Dénouement… a.k.a. the Post Mortem

October 16, 2009 | mriehn | Comments 1

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by Michael Riehn
Whiteyball Staff

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…  That’s how I feel about the Cardinals in 2009.  This season was unlike any other we’ve experienced as Cardinal fans.  Unlike 2008 or 2007, the team actually looked great for long stretches of the season.  This was the best regular season since 2005, and the team may have a lot to look forward to in the coming years… or they may not.

So What Went Wrong?
The first half of the season, the Cardinals were weighed down by huge drop offs in expectations from the hitters.  This is a list of batters by positions that were doing worse than their counterparts from the year before ( first half):  LF, CF, RF, 3B, C, SS, P.  That’s virtually everyone.  Only second baseman Skip Schumaker, who was a huge drop off in defense from Adam Kennedy, and Albert Pujols (who was having a career best first half) were hitting above the positions from the previous year.

Khalil Greene was traded for Luke Gregorson who promptly turned into the right handed middle reliever that we needed in 2009:

Then we traded for Mark DeRosa, who went Oh for his first 10 and promptly got injured.  While he rebounded and gave the Cardinal lineup some punch, his overall numbers in St. Louis were not good (though an upgrade from the 3rd basemen of the 1st half), and he was a below average fielder at third base.

In Chris Perez’s last 29 games he had a 2.90 ERA, 31 IP, 36 Ks, 11 BBs and held batters to a ridiculous .574 OPS.  (He would have looked nice in the playoffs closing out game 2).  In that time, Mark DeRosa hit .241/ .311/ .432, .743 OPS.  I like Mark DeRosa (and liked the trade at the time) but in hindsight, you can say that his trade, and the one for Greene, did not work out for the Cardinals.  One of the team’s biggest needs going forward is a closer, and we may have let two good (and cheap) ones slip away.

Kyle Loshe signed a big contract in the offseason and promptly found himself on the disabled list (multiple times) for the first time in his career.  He was mediocre in between each DL stint.  Todd Wellemeyer may have been the worst starting pitcher in the majors last year (after being so good the year before).

The right handed middle relief was inconsistent and several players had nagging injuries (including a scare at the beginning of the year for Chris Carpenter).

Then there is the debacle of the playoffs…

What Went Right… (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Trades)

How I learned to stop worrying & love the trades

Albert Pujols was a monster in the first half and good in the second.  He put the team on his back in the early going and kept them in the race.  It’s almost passe to talk about how good his future Hall of Fame career is, but he is worth the price of admission all by himself.

If the trades have anything to do with Pujols signing a contract to stay with the team for the rest of his career (this offseason), they were a success, no matter how poorly they turn out to be.

The Cardinals found some spare parts lying around that became useful players.  Brendan Ryan showed that he may be one of the best fielding shortstops in the game, and wasn’t a liability with the bat.

Skip Schumaker showed vast improvement at second base throughout the year, and may even become a league average glove (with an above league average bat).  We traded a useless (this year) Chis Duncan for a very good backup middle infielder (who is virtually free next year).

Colby Rasmus was rushed, but showed flashes of great promise with the glove and the bat.  He will only get better, and is our biggest hope for sustained greatness.  Ryan Ludwick rebounded to have a solid season.  He’s probably not the 2008 version that we saw, but the 2009 player is pretty good.

Ryan Franklin became one of the best closers in the league before the clock struck midnight and it all came crashing down over the last month.  Hopefully he will be more like the first 3/4 of the year than the last month (though it would have been nice to have Gregorson and Perez as backup plans).

All of these things paled in comparison to the 2 biggest stories of the year:

The Three Headed Monster
Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright combined for over 400 innings of Cy Young caliber pitching.  Not since Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton have the Cardinals had such a fantastic 1-2 punch.  Joel Pinerio was very good and helped form a sturdy 3 headed pitching dream team.  When John Smoltz was signed, it made the staff even more formidable.

Going “All-In” with Matt Holliday
We gave up a lot for Matt Holliday.  If we don’t sign him, those 4 for 5 nights in the box scores that Brett Wallace puts up are going to hurt quite a bit.  Saying that, he did what he was supposed to.  He carried the Cardinals to the playoffs and put up numbers reasonably similar to Pujols.  If we sign him, it gives us the type of production we’ve been lacking since Scott Rolen’s shoulder was run over by a Chinese freight train and Jim Edmonds got old.

Nobody talks about the 2 biggest reason for the trade.  1. Matt Holliday would not have signed here as a free agent. The only shot we had to sign him was to trade for him, and hope he liked St. Louis enough not to chase the top dollar.  That race is on right now and will go a long way to deciding the Cardinals chances over the next 2 years.

2. Pujols is watching and trying to decide if he’s going to sign a new long term contract.  There is nobody else on the market like Holliday (especially that will sign with us), and Albert wants to win more than anything.  He’s not going to sign a 10 year contract and miss the playoffs for the life of the deal.

Why I’m not Worked up About the Great Crash of 2009 (anymore)
I like to think of 2006 versus 2009 in terms of poker hands.  We went into the playoffs in 2006 with a pair of deuces (the team) and a King (Pujols).  We caught a pair of deuces on the turn and the river and won the whole thing.  Improbable?  Yes.  Should it have happend? No.

This year we had a pair of Aces (Wainwright and Carpenter) and a King.  We went all in on another King (Matt Holliday) and lost.  Is it fair?  No.  The management was right that we had the odds to go for it, they just didn’t turn in our favor.  That doesn’t mean it was a bad bet, it didn’t work out.  Luckily we have 2006 to balance it out.  Most teams don’t have that (ahem, Cubs), so we have to be thankful for the year of the 4 deuces.

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