dunn deal

kerry wood for adam dunn?

bleed cubbie blue floated the idea to his northside readership, and to my amazement most of the respondents were in favor. even more incredibly, most of the respondents at the red reporter (which picked up the thread) were against it - ie both sets of fans seemingly would rather have a 180-k-a-year hitter than a 280-k-a-year pitcher.

what the fu' am i missing?

c x a's

nobody will be watching tonite's mulder-hudson matchup w greater interest - or heart - than the posters at athletics nation. palpable buzz at that url for a week-plus; loyalties divided roughly 50-50 between the two exes, near as i can tell. anyway, AN sure to be watching (and posting) so check it out. (oakland's own game tonight, btw, to be started by, who else, dan haren . . .)

add'l reading on the oakland rotation diaspora at cnnsi, where mulder is quoted thus: "I would not be the pitcher I am today without pitching with those guys. We pushed each other, in nothing but a good way, to be better. Nobody wanted to be the weak link, you might say. We all had our years when the other two outshined one of us. I became better because of it."

add'l quotes from both huddy and mulder in derrick goold's filing today at the p-d. and joe strauss examines the matchup of 2,000-win managers - a more historically significant showdown (1st since 1950), but overshadowed by the storybook pitching pairing.

redbird reasoning's series mini-preview also merits a look.

double visions

the other day david pinto wondered whether pujols might have a shot at breaking the all-time doubles record, held by tris speaker with 792. all albert has to do is avg 50 doubles a year through the remainder of his 20s, then 35 a year throughout his 30s, and he’s got it. piece a shinola . . .

while we await that happy development in 2020, we can watch pujols’ ascent of various franchise all-time leaderboards. significant gains to be reaped this year on the career hr list; he already stands 9th with 160 and will likely pass simmons, bottomley, and hornsby this season to reach 6th place; should overtake mcgwire and lankford next year to reach #4, just behind jim edmonds — who entered this season 21 dingers ahead of pujols, in 6th place on the franchise leaderboard. edmonds may creak up to 2d place before all is said and done but will drop to third shortly thereafter as pujols blows by him. albert on pace to depose stan the man, atop the chart with 475 hr, in about 2016, ending The Man's reign of 53 years.

or 13 years longer than the babe reigned as mlb’s all-time hr king.

on the pitching side of the ledger, matt morris stands to climb four spots on the strikeout list (passing larry jackson, bill doak, steve carlton, and jesse haines) to rank #4 by the end of the year, behind only gibson, dean, and forsch. (you heard me right — bob forsch is the third-whiffingest redbird hurler ever, with 1079 . . . . .in, ahem, 2,794 innings.) mattymo also likely will crack the top 10 in games started and could, with a stellar season (21 wins), break into the top 10 in wins. morris also prob’ly rises to 5th by the end of this year in homers allowed. the guy’s all over these leaderboards — 8th in career winning pct (.626), 6th in k-w ratio (2.55), 10th in hit batsmen (could rise to 6th or so this season).

it’s about time we started appreciating the boyo — especially since this may be his last year in stl.

looking out for the LOOGYs

on the same day jason i'hausen injured himself, the hardball times ran the second half of its two-part history of the LOOGY (part one and part two). musta been kismet — until i’hausen returns from the dl, la russa's LOOGYs, or (all together now) "left-handed one-out guys," will loom even larger than usual in the cardinals' bullpen.

the THT study, authored by steve treder, traces the LOOGY's evolution from bullpen freak to key role paying up to $2 million per. treder also confirms what st. louisans have long known and taken for granted: under tony la russa the LOOGY isn't just a relief role, it's a cabinet position. TLR is the all-time king of LOOGY managers, having managed almost 30 individual LOOGY seasons. and since joe torre also had a wicked LOOGY habit, the cardinals rate as the all-time champion LOOGY franchise.

indeed, the cards nearly completed the holy trinity this off-season when they acquired the all-time cy young of LOOGY pitchers, mike myers. damn shame they got rid of him before the season started. in la russa’s hands (and especially now, with izzy on ice) myers might have pitched 90 times this season, faced ~110 hitters and logged, say, 25 innings pitched. . . . . alas, we’ll never know the true limits of LOOGitude.

or perhaps we’ve already established them. according to treder, in the last 14 seasons (going back to year one of the torre regime) cardinal fans have been privileged to watch 12 pitchers who merit the appellation "really hard-core LOOGYs" (RHC LOOGYs). these aren’t just any old LOOGYs; as defined by treder, they are hyperspecialists who average fewer than 0.80 innings per appearance over the course of a season. here are the 12 in their glory:

1991: bob mcclure
1992: mcclure
1995: tony fossas
1996: fossas, rick honeycutt
1997: fossas
1998: lance painter
1999: scott radinsky
2000: jason christiansen
2001: christiansen
2004: ray king, steve kline

with 10 appearances and just 6 innings so far this year, ray king is well on his way to becoming the cards’ 13th RHC LOOGY of the era — and randy flores or carmen cali may well become the 14th when all is said and done. question is: have all those RHC LOOGYs served the cardinals well over the years?

en toto, RHC LOOGYs have made 670 appearances for st louis since 1991, covering 476 innings. their record: 3.10 era, 25 wins, 21 losses, 10 saves. per 200 innings pitched, they have allowed 180 hits and 82 walks, with 146 strikeouts. opposing hitters have batted .223 against them. the figures don’t change appreciably when we break out la russa’s RHC LOOGYs separately: 3.25 era, 19-18 with 10 saves, and (per 200 innings) 178 hits, 84 walks, 148 strikeouts, .218 batting avg.

the average RHC LOOGY, then, has pitched pretty effectively for the cardinals. alas, the cards under la russa have never had an "average" RHC LOOGY. they’ve either had very excellent RHC LOOGYs, or RHC LOOGYs whose appearances are tantamount to LOOGicide — bring them in and you’ve slit your own throat. the good RHC LOOGYs, all with era’s of 2.86 or lower, bookend la russa’s reign in stl: honeycutt and fossas from 96, kline and king from 04. the bad RHC LOOGYs all have era’s of 3.83 or higher and pitched from 1997-2001. grouped together:

good: 2.48 era, .190 opp ba; per 9 inn: 7.2 h, 3.0 bb, 6.1 k
bad: 4.27 era, .258 opp ba; per 9 inn: 9.2 h, 4.9 bb, 7.4 k

here’s the punch line: in the good RHC LOOGY years, la russa’s teams have played .570 ball (59-46) in 1-run games. in the bad RHC LOOGY years, his teams have played .480 ball (116-127) in 1-run games:

that shouldn’t shock anyone. RHC LOOGYs are sort of like place-kickers in football: their short appearances on the field have a disproportionately large effect on the final score. they generally pitch against one of the opponent’s best hitters, often with the tying or winning run at bat or on base; games often literally hinge on their one-batter stint. a good LOOGY season can turn a few losses into wins; a bad LOOGY season, the reverse. and the effect is only magnified in the absence of a true closer.

the difference between .570 and .480 in one-run games is about 6 wins over the course of a year — a game a month, more than enough to change the outcome of a pennant race. i hardly need remind anyone that in ’03, last time i’hausen got hurt, the cards went 14-25 in one-run games and missed the playoffs by 3 games.

so if we want to forecast how the cards will weather i’hausen’s absence, keep an eye on the LOOGYs. they’re the canaries in the coal mine: if they start to choke, it’s only a matter of time before the whole team is breathing bad air.

the curse of esteban yan

and russ springer. and jeff fassero. and gabe molina.

anybody got pedro borbon, jr.’s cell number?

all those hands on deck and god knows who else in the wake of jason isringhausen’s injury last night. izzy left with one out in the 9th with what initial reports called an "abdominal strain" — did not look good, but too soon to panic.

not.

assuming they shut him down temporarily (and why take chances in april?), julian tavarez becomes the closer by default; he saved 15 games in 2003-04, and there’s truly nobody else who can do it . . . unless la russa decides to play the matchups batter-by-batter, in which case they might as well recall the entire memphis bullpen.

another approach — favored by my friend anolis — would be to take a shot at the theo epstein / bill james experiment of 2003 and abolish the closer role altogether. anybody might close on a given night, depending on who’s sharp, who’s throwing strikes, who’s keeping hitters off stride. one day it might be reyes, the next day flores, the next day tavarez; let circumstances and game situations decide, a la herzog in 1985.

’course, the epstein/james theory flopped in boston in ’03, and in any case it isn’t la russa / duncan’s style. at this point aint-broke-dont-fix seems in order; tavarez closes, reyes / king / flores share setup duties, journell stays in middle relief, and the cards replace isring’sen with not one but two arms from memphis — the better to eat innings and provide maximum matchup flexibility. my guesses are cali and jarvis get the call, with luna moving down to memphis.

if that’s the case, it leaves the bullpen with just two holdovers from the stingy ’04 unit (tavarez and king) and five other guys who pitched a combined total of 48 innings in the majors last year.

on the bright side: six pitching changes a night means longer games, hence extra time to commune with busch and its spirits; could add three or four game-lengths to the schedule . . .

dusty to dust

the catalog of northside misery grows. chad fox’s elbow blew out. nomar’s linked to roids. and dusty baker’s a lech.

which is the least of his problems. after sev’l of dusty's in-game moves backfired and chicago blew a late lead to pgh on saturday, the cub blog army finally deserted. baker’s toast. the watch has officially begun. nice summary of the mutineers' remarks over at goat riders of the apocalypse, who writes:

"Look at the list of Blogs calling for Dusty Baker's head today. Bleed Cubbie Blue, The Cub Reporter, View From the Bleachers, Rooftop Report, we know Sloth, Ivy Chat, Cub Fan Nation, and the whole Desipio gang are out for Dusty's head... Mike Comar of Cubs Pundit has recently re-titled his blog, Fire Dusty Baker. In other words, I really think Dusty lost Cubs fans today. I personally gave him a million-and-a-half chances... and I'm done. Dusty Baker sucks."

that was on saturday, right after a frustrating loss. having taken a couple of days to cool down, goat riders weighs in today with this: "All we can do is hope that Jim Hendry also noticed Dusty's abuse of Chad Fox. All we can hope is that all of Dusty's bonehead, moronic mistakes are piling up. Otherwise, the Cubs won't win. They just can't. Not with Baker at the helm."

rooftop report has already started vetting candidates to succeed dusty and names a surprise preference: "Dierker's first year managing the Astros he had 7 players in double-digit steals. In his second season all eight starting position players were in double-digit steals. He knew how to use a bullpen, with his relievers all appearing in between 40-65 games a year. Nobody was overused and worthless at the end of the season."

and the fellahs at cubsfun have produced a definitive critique of dusty’s roster handling and lineup manipulations (courtesy of the cub reporter). comments to that post include the following: "I wish there was a way to prove this but I would bet my house that the Cubs would win signficantly more games with Scott Skiles managing than with Dusty."

and it's only april . . . .

three for the show

yesterday’s non-triple-play called to mind a even more bizarre tp scenario — and another tidbit of busch stadium nostalgia. i witnessed the play and had a vague recollection of it; retrieved the details from chuck rosciam’s triple-play catalogue over at (where else?) retrosheet.

it happened in the 8th inning on opening day 1981 against the defending world-champion phillies before 38,473 (ruthven vs forsch). the phillies opened the inning with three singles and a walk, extending their lead to 5-2 and leaving the sacks full with nobody out: manny trillo at third, bake mcbride at 2d, mike schmidt at first. gary matthews came up against jim otten (the 3d pitcher of the inning) and scorched a sinking liner to shortstop, where gary templeton trapped the ball. unfortunately 2d-base ump jerry crawford immediately signaled catch and called the batter out, confusing the hell out of all the players on both teams, who knew damn well that the ball had hit the ground and the force play was in order. templeton’s reaction only worsened the confusion: he immediately threw home to force trillo, rather than throwing to 2d or 1st to double off a baserunner. what ensued resembled a bizarro-world infield drill — the baseball ping-ponging around the diamond, baserunners running out of sheer confusion, fielders making pegs with no purpose in mind other than to get rid of the ball and let somebody else figure out who to tag or which base to step on.

to pick up the play: darrell porter (playing in his first game as a cardinal), having received a meaningless throw from templeton, fired an equally meaningless throw to first base to put out matthews, who was already out . . . . meanwhile the baserunner at first, mike schmidt, had read the umpire’s call and alertly returned to the bag but then, on seeing the cardinals’ reaction, thought better of it and lit out for second. hernandez threw it down there and herr applied the tag for the 2d (or was it first?) out. herr than turned a reverse-pivot and heaved it to third, where oberkfell tagged out mcbride. all bets being off by now, the players deemed it prudent to keep running and throwing and covering bases until further notice . . . . all but trillo, who (thinking himself forced out at home) had long since veered off into the dugout. if he had tagged up and crossed the plate, his run surely would have counted, as he would have reached home well before obie put out mcbride to end the inning. every infielder touched the ball --- your basic 6-2-3-4-5 triple play.

the fielders and baserunners were all eventually excused; then dallas green ran out and browbeat the entire umpiring crew, and herzog joined the conference to serve notice that the umps’d catch many times worse from him if they reversed the call. in the end the play stood, the inning ended; i’m not sure but what the phillies might’ve played the rest of the game under protest. if they did, the gesture was moot; the game ended 5-2 philadelphia.

mulder 10 tational

mark mulder’s great performance yesterday had athletics fans waxing nostalgic. a sampling: "Dan Haren is a great young pitcher, but he will never be able to do this. This is a one of a kind performance that i would only expect out of Mark Mulder."

the game put cardinal fans at the birdwatch in mind of a masterful 10-inning sho by john tudor in the heat of the ’85 pennant race: "A left-handed #30, going against a Cy Young winner, shuts out a division rival for 10 innings and one of the great stretch drive pick-ups in history drives home the game's only run for the Cardinals."

astro-fan blogger throws like a girl attended the game yesterday and brain-dumped mucho about clemens, mulder, busch, stl fans, etc.: "I don't know if I would call the St. Louis faithful the best fans in baseball, but they are certainly attentive and also courteous. . .. . It is weird and disheartening to see this casual disregard for their ballpark, especially considering the Cardinals' apparent infatuation with their illustrious history."

also worth a read: an early stat-alysis of eckstein’s fielding (a big concern of mine) at redbird reasoning: "So far this year . . . Renteria is getting to 86% of the balls that he should, while Eckstein is getting to 81%. Renteria's numbers are in line with his career mark, which is .851. Eckstein, on the other hand, has been quite a bit below his career average of .868. (Yes, that's right - over their careers, Eckstein has a better ZR than Renteria. Go figure.)"

7 in the 9th addendum

not one but two "roger freed games"?

so informs brian gunn of hardball times and redbird nation fame. in a comment to my previous post, he writes:

"It's my understanding that this game -- in which Freed hit a two-out, extra-inning grand slam (on a 3-2 pitch, no less) -- is what is commonly known as 'the Roger Freed game.' Odd that one guy had two similar moments in one very brief career."

sure enough, it happened at busch against the astros on may 1 1979. silvio martinez squared off against jr richard and outpitched the sunuvagun, took a 3-1 lead into the eighth inning before tiring and losing the lead with two outs in the eighth. (check out the play-by-play at retrosheet and compare how ken boyer managed his bullpen in the 8th vs the way managers run games today. . . . .) the teams played into the 11th deadlocked 3-3; houston got to tom bruno for three in the top of the frame and entrusted the lead to joe sambito, he of the 1.23 era (he would finish the year at 1.77 with 22 saves). the cards didn’t exactly beat sambito to a pulp: tony scott legged out an infield hit, reitz fanned, then oberkfell walked, as did steve swisher (who’d entered the game on a double-switch). that turned over the lineup and brought up templeton, who entered the game hitting .302 but with only 3 rbis; he whiffed for the second out.

jerry mumphrey was due next, but boyer called him back and sent up freed. roger had finished the magical ’77 season at .398 but reverted to joe-lis form in ’78, batting just .239 in 92 at-bats. and he was hitless so far in ’79: five ph appearances, five outs. i wasn’t at the game and so can’t describe the moment, but like brian says freed did it again: a grand slam and a 7-6 cardinal win.

it would be roger’s last moment of big-league glory; he got just 25 more at-bats that season, then called it a career. as to whether this game or the 8/22/77 game is the authentic "roger freed game," it appears they both qualify for the honor. the ’77 game was televised on abc’s "monday night baseball," and it seemed like every kid in my 8th-grade class either watched it on tv or was at the game but left early and missed the great rally; within my clique that was the "freed" game. but if you saw or listened to the ’79 game no doubt it would stay with you forever — and forever call roger freed's name to mind.

for a guy with just 717 career at-bats and 22 hr, freed made himself some decent memories. he only logged 206 at-bats as a cardinal — but two of them made indelible impressions on a generation of young cardinal fans.

way to go roger.

acknowledgments again to retrosheet — can’t thank those guys enough — and to brian gunn for deepening the memory with an excellent comment.

busch nostalgia: 7 runs in 9th

with busch stadium closing this year, a heavy dose of base sentimentality is inevitable from old fools like me; might as well get on with it.

leaving the list of all-time greatest games/moments to better minds, i’m going to write instead this season about games / moments that history has forgotten . . . . but that i remember. they took place not in the playoffs or during a pennant chase, but on some unremarkable saturday afternoon or wednesday evening in some may or july way back when. . . . .

it’s august 22, 1977; i am 14, and the cardinals are in fourth place. an atypically robust fourth place — thirteen games above .500 — but still 9 games behind philadelphia in the nl east. they are 5-4 on a long homestand that still has four games to run, and the dodgers are in town on a monday night for the first of two. la leads the nl west by 9.5 games over the twice-champion reds, and they look for all the world like champs themselves. these dodgers have ev’ything the cards of the mid-1970s lack. they have power — a league-leading 191 hrs in 1977, including four 30-hr men (one of them, reggie smith, a cardinal as recently as 1976); the cards will finish 23rd among the 24 mlb teams with 96 hr. the dodgers have steady defense — a.981 fielding percentage, 2d best in the league — while the cards commit nearly an error a game. above all the dodgers have outstanding pitching — an mlb-low 3.22 team era. in those innocent pre-sabr years, not even the best-informed baseball fan attributes the la pitchers’ excellent stat lines to dodger stadium; la’s pitchers are simply good, that’s all anyone knows. and the cardinals’ pitchers, as ever, are just good enough to drive you crazy; they yield half a run more per game than the dodgers’ moundsmen and will rate 7th in the league at year’s end.

nine years removed from their last postseason appearance, the cardinals have finally generated a new crop of stars-in-waiting. only one player, lou brock, remains from the championship teams of the ’60s; even manager red schoendienst is gone, replaced just this season by stern vern rapp. other than brock (who is 38), the entire starting lineup is 27 or younger. it’s led by ted simmons — an eight-year veteran but still only 27 years old — and two extremely talented homegrown players, 21-year-old garry templeton and 23-year-old keith hernandez. great expectations hover. the pitching staff, just as young and nearly as promising, features 27-year-old bob forsch (en route to 20 wins in 1977); reigning nl era champ (and future cy young winner) john denny, aged 24; and pete falcone, a hard-throwing 23-year-old lefty who already has two 12-win seasons under his belt.

denny is on the mound on this particular night, paired against the dodgers’ burt hooten (who enters the game 9-7, 2.64). denny opened his era-title defense in spectacular fashion, racing out to a 7-0 start, but since then he has suffered five straight losses and spent six weeks on the disabled list; his era now stands at a disheartening 4.05. and denny’s off again tonight: three singles plate a run with nobody out in the third; a hit batsman jams the sacks with two outs, and then steve yeager parks one — a grand slam and a 5-1 dodger lead. try to recall (those of you who’re gray-stubbled enough) what a 5-1 deficit meant in those days, when runs didn’t just fall from the sky and 414 feet of heavy air stood between home plate and the centerfield wall at busch stadium. you weren’t going to jump right back into the game with a couple of quick-strike homers. 5-1 was imposing — roughly akin to a 20-point gap in the nba.

and the cards don’t cut into it against hooten; he sails through the lineup, letting only one man advance into scoring position. the seats start to empty in the 7th inning, and after the redbirds go meekly in the bottom of the 8th departing fans choke the exits; garbage time has arrived, and not even a 9th-inning appearance by the mad hungarian can redeem it. hrabosky’s ineffectiveness (a run on 2 hits) wipes out the last vestige of hope, along with nearly all of the remaining spectators; the few souls who remain from the paid crowd of 28,222 are all ones who, in today’s parlance, need to get a life.

jerry mumphrey’s leadoff single in the 9th doesn’t make their loyalty appear any less foolish; nor does templeton’s ensuing triple to make it 6-2. and the fans know it; nobody thinks this “rally” will lead anywhere, and the crowd does not roar. nor is lasorda particularly concerned; he lifts hooten for a mop-up guy named lance rautzhan, a rookie lhp appearing in only his 10th big league game. simmons chases temp’ton home with a single to make it 6-3, but still . . . . c’mon. hernandez though doubles simmons home and takes third on an error, and now it’s 6-4 with nobody out, the tying run is at the plate, and those few diehards who remain in their seats look up from their beers and finally start to pay attention again.

charlie hough relieves rautzhan and promptly knuckles one past yeager; hernandez trots home to make it 6-5, and hopeful cheers echo off empty seats. but mike anderson strikes out, and with ken reitz and mike tyson now due to hit it seems that fantasy will yield, as it inevitably must, to reality. reitz though musters a single, and tyson singles the pinch-runner (rick bosetti) into scoring position, setting up a confrontation for the ages: charlie hough against roger freed.

freed is in the midst of one of the most improbable seasons in baseball history. he came into the 1977 season with 511 career at-bats, 13 homers, a .221 average and 133 strikeouts. he might generously be described as a poor man’s dave kingman; ungenerously we might say he’s a poor man’s joe lis. but in 1977, freed inexplicably becomes jimmie foxx. in his first 9 at-bats (liberally dispersed across the first seven weeks of the season) he gets 5 hits. as of july 4 he’s hitting .333 (albeit in highly limited playing time); a week later he starts four games in a row and goes 7 for 12, lifting his average to .405. at which point it becomes quite clear that roger freed has been touched by supernatural forces. no one knows what spirit(s) he has invoked nor what price his soul will ultimately pay, but there’s no question about it: freed is charmed. his every at-bat seems potently fraught. he is the perfect batter for this moment: a man in the midst of a miracle season trying to cap off a miracle comeback. a cone of celestial light bathes him as he stands just outside the batter’s box, waiting out a conference at the mound — ron perranoski counseling hough on how to pitch to a shaman or some such. the conference ends, and freed digs in; hough delivers, and pow! there she goes, into the left-centerfield bleachers.

a walkoff homerun — that rarest of feats for the 1970s cardinals. a seven-run ninth-inning rally — rare even by today’s hyperoffensive standards. the cards mob roger freed at the plate, cheered on by the handful of don quixotes who still people the seats. across the city, meanwhile, about 24,000 early-departing fans listen with mixed emotions as buck and shannon call the bottom of the 9th; with every base hit their sense of shame and self-reproach grows, and they root that much harder for the rally to fall short and redeem their judgment.

the "roger freed game" (as posterity knows it) represents a pinnacle for that particular crop of cardinals. for that one night they fulfilled their promise, rose up and defeated a champion. two nights later they would reach their high-water mark, 16 games over .500; though they played together three more years, this particular group of players would never again achieve such loft. the great herzog purge of 1980-81 scattered that talented young st louis roster to the four winds. only hernandez and forsch would remain; only they would ultimately fulfill the promise of the 1977 team.

see the box score at retrosheet — and thanks to them, as always, for the invaluable work they do.

no nomar no more . . . .

either espn miked the cub wives’ section of the stands, or a lotta chicagotoids made it to busch last night. here’s what some on’m are saying this a.m.:

bleed cubbie blue
"The Cubs seemed to come out and approach this game with a sense of purpose. It may be too early to have one of those "message" games, but winning at St. Louis, a house of horrors for years, in decisive fashion in front of a full house, has to buoy the spirits and confidence of every single member of the ballclub."

cub reporter
"I’d love to be excited by a well-played victory versus our arch-nemesis the Cardinals, but the ever-lasting image of Nomar crumpling to the ground and subsequently being carried off the field is sadly what most of us will probably take from the game. No definitive word on the injury yet, but I got one of those hunches that it’s really, really bad. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we see him before the All-Star break."

cub reporter also has an extended post about nomar’s injury and the cubs’ options in the wake thereof.

chicago tribune
steve stone apparently steered clear of the cubs while prepping for his duties as espn game analyst last night. quoth he: "I don't anticipate any problems. It's a new year. They have certain goals they have to attain and I'm trying to do my job. We're not going to interact."

finally, there was this piece of news from yesterday’s open game thread at bleed cubbie blue:

"Too lazy to look up the Cubs' record on the days after new popes were elected.
by dvdmgsr on Wed Apr 20, 2005 at 03:57:13 PM CST

You made me do this...
8/12/1903: Split DH with Braves, won game 1 7-4, lost game 2 11-10 (no game on 8/10 or 8/11)
9/4/1914: Lost to Reds 4-2
6/22/1963: Lost to Pirates 3-0
8/27/1978: Beat Reds 7-1
by Al on Wed Apr 20, 2005 at 04:18:15 PM CST"

a very interesting study, but far more pertinent obviously to our guys — insofar as after casting their votes they have to fly back from the vatican in time for the first pitch. on the day after electing a new holy father, the cardinals:

lost to the giants 14-4 on august 12 1903
lost to pgh 2-1 on sept 4 1914
beat los angeles 2-1 on jun 22 1963
beat atlanta 14-3 on august 27 1978
lost to the cubs 3-1 on april 20 2005

thanks eternally to baseball reference.com.

cubs v cards 2004: last look back

the cubs’ dominance over the cardinals last year in head-to-head games can be summarized like this:

in 168 innings, the cubs allowed 151 hits and struck out 151 hitters.
in 167 innings, the cards allowed 196 hits and struck out 111 hitters.

from these numbers alone you would assume the cubs won the season series handily; and you’d become convinced beyond any doubt after looking at the hitting lines. the cubs out-oba’d the cards 347-313, outslugged them 486-448, outhit them 297-244, and out-ops’d them 833-761.

over the 19 games the cubs created 112 runs, the cards just 87. so how in god’s name did the cards win the season series 11-8?

i began trying to answer that question last month, before work and life interrupted the project. i’m not going to go back and complete that long and tedious enterprise, but the larger point of it need not be lost: the cubs should have hammered the cardinals last season. via runs created and the pythagorean formula, we would predict that the cubs should have won 12 of the 19 meetings last year. they won only 8 — an 8-game swing in the standings. now consider this: after completing the 19-game series on july 20, the cards led chicago by 10 games in the standings. factor in that 8-game swing, and the cards’ lead would have been just 2 games.

think that might have made for a slightly diff’nt stretch run?

and it’s easy to single out four games the cubs could or should have won. there was the 1st game of the year, when the cubs outhit the cards 10-5 but walked four men in the bottom of the 9th to lose 4-3. there was the third game, on may 2, when they again walked the bases full in the last inning of a tie game and lost 1-0. there was the may 21 game in wrigley, in which the cubs hit 4 dingers but fell 7-6; and of course the last game of the year, in which the cardinals rallied from an 8-2 hole to humiliate the cubs 11-8.

above all there was the 13th meeting of the season, on june 23d. you all remember it: the cards went up 3-0, then 5-3, but fell behind 9-5 after a disastrous 6-run cub rally in the top of the sixth — an inning so exasperating it left steve kline flipping the bird at his manager. but the cards clawed back to within a run, tied it on hec luna’s sac fly, and won it on a passed ball in the bottom of the 8th. cardinals 10, cubs 9.

the game fell neatly within the season-long pattern: the cards beating the cubs despite losing by every statistical measure. in this game the cubs outhit the cards 14-9, put 21 runners on base to the cards’ 14, and pounded 22 total bases to the cards’ 17. for good measure they took two cardinal runners off the bases, turning a double play and nailing womack at third on a peg from the outfield. but, cubs being cubs, they left 11 men on base and committed three errors, plus the passed ball . . . .

that single game literally turned the race around. had the cubs won it (as they should), they would have pulled into a first-place tie with the cardinals. instead they fell two back, and the two became three when the cards won the rubber game the next day. the cubs came into the june 23 game on a 9-1 tear; thereafter they went 6-10, while the cards in the same span went 13-3. just like that, an apparent first-place tie became an 8-game spread.

i think that june 23 loss altered the cubs’ self-image. they fell meekly 4-0 the next day in just 2 hours 14 minutes; succumbed to the cards again 6-1 and 5-2 just before the all-star break; then fell to pieces in the last series of the year, blowing an 8-2 lead in one game and throwing beanballs and tantrums in the other.

truthfully, the cardinals and cubs redefined each other last season in their head-to-head series. the cubs, preseason favorites to win the nl pennant, were exposed in their games vs the cardinals as a sloppy, immature, wastrel team, throwing away wins they would ultimately need. the cards, conversely, proved with their victories over chicago that they could contend for the division. from that first four-game set against the cubs, when st louis eked out two very tentative wins, the cardinals evolved from wannabe-contenders into a true juggernaut — so much so that by the last series of 2004 they toyed with the floundering cubs, laughed in their faces.

as we watch the old rivals battle in 2005, should be fun to see if (and how) they change each other.

kiko k'od?

athletics nation is reporting, per mlb.com, that kiko calero's elbow ails. just a one-line toss-off in the daily report:

"Reliever Kiko Calero, who pitched two perfect innings Saturday, is experiencing some pain in his elbow and was unavailable Monday."

that sly jocketty . . . .

hotel hell

also happened to catch jim rome's 5-minute int'view with jim edmonds last hour. rome asked "what happened last october against the red sox," and edmonds said "we just came up flat"; rome followed, "how the hell does a team come up flat in the world series?" and edmonds hauled out the pathetic canard about the team hotel not being up to snuff. he also said (paraphrasing) that the cards' current theory is that boston's front office didn't think they'd be in the world series anyway and hence didn't reserve rooms for the visiting team until after all the prime lodgings were taken. . . . in other words, the stupid hotel is still a hot topic in the clubhouse. you'd think they might talk instead about rolen's 0-fer or edmonds' 1-fer . . . .

if you're a rome subscriber you can hear this on the net at rome's site.

april is cruelest redux

cheer up yadless — you stink now, but (to paraphrase gen’l patton) all stinkage is fleeting. . . . well, some stinkage anyway; a good bit of it is eternal. btaim, where does molina's lame 2005 launch rate on the spectrum of slow cardinal aprils? off the top o me head i can think of half a dozen or so horrid starts by redbird rookies, plus assorted april flops by veterans added during the off-season. all statistics herein derived via the magic of david pinto’s day-by-day database.

i begin with the worst season launch i can remember — turned in coincidentally by a new starting catcher on a pennant-defending cardinal team:

mike heath, 1986
four hits through his first 12 starts: .080 avg, .359 ops. heath compiled his quintessential stat line on april 19 (19 yrs ago to the day) in a 17-inning win against the expos: 0 for 8, with an error and a passed ball (thanks retrosheet). herzog started platooning the guy, and he bounced back in may — .281 for the month with 10 walks, lifting his ops all the way to .601; but by then the cards were in last place, 10 games under and 14.5 behind the torrid mets, and the cardinals’ stake in the return of mike heath’s batting eye no longer held much value. he lost the job to mike lavalliere and by late august was playing for cleveland.

heath 86
thru apr 30: 4 for 50 (.080), 1hr 3bi, 179/180/359
thru may 31: 20 for 107 (.187), 2hr 15bi, 293/308/601

i started with heath because he’s the only guy i could come up with who had a start even remotely as awful as yadless’s. but the comparison’s not really apt — heath was 31 years old with a 7-yr track record (he bounced back in ’87 to hit .281 for the division-winning tigers), while yadier is a 22-yr-old rookie still trying to establish a big-league identity. i can think of five rooks in recent stl history who went through somewhat similar travails, starting with:

keith hernandez, 1975
handed the 1b job after a strong september ’74 callup, hernandez hit .189 thru april with one xbhit, still only at .211 by the end of may. he got sent back to tulsa shortly thereafter, returned to the bigs late in the season and went 21 for his last 65. proceeded to have a decent career . . . .

hernandez 75
thru apr 30: 10 for 53 (.189), 0 hr 4bi, 271/226/498
thru may 31: 26 for 123 (.211), 1hr 12bi, 285/317/602

heity cruz, 1976
case study in how to mishandle a prospect. an outfielder by trade, the 22-year-old cruz (younger bro of jose) became a 3baser — a position he’d never played at any level — by front-office fiat and declared the successor to the traded ken reitz. formula for failure. yet the organization was surprised when cruz hit just .170 thru april with a 2/13 walk-to-k ratio and a .461 ops. by may 31 he’d only heated up to .202, and the peripherals were abominable: 3 walks and 30 ks in 129 at-bats. he finished the year at .228 with a 625 ops (ops+ of 77) and, for good measure, a .934 fielding percentage. career ruined

h cruz 76
thru apr 30: 9 for 53 (.170), 1hr 9bi, 196/264/461
thru may 31: 26 for 129 (.202), 4hr 16bi, 224/333/557

jim lindeman, 1987
marginal 25-yr-old 1b prospect, but got so hot in spring training that the cards traded andy van slyke to pgh (for tony pena) and stuck lindeman in right field. he continued to pop the ball in april — 7 2bs, 3 hr — but 2 walks v 14 ks spelled trouble, which arrived right on schedule. come may, lindy hit .077 and fanned 11 times in 26 at-bats without a walk or an xb hit. that was all herzog needed to see; he started platooning jose oquendo and curt ford in right, while lindeman lurched to a .208 avg / 640 ops (66 ops+) in spot duty the rest of the way. he smote a pivotal homer in the ‘87 nlcs but otherwise was ruined by that impotent may; the remainder of his big-league career consisted of 414 at-bats scattered across 7 seasons.

lindeman 87
thru apr 30: 13 for 54 (.241), 3hr 11bi, 263/537/800
may 1 thru 31: 2 for 26 (.077), 0hr 3bi, 074/077/151
thru may 31: 15 for 72 (.208), 3hr 14bi, 224/431/654

luis alicea, 1988
took over for tom herr (dealt to min) in late april at 22 and, 10 games in, was only marginally better than molina at 6 for 33. by may 31 alicea had lifted his avg to just .221, but with 17 walks and 8 xb hits (624 ops) he was showing some signs of life. little looie drew only 8 walks the rest of the way, however, finished at .212 (599 ops, 61 ops+) and did not appear in another big-league game for nearly three years.

alicea 88
thru may 3: 6 for 33 (.182), 0hr 5bi, 282/242/524
thru may 31: 29 for 131 (.221), 1hr 15bi, 309/305/614

david bell, 1996
another failure at 2bag, lost his job to . . . . the aforementioned luis alicea. bell got 13 april starts at 2d and batted just .196 with 2 walks and 1 rbi. 11 starts later, he’d tripled the rbi total. . . . . . but still was at .188. he got just 60 at-bats the rest of the way, didn’t make the cards’ postseason roster, and didn’t improve a whit in 1997 — almost identical numbers. he has since played well enough to push his salary to $4 million a year, which accomplishment ranks as bell’s finest as a ballplayer. . . . . list of similar players at baseball-reference.com includes the immortal ed charles of the 69 amazins.

da bell 96
thru apr 30: 9 for 46 (.196), 1hr 1bi, 229/304/534
thru may 31: 16 for 85 (.188), 1hr 3bi, 255/259//514

i can’t end this discussion without mentioning one of my all-time favorite slow starts by a cardinal player — love the 2-30 walk-whiff ratio and 30-rbi pace:

galarraga 92
thru may 31: 8 for 40 (.200), 0hr 3bi, 256/200/456
thru jun 30: 22 for 119 (.185), 0hr 6bi, 2bb 30k, 230/235/465

finally, there’s darrell porter, the living breathing embodiment of sabrmetric principles. porter arrived in 1981 to replace the beloved ted simmons, a career .300+ hitter and marginal hall-of-fame candidate. porter didn’t hit .300; nor, for his first couple of months, did he even hit .200. not by a long shot. accordingly st louisans hated his guts and grumbled loudly about simmons’ departure. if we’d known then what we know now about how to read a stat line, perhaps we wouldn’t have grumbled so much:

porter 81
thru apr 30: 4 for 24 (.167), 1 hr 2bi, 10bb, 412/375/787
thru may 31: 9 for 52 (.173) 2 hr 8bi, 19bb, 394/385/779

inefficiency experts

after 10 games, the cardinals stand dead last in the national league in defensive efficiency rating.

small sample size, yes, but let me repeat: they’re dead last. behind the fossilized giants, the talentless rockies (who have coors to contend with), the patchwork d-backs. on a team this old, lately shorn of two gold gloves, that’s real cause for concern.

on t’other hand . . . david eckstein thru 10 games has been flawless in the field, with no errors and a 5.34 range factor/9. again, small sample size — but the early returns do not suggest he is the gaping hole some commentators (espec’ly your humble correspondent) feared he might be.

also to the good: cards have yielded just 6 hr so far. but to the bad: only 11 doubles, and only 27 extra-base hits overall, next to last in the league. that makes a nice balance with the team's league-worst 27 walks . . . . . .

add'l numbers crunched today at the birdwatch

kline in his milk

there was a reliver named kline
who had a dysfunctional mind
the only things worse
than his brain-chemical curse
were the stats on his pitching line

ankiel, pulsipher, kline --- what is going on here? if the only qualifications you need to pitch for the cards are left-handedness and mental/emotional imbalance, then i could suit up for the damn team . . . .

the cruelest month

this dispatch from a friend who attended saturday's 10-4 loss to phila:

I saw the redbirds this weekend and they looked awful. The town is in a panic, just like last year at this time. But I think this year is different: their play is lazy and uninspired, Edmunds has clearly lost a step, they're old, their rotation, while deep, is full of pitchers who overachieved last year, and their bullpen simply sucks. I'm convinced Mulder has blown-out his arm. I did hear on sports open-line that LaRussa's teams are notorious for slow starts (they were 24-22 at one point last year), but this slow start may turn into a slow middle and a slow end. The loss of Calero and Kline cannot be overstated. And by the way, the signing of Larry Walker may be one of the dumbest things Jocketty has ever done. If Walker wasn't on the team, maybe Renteria or (more importantly) Matheny would be.

my response as follows:

all your points may be right . . . . but they looked pretty wretched in april last year too. opened 1-3 at home against milwaukee (!), gave up 30 runs in 4 games. a week later the astros came to town and swept three straight, outscored the birds 26-9.

i also recall a year (maybe 2002) when st louis opened the season in colorado. i didn't go to any of the games because i hate coors field baseball, but the cards got clobbered in all three. let me go look it up (i love the web . . . )

here it is: in 2001, fresh off winning the division by 10 games, the cards opened in denver and lost three in a row by a combined score of 32-11. that year's team was .500 as late as july 29, and they were 8.5 games behind the cubs; they went 42-19 down the stretch and tied houston for the division, while the cubs went 28-32 and finished third.

long season.

beaucoups debuts

we greet mark mulder (winningest stl offseason acquisition in 50 yrs) with a sampling (not quite random) of new cardinal pitchers' april debuts down through the years:

apr 16 72 at busch, mtl 3 stl 2
wise (l): 8ip 6h 3r(2er) 2w 4k

apr 6 74 at busch: stl 8 pgh 0
siebert (w): 9ip 4h 0r 2w 6k

apr 10 74 at shea: nym 3 stl 2
curtis (l): 7ip 6h 3r 3w 3k

apr 13 74 at threerivers: stl 6, pgh 4
mcglothen (w) 8.1ip 9h 4r 3w 7k

apr 13 76 at threerivers: pgh 14, stl 4
falcone (l) 1.2ip 1h 5r 5w 0k

apr 12 81 at busch: stl 7, pha 3
sorenson (w) 6ip 5h 3r 1w 4k

apr 10 82 at busch: pgh 11, stl 7
mura (nd) 1.1ip 3h 3r 3w 2k

apr 11 85 at shea: ny 2 stl 1 (11)
tudor (nd) 9ip 3h 1r(0er) 3w 5k

apr 7 88 at rivfront: cin 8, stl 1
deleon (l) 3.2ip 5h 4r 6w 3k

apr 10 90 at busch: stl 4 mtl 2
bry smith (w) 5ip 8h 2r 2w 1k

apr 3 96 at shea: stl 5 ny 3
stottmyre (w) 7.2ip 5h 3r 3w 5k

apr 3 00 at busch: stl 7 chi 1
kile (w) 6ip 2h 1r 2w 4k

apr 6 01 at bank one: stl 12 az 9
hermnson (w) 5ip 6h 6r 4w 5k

apr 4 03 at busch: hou 6 stl 5 (12)
tomko (nd): 6ip 5h 5r (0er) 3w 3k

apr 6 04 at busch: mil 7, stl 5
marquis (l): 5.1ip 8h 6r 1w 6k

apr 8 04 at busch: mil 11 stl 5
suppan (l): 4ip 8h 6r 3w 4k

apr 9 04 at bank one: stl 13 az 6
carpter (w): 6ip 7h 5r 1w 3k

93 and 69

ok, time to get down to it. the cards will finish 93-69 this year, which will likely (but not surely) get them into the playoffs for the fifth time in six years. a great big cloud of triumphalism has billowed up among the cardinal faithful this spring, particularly during the last week or so of camp, and it seems to me badly misplaced; i think this is going to be a rockier ride than anybody wants.

i base the forecast on the following considerations, presented in no particular order:

history. the vast majority of 100-win teams win fewer than 100 for an encore. that goes for even the most dominant teams of the past generation. the ’84 tigers (104 wins), ’86 mets (108), ’88 a’s (104), and ’95 indians (100-44 in strike-shortened year) all failed to reach 100 the following year, as did the two winningest teams of all time, the ’98 yankees (114 wins) and ’01 mariners (116). so 90-something wins almost surely it will be. that conclusion is reinforced by the glances i took this winter at 100-win teams, runaway division winners, dual league leaders in runs for and runs against, and the four teams with profiles most similar to the 2004-05 cardinals.

leading indicators. in one of the abstracts, bill james enumerated seven "leading indicators" to distinguish teams on the rise from teams on the decline. i can’t remember all seven, but i know the list included three that augur ill for the cards in ’05:
1) differential betw actual w-l and pythagorean w-l: the cards were +5 in ’04, ie they were a 100-win team masquerading as a 105-winner. even if all else stays the same, luck alone will likely shave at least five games off the cards’ win total
2) age: old teams tend to decline; young teams tend to improve. the cards are old.
3) previous-year improvement/decline: the cards improved by 20 games in ’04. a bounce that large tends to be followed by a bounce in the opposite direction the following season.

career years. a lot of cardinals played at the top of their games last season, and hence may be due for a bit of a letdown in ’05. how widespread was this happy syndrome last year? here’s a list of career bests established by cardinal players in 2004:

womack — ba, oba, slg, ops, ops+
rolen — hr, ba, oba, slg, ops, ops+
edmonds — hr (t), rbi, slg, ops, ops+
mabry — hr (t), oba, slg, ops, ops+
pujols — hr, walks
matheney — rbi
marquis — w, ip, gs, so
suppan — w, h/ip
carp’ter — w, h/ip, wh/ip, k/ip, era (1.13 below career avg), era+
king — w, g, h/ip, wh/ip, era, era+
tavarez — era (2.00 below career average)*, h/ip
kline — era, h/ip

so let’s see: the three-four-five hitters all set or tied career highs in homers, and two of those three also set new standards in slugging and ops. the leadoff man set a career mark for oba. three starting pitchers set career highs in wins. and perhaps most incredible of all, the entire setup corps (king tavarez kline and calero) set career lows in both era and hits per inning. . . . . the sabermetricians have a stat for this sort of thing: they call it Flurry of Lucky, Unprecedented Creer Events, or FLUCES. (ok, so they can't spell . . . . they're sabrmetricians.) no need to tell you that the cardinals led the majors in it last year by a wide margin. some of last year’s stalwarts are going to have lesser years in ’05, and one or two may flat-out suck. the cards led the league in both runs scored and runs prevented last year; i don’t believe they’ll lead in either this season. still in the upper echelon, but not on the throne.

the bullpen in particular seems primed for a busted bubble. tavarez’s 2.38 era was two runs below his career average; he won’t have calero to take the heat off him this season and strikes me as rather liable to get exposed. king’s career year in ’04 wasn’t quite as far out of line with his norms, but he pitched in 86 games and reported some arm stiffness this spring . . . . duh. even if fat ray stays limber, he will need support from two scrubs (pulsipher and flores) who might have struggled to make the staff out here in denver. the rh setup corps — tavarez eldred and al reyes — will not scare anyone. if king hits the dl and tavarez reverts to form . . . . well just keep yer fingers crossed.

so much for what concerns me about the team. . . . . actually i could go on, but the point has been made. what’s to like about the 2005 cards?

the starting pitching. the cardinals’ two best pitchers, mulder and morris, are both due to rebound from subpar years. bad shoulder and all, morris fanned 6 guys per 9 innings, had a whip of 1.29, and won 15 games last season; that’s one of the best "bad" pitching lines in franchise history. he returns healthy, slightly pissed off, and pitching for a new contract — he could win 20. carpenter is the new woody williams — in and out of arm trouble, but in command and good for 15 wins. suppan is a known quantity, marquis just the opposite — might win 15 again, or might pitch his way out of the rotation by the all-star break.

that brings us to mulder, the great x-file. rarely has an offseason acquisition been burdened with such portent as this one. if he’s on, mulder goes 21-5 and the cardinals return to the series. if he’s off, he spends more time on the d.l. and the sports psychologist’s couch than on the mound, and st louis labors to 86 victories. if the former, jocketty supplants billy beane as baseball’s reigning front-office genius; if the latter, he supplants john depodesta as the reigning front-office schmuck.

i’m betting that jocketty knows what he’s doing.

they can still hit. as long as albert stays healthy, they’ll put up enough runs.

the division stinks. the astros and cubs both remain dangerous (more so than we might like to admit), but we’d all be a lot more worried if they both hadn’t trimmed strong-armed starters and rbi men from their rosters.

they have trade depth and payroll flexibility. even with haren’s departure, the cards still have attractive pitching prospects — enough to fetch a setup man, a lefthanded bat, a middle infielder, or whatever other fortification(s) they might need come july. nobody shops more wisely at the midseason flea market than jocketty.

if it sounds like i don’t think much of this team . . . . well how could you not be concerned? the cardinals brought in castoffs to play second and short, topped off the bullpen with journeymen and reclamation projects, and have staked nearly all on a guy who basically pitched his team out of the playoffs last september. ev’yone else has holes, sure, but the cards are far from invincible . . . . . with the league (especially the central) so far down, though, i don’t know that anyone will vince them. the cubs? for sure, if their aces hold up and their bullpen holds leads. houston? sorry, don’t think so. pittsburgh? not ready. cincinnati? c’mon . . . .

the wild card will probably come out of the nl east this year, where florida phila and atlanta will be vying. the cubs are sloppy and stupid, but they sure can pitch. i foresee a tense summer in st louis.

predicted runs scored: 830, 3d in league (behind phila and fla)
predicted runs allowed: 700, 6th in league (behind fla la chi nym and atl)
predicted finish: 93-69, 1st place by 1 game over chicago
nl east champ: florida
nl central champ: st louis
nl west champ: san francisco
nl wild card: philadelphia
al east champ: new york
al central: minnesota
al west: anaheim
al wild card: oakland
pennant winners: st louis, new york
series: st louis