Simply the Best

May 01, 2009 | mriehn | Comments 1

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by Michael Riehn
Whiteyball Staff

Busch Stadium

Raise your hand if you had the Cardinals finishing April with the best record in the major leagues…  Anyone?   None of the pundits had them even close (including yours truly).  16-7 is a fantastic start for the Redbirds, and they have built up a 3.5 game lead over the second place Brewers.  The near unanimous pick for the division title, the Chicago Cubs, are sitting in 5th place, 5 games back at 10-11. You really couldn’t ask for a better April start for Cardinal fans (well, maybe an opening day win would have been nice).

A month is a significant period and the sample size is enough to begin drawing conclusions about the teams.  That’s not to say that the Cardinals are going to finish with a 113-49 record (their current pace), or that the Cubs aren’t going to make their inevitable run (they aren’t this bad), but it is enough to give us a starting point.

The Cardinals have won with offense and pitching.  They are second in OBP (.369) and 6th in SLG% .450.  (Remember, plus .350 on base percentage and +.400 SLG is good).  They are taking patient at bats and hitting the ball hard.  The Cardinals are 4th in baseball with a 3.65 ERA and are actually leading MLB with 9 save (though they’ve also blown the 5th most with 5).

Albert Pujols has been great as usual (.337/ .457/ .675 – BA/ OBP/ SLG), and is in the running for the player of the month (again).  Ryan Ludwick has shown that last season’s slugging was for real (.297/ .329/ .554) and Chris Duncan has hit (.304/ .417/ .522) and actually played almost average defense in the outfield (-.3 UZR).   Yadier Molina has ascended into one of the best catcher in baseball (.333/ .402/ .500) and Tony La Russa has mixed and matched his team well (especially at third base and the outfield rotation).

On the pitching side, who would have thought the Cardinals would have accomplished this shiny record with Chris Carpenter only getting to the 5th inning one time?  Kyle Lohse (3-0, 1.97 ERA, 32 IP, 19K/ 8 BB), Adam Wainwright (3-0, 2.76 ERA, 29.1 IP, 25K/ 18 BB)  and Joel Pineiro (4-0, 3.76 ERA, 26.1 IP, 6K/ 6 BB, 54.8% GB rate) have all played well.  We have seemed to have found our closer with Ryan Franklin (0-0 7 saves, o.00 ERA, 10.1 IP, 9K/ 2 BB) and the bullpen has settled down after a rough first couple of weeks.

How has the Skip Schumaker experiment worked out at second base?  The results are mixed.

To the naked eye, it seems like Schumaker’s defense has actually been pretty good.  He has only made one error and has actually been turning the pivot pretty well, but his range has not been good.  This is something that is hard to see when watching the game every day and the reason why the Cardinals constantly shift him out of second base in the late innings.  His .375 OBP (.340 is roughly average in Major League Baseball) has been great in the leadoff spot though, and it has opened up a position in the outfield for one of our hitters.

UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating: The number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs and error runs combined.) has not been kind to Skip as he has had an abysmal -4.0 UZR (he has lossed the Cardinals 4 runs, which would put him as one of the worst second basemen in baseball), but you have to give him time and remember that he is still learning on the job.  This is still something to watch, but so far it looks like a worthwhile experiment.

The April record is slightly inflated due to luck.  The Redbirds have played well but there is still a lot that they can improve upon.  They lead major league baseball in errors and have the 6th worst UZR.  This is a cause for concern and HAS to be improved.  They should not be fielding this bad with plus defenders at 1B, 3B, C and right field and average defenders at center (above average with Colby, slightly below average with Ankiel) and shortstop.  Second base and left field shouldn’t be dragging this team down this much, and normally sure handed players are making too many mistakes (led by Khalil Greene’s 6 errors).  They will improve.

Most of the damage against the pitching has been done when the Cardinals are way ahead (or behind).  The back of the bullpen has absorbed some beatings with Josh Kinney (13.50 ERA), P.J. Walters (8.68 ERA), Brad Thompson (6.75 ERA) and Trever Miller (5.40 ERA).  The addition of Blaine Boyer should help this issue, and the early season struggles of Jason Motte have seemed to subside.  Todd Wellemeyer is better than his record has shown, but in fairness, Joel Pineiro is definitely not as good as his first month and even Loshe and Wainwright have been slightly lucky.  This will probably get a little worse, as the good luck seems to have outweighed the bad.

So what can we expect from these Cardinals? Have they been lucky or this good?  One way to eliminate luck is to see what their record “should be”. Pythagorean expectation is a formula invented by the leading baseball statistician, Bill James, to estimate how many games a baseball team “should” have won based on the number of runs they scored and allowed.

The Cardinals have scored 133 runs and given up 96.  Comparing a team’s actual and Pythagorean winning percentage can be used to evaluate how lucky that team was (by examining the variation between the two winning percentages). The term is derived from the formula’s resemblance to the Pythagorean theorem.

Should the Cardinals be on pace for 112 victories?  No, as you can expect, they HAVE been lucky.  The good news is that they should still be on pace for a 106-56 record.  I don’t believe they will get to this (this team hasn’t hit it’s first major slump yet), but they ARE better than most critics gave them credit for pre-season.  My new prediction is a 93 win season (up from 90 preseason) with a tight race for the division title or wild card.

The Cardinals look like a playoff club and I’m looking forward to seeing how long they can keep up their torrid pace.

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