------

On 15 December 1976 Anthony La Russa jr., 32 years old, was traded by the Chicago White Sox to the St.Louis Cardinals. It was Tony La Russa's last stop as a player. Going the other way was the Cardinals 5th round pick of the 1973 draft, Randy Wiles. Yes, this is a piece about a bunch of rather insignificant players.

Wiles made his Major League debut on 7 August 1977, entering the game in the bottom of the ninth with one out and runners on first and second. He game up the game winning single to the Royals' John Wathan. The next day things went better, though. At home against the Mariners, Wiles once again entered in the ninth with one out with first and second loaded and the score 4-4. This time he fended off two batters and through a homer by Lamar Johnson in the bottom of the inning scored his first Major League win. Three more games followed in the next week.

Wiles' last game was the 18th of August in Yankee Stadium. Entering the game in a hopeless situation in the bottom of the 8th, it looked like just another game to get through. With one out and a man on first, Wiles neatly got rid of two more batters to end the eigth. The Yankees were leading by five, so the game was well and truly locked. Then came the White Sox attack : single, homer, single, out, double, single, sac fly, single, walk, single, intentional walk, out and all of a sudden the Sox were leading the game 10-9! So once again Wiles was in a win situation and that's when it went wrong. He walked Munson, Lou Piniella sacrificed to move Munson to second, after which Chris Chambliss homered to hand Wiles and the White Sox the loss. That Chambliss was looking at the ball and not the pitcher became clear when he admitted he through he'd hit the homer off Drave Hamilton, who was on the mound before Wiles. A mere five days later the Cardinals claimed Wiles on waivers.

Meanwhile Tony La Russa spent his time with the Cardinals organization down in New Orleans, playing triple A ball for the Pelicans in the Superdome. Indeed, the great big Louisiana Superdome hosted Minor League Baseball for one season and TLR was part of it!

-------------------

Only two divisions ever have averaged a winning percentage over .550 and those are the 2001 and 2002 AL West. The strongest ever NL was the 1987 East. In itself these facts aren't very interesting, but lets look at the 1987 NL East anyway, as it presents us with a different way of winning.

Random fact number one : Since the Cardinals won the division in 1987 with only 94 homeruns, the 1988 Dodgers have been the only team to win a division with less than 100 longballs. The Cardinals were one of only six team in Major League history to win their division with less than 100 homeruns, while conceding more than 100. The others are the 1945 Dodgers, 1959 White Sox, 1965 Dodgers, 1973 Mets and 1978 Royals.

Since the game is about scoring more runs than your opponent, these feats are quite remarkable. Here's from where the Cardinals and their opponents scored.

             Cardinals       |      Opponents
From    ER     UR            |  ER       UR
3      321     52            | 239       20
2      208     28            | 187       20
1       85     10            |  83       12
B       92      2            | 129        3
       ----------------------+-----------------------
       706     92      798   | 638       55    693

From third it's 373-259 in the Cardinals' favour, from any other base it's 425-434. In other words the Cardinals were just lethal with a man on third. So how were the runs from third scored?

HR       14
Triple    8
Double   42
Single  129
No hit  180

Topscorers from third on singles and non-hits : Vince Coleman with 62 runs, Ozzie Smith with 43 and Willie McGee with 31. Coleman's phenomenal speed made a big difference here. Just looking at the at bats with him on third, he went out once, remained on third 50 times and scored 54 times. The Cardinals had 671 at bats with someone on third. 26 of those had the man on third out, 362 had him remain on third and 283 resulted in a run from third. Coleman was the only one to score in over 50% of the at bats he was at third (for those with more than 5 ABs)

Another interesting number is the 52 unearned runs from 3rd the Cardinals scored. In fact the Cardinals had the highest number of opposition errors among NL teams with 151. With a line-up built for speed, I suppose the opponents were too much in a hurry to make their play and started making more mistakes.

A closer look on Coleman's base stealing.

Base    SB      CS
2nd     85      13
3rd     24      5
Home    0       4

So how vital were these steals? Unlike most speedy lead off hitters, Coleman could not count on much power behind him to propel him along the bases, which shows in his runs. 3 runs came from homers, 12 from first, 30 from second and a massive 76 from third. So Coleman needed batting average (mainly Ozzie Smith's .303) and his own speed to move closer to home. If we look at the number of times Coleman was on each base and how many times he scored from there, the importance of his steals is immediately clear.

Base    Times on base   Runs    %
1           254          12    4.7
2           161          30   18.6
3           112          76   67.9

With each base his chance of scoring more than tripled.

So the Cardinals primary weapon was speed. It's a rarity to see speed win without power, though. Since the beginning of divisional play only the Royals (1976, 1978) and Cardinals (1985, 1987) won their division with over 200 steals and less than 100 homeruns. Note also that the 1987 Cardinals only had the fifth best ERA in the National League, so it wasn't superb pitching either.

Labels: Baseball, Cardinals

In 2001 the Seattle Mariners had an amazing 116-46 record, tying the 1906 Chicago Cubs for the most wins record. However, in October the team went flat on its face and didn't even make it to the World Series.

By the end of April they were leading the division by 9 and they never had to look back. From game 7 until the end of the season the Mariners had a winning percentage of over .700 and they in fact led the division from start to finish. Late in the regular season there was no indicator that things were going downhill in Seattle. A 15-6 September was followed by a 5-1 end to the regular season in early October. Overall June and July were the Mariners' worst months with a .667 winning percentage. With no less than five regular batters over 30 (Dan Wilson, John Olerud, Bret Boone, Al Martin and Edgar Martinez) the team was bursting with experience.

Two games seem to be pivotal in the Mariners' post-season demise : game 3 of the ALDS and game 4 of the ALCS.

With the ALDS tied at 1 the Mariners and Indians travelled to Jacobs Field. The once mighty Mariners were completely destroyed and the game ended 17-2.

The game started well with Ichiro Suzuki singling, Mike Cameron doubling and Edgar Martinez being intentionally walked while Brett Boone struck out. John Olerud was then walked with the bases loaded to score Suzuki. Two foul pop outs got C.C.Sabathia out if his first inning jam, after which the bottom half of the inning displayed much the same with Omar Vizquel singling, Roberto Alomar doubling and Juan Gonzalez singling to put the Indians 2-1 up.

The Mariners then went down in order in the top of the second and started the bottom of the inning with an error by Boone to allow Travis Fryman on. A single by Einar Diaz and a two out triple by Omar Vizquel made it 4-1 to the Indians. By this time starter Aaron Sele was replaced by Paul Abbott, who promptly gave up a homer to the first batter he faced and surrendered 4 runs in his first inning to make it 1-8 after 3.

The question is why Sele was pulled. By the time the Mariners took the field in the bottom of the third their chance of winning had gone down to about 16%, so why not let Sele pitch through trouble and keep Abbott fresh for game 4?

Over the course of the season Sele had done reasonably well agains the Indians with a 3.95 ERA over 13.2 innings in 2 starts, while Abbott had been pounded in his start against the Tribe for 6 earned runs in 7 innings. Yes, Abbott's lifetime record against the Indians was great with a 5-0 record and a 2.77 ERA. However, 2 of those wins came as a reliever for the Twins back in 1991 and 1 was in the 6 ER/7 innings game in which he was lucky enough to receive enough run support from his offense. Sele's lifetime record against the Indians up to 2001 wasn't exactly brilliant : 5-7 in 17 starts with a 4.99 ERA. So yes, if Lou Piniella believed they still had a chance to win the game, pulling Sele was probably a wise move.

Anyway, for game 4 this put the Mariners in a difficult position. They were now in a situation where they had to win two to stay alive and had no choice but to use their two top pitchers to try and do it, knowing they'd be unavailable for the opening games of the ALCS.

Lets sidetrack for a moment and see how 5 game division series winners do in general.

Year 5 Team     Opp.            Result
2005 Angels     White Sox (3)   1-4
2004 Astros     Cardinals (4)   3-4
2003 Red Sox    Yankees (4)     3-4
2003 Cubs       Marlins (4)     3-4
2002 Twins      Angels (4)      1-4
2002 Giants     Cardinals (3)   4-1     WS : 3-4 vs Angels (4,5)
2001 Yankees    Mariners (5)    4-1     WS : 3-4 vs Diamondbacks (5,5)
2001 Mariners   Yankees (5)     1-4
2001 D'backs    Braves (3)      4-1     WS : 4-3 vs Yankees (5,5)
2000 Yankees    Mariners (3)    4-2     WS : 4-1 vs Mets (4,5)
1999 Red Sox    Yankees (3)     1-4
1997 Indians    Orioles (4)     4-2     WS : 3-4 vs Marlins (3,6)
1995 Mariners   Indians (3)     2-4

That's 13 5-game division series winners, of which 5 survived the LCS and 2 won the World Series. Take into account that of the 13, 2 ended up playing each other and 2 more met in the World Series.

While the Mariners were lucky enough to be the only 5-game division series team in history to meet another 5-game winner in the LCS, the prospects to go all the way were already grim.

For the ALCS the Mariners were up against the Yankees. In the regular season Seattle had a record of 6-3 against them, with a 3 game sweep in New York, a 1-2 series loss in Seattle and a 2-1 series win back in New York.

Of course having had Garcia and Moyer pitch games 4 and 5 and the Yankees not having used 2 starters in 1 game in their 5 game series against Oakland, the series started with the Mariners number 3 against the Yankees number 2, putting the Mariners at a bit of a mental deficit for the first game.

In game 1 Andy Pettite kept the Mariner bats quiet, pitching 8 strong innings to help the Yankees win 4-2. Game 2 was more of the same. While the Mariners managed 6 hits, a 3 run second inning was enough for the Yankees to head to Yankee Stadium with a 2-0 lead.

Game 3 then finally saw the regular season Mariners hammering away. With a seven run sixth they laid the foundation for a 14-3 victory to bring them back in the series. However, game 4 saw the fallout of having used Abbott against the Indians. Now Abbott, the Mariners number 4 pitcher was up against Yankees ace Roger Clemens. While Abbott kept the Yankees hitless for 5 innings (even when he did give up 8 walks), his counterpart allowed only 1 hit with 4 walks. The game went into the bottom of the ninth tied at 1 when Alfonso Soriano hit a one out, two run homer to end the game and put the Yankees within a game of the World Series with a home game remaining.

Now lets concentrate on game 4 of the ALCS for a minute. What would have been the starters scenario had the Mariners let Aaron Sele pitch through trouble in game three of the ALDS? In reality Moyer and Garcia had pitched the previous days, Sele was on three days rest after already having pitched on three days rest in is previous outing in game 1, so Abbott was the only option. Had Abbott pitched game 4 of the ALDS, Garcia would likely have pitched game 5 and the ALCS would probably have started with Moyer, Sele and Garcia. The logical option for game 4 would then have been Jamie Moyer pitching on 3 days rest.

While Abbott didn't give up any hits and the 8 walks didn't have any consequences in runs, his lack of control had him pulled after just 5 innings and possibly had the offense a bit too eager to score with the constant threat of their pitcher being about to give up some runs. From the 6th inning the only baserunners were Lampkin, who walked in the 7th, and Boone who homered the Mariners into the lead in the top of the 8th. A solo homer by Bernie Williams in the bottom of the 8th tied the score, after which 2000 AL rookie of the year Kazuhiro Sasaki gave up a 2 run walk-off homer to Alfonso Soriano to give the Yankees the win.

With the series 3-1 to the Yankees, the situation was near hopeless for the Mariners. Their strongest pitcher, Jamie Moyer had pitched only two days before the game, while staff ace Freddy Garcia, 18-6 with a 3.05 ERA in the regular season, hadn't exactly displayed stellar activity in his 3 play off games so far. And thus they started game 5 with the guy in which they'd shown no trust in in the division series : Aaron Sele.

The game was then decided in the 3rd inning when David Bell made an error to allow Scott Brosius on base. After that a Soriano single moved Brosius to second, a Chuck Knoblauch sacrifice bunt moved him to third and Derek Jeter's sacrifice fly scored the opening run with two outs. With a double by Dave Justice and a homer by Bernie Williams, Mariners starter Aaron Sele was faced with four unearned runs and the Yankees had the series in the pocket, while the 116 win Mariners were left empty handed.

Labels: Baseball

I was going to write this one about what happens to Cardinals first round draft picks in general, but ended up looking at one particular case : Braden Looper.

Looper was the Cards 1996 first round pick and a third pick overall. Debuting as a starter in single A with a 3-6 record and a 4.48 ERA in 12 starts, he moved to double A Arkansas where he turned into a closer before the end of the year and making his Major League debut. In only his second year Looper became the closer in triple A Memphis before being traded to Florida.

Looper, Armando Almanza and Pablo Ozuna were traded for Edgar Renteria in December 1998. When we look at the value for money (VORP/million dollar) this seems like a very bad deal on the surface.

     |         Renteria          | Looper, Almanza, Ozuna  |
-----+-------+-------------------+------+------------------+
1999 |  33.6 |  2,000,000        | 21.2 |   401,000        |
2000 |  33.3 |  2,250,000        | 13.3 |   660,000        |
2001 |  15.4 |  4,500,000        | 20.3 |   480,000        |
2002 |  49.4 |  6,000,000        | 25.7 | 1,146,000        |
2003 |  75.3 |  6,500,000        |  6.4 | 1,425,000        |
2004 |  27.3 |  7,250,000        | 24.2 | 2,500,000        |
-----+-------+-------------------+------+------------------+
    | 234.3 | 28,500,000  8.221 |115.8 | 8,209,000 14.106 |

With Ozuna's limited exposure to the big leagues, we can leave him out of the equation. He's yet another one of those huge prospects (Minor League player of the year in 1998!) who never made it. Besides, he turned out 4 years older than was thought around the time he was with the Cards. Almanza did gain quite a bit of time in the big leagues, but considering the numbers that had more to do with the fact that he played in Florida than with his actual talent. Which more or less makes it a straight trade Looper for Renteria. Based on his numbers Looper would have been the Cards closer from about 2002, which is exactly when they got Izzy.

The other matter is who would have played shortstop over the 1999-2004 period if the Cards hadn't had Renteria. 1998 started with Royce Clayton as shortstop until he was traded to the Rangers. Once Clayton left, the Cards made do with Luis Ordaz. Ordaz never turned into an everyday player, so they were in need of a replacement. However, the shortstop free agent market was thin that year. Pat Meares was there, but he was only granted free agency on 21 December, a week after the Cardinals traded for Renteria. Besides, Renteria was the up and coming star for the future.

Over the period 1999-2004 Renteria's 28.5 million in salary was the fifth most amount paid for a shortstop. Only Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and Barry Larkin earned more. Ex-Cardinal Royce Clayton earned a little over 20 million in those six years, so what if the Cards had held on to him?

     |         Clayton          |          Larkin           |
-----+------+-------------------+-------+-------------------+
1999 | 30.4 |  4,500,000        |  55.4 |  9,000,000        |
2000 |  6.4 |  4,500,000        |  42.4 |  9,000,000        |
2001 | 12.4 |  4,500,000        |   8.6 |  9,000,000        |
2002 |  5.2 |  4,500,000        |   8.7 |  5,300,000        |
2003 |  1.9 |  1,500,000        |  12.9 |  5,300,000        |
2004 | 17.3 |    650,000        |  26.5 |    700,000        |
-----+------+-------------------+-------+-------------------+
    | 73.6 | 20,150,000  3.653 | 154.5 | 38,300,000  4.034 |

OK, so we can conclude trading Clayton was a good move. From what I'm reading in Google Groups messages around that time, Barry Larkin was at one point also a target for the Cards, but thankfully they didn't pursue him. His name and reputation made him a hugely overpriced, over the hill shortstop for most years of the end of his career. With it being an even better thing that they didn't end up with Meares, who apparently managed to earn over 3 million per year for 4 years while not actually contributing, it would appear Renteria was about they best the Cards could have done. Now lets see what it could have been like without the trade and thus without having to get Isringhausen.

While Looper's VORP over the 2002-2004 period amounts to 61.6 for the 4.4 million he was paid, Izzy cost 17.75 million and delivered 49.9 worth of VORP. So for 2002-2004 that leaves 17.75-4.4+6+6.5+7.25 = 33.1 million to spend on a shortstop. That amounts to about 10 million a year, which was not enough for ARod or Jeter, leaving only the aforementioned Barry Larkin, Rey Ordonez and Nomar Garciaparra as more expensive options than Renteria. Garciaparra had a deal through 2004 in Boston (originally through 2002, but the Red Sox had picked up their options for 2003 and 2004 by the end of 2000). Ordonez was firmly rooted in the Mets organization, so there's no way the Cardinals would have been able to acquire a better shortstop than Renteria without giving up something.

They might have been better off trading away other players, but that's in hindsight. With about 1.5 million available in 1999-2000, 4 million in 2001 and 10 million in 2002-2004, a combination of well above average shortstops would have been a definite possibility. However, it's too vague to start talking about possible maybe deals that never were here.

Labels: Baseball, Cardinals

What is it with the Cardinals this year? That the pitching is a disaster is a given, so lets see how it working at the plate. In general there's a lot of improvements, but the many injuries leave their scars.

Lead off

From a .295 average and .368 on base percentage last year to .280/.340 now. About 94% of the 557 at bats so far were from David Eckstein (476) and Aaron Miles (50) and it's those 50 Miles ABs that drag the totals down. Eckstein's number as lead off are .290/.348, while Miles recorded .260/.315. It's clear that Eckstein's injuries didn't only hurt him.

Despite a lack of power for Eckstein (1 homer this year against 8 last year), his base travelling has improved. Back in February I wrote it was .342 last year. Now it's .366 with 65 runs, 122 singles, 14 double, 1 triple, 1 homer, 30 walks, 14 hbp, 7 steals, 6 times caught stealing.

Eckstein's improved run rate has a lot to do with who are batting behind him. Compared to last year the slugging percentages of batters 2 through 6 have all improved from a combined .494 to .529, mainly thanks to Albert Pujols phenomenal power.

Heads and tails

The middle of the ballgame is solid from a Cardinal perspective. It's the lack of finishing power and the lack of knocking out the opposition in the early rounds that are the problems.

In the first two innings this year, the Cards hit a homerun per 32 AB. Last year that was one per 23 AB. Not that homeruns are all that counts, but it shows almost a lack of wanting to hurt the opposition right from the start. Compared to the fourth and fifth where batting averages have risen above .300 and with a homerun every 20 AB in the fifth, that's a weak start where apparently a lot more is possible. It looks as if the team actually needs to be trailing to perform as their batting averages is highest when trailing by one. When leading the Cardinals bat .259, but when trailing it's .285.

The tail end of the game provides the same problem as the start. In innings six through nine they bat .254, twenty points below the overall average.

Why?

It could be many things, of course. I'm looking at it from a few thousand miles and just see the numbers. It could be the curse of the weak division. The almost assurance that no matter how much below their level they play, the Cards are going to make the playoffs anyway. The curse of underperforming in the post season, the "lets save the best for last" idea. Who knows. For now I'm going with the many disruptions in the line up due to injuries. These are professional athletes who I expect will give 100% no matter what. Or am I naive? Either way, unless the pitching improves by a lot very quickly, I fear the play offs will once again be short.

Labels: Baseball, Cardinals