As we all know, the Cardinals are 7 games under .500 since the July 31st trading deadline. I've been tracking the play of the Redbirds all season, using Win Probability Added (courtesy of Fangraphs). As has been noted before, this is an excellent system to find out who is helping the team win and who is helping the team lose.

Batter info: (only offensive numbers, no defense, thru 9/25)

Belliard     -0.750 Aug / -1.113 Sep (god awful! on a per-month basis, one of the worst players in the league))

Bennett       0.728 / -0.310 (bouyed by 1.036 pts in 4 games)

Duncan        0.651 / -0.109

Eckstein     -0.367 /  0.359

Edmonds      -0.024 /  0.236

Encarnacion   0.008 / -0.185

Miles         0.287 / -0.499 (over-extended, maybe?)

Molina       -0.039 / -0.118

Pujols        0.474 /  1.418 (as valuable as Belly's been destructive)

Rodriguez    -0.010 /  0.212

Rolen        -0.080 / -1.173 (horrid September)

Spiezio      -0.257 /  1.006 (2nd best player in Sep)

Taguchi      -0.449 /  0.107 (used less in Sep => more effective; hmmm)

Vizcaino     -0.196 /  0.239 (basically useless until his last 2 games)

Wilson        0.261 /  0.029

Just for giggles - PITCHERS:   -0.321 / -0.840 (Jabba's been worse than the pitchers!)

Pitcher stats:

Carpenter       0.640 /  0.111

Marquis        -0.830 / -0.331

Mulder         -0.819 /  n/a   (in just two starts)

Reyes           0.035 / -0.059 (league average)

Suppan          0.525 /  0.537 (best starter)

Weaver         -0.390 /  0.212

Isringhausen   -1.052 / -0.661

Looper          0.313 / -0.670

Wainwright      0.323 /  0.018

Flores          0.227 / -0.466

Hancock         0.040 / -0.121

Johnson        -0.094 / -0.131

Kinney          n/a   /  0.362 (our most effective reliever in Sep)

Sosa            0.232 / -0.500

Thompson        0.077 /  0.116

Put simply, each half point means a game in the standings. So that means, with Cardinals being 5 games under .500 in September,

the offense is 2 games under (mostly due to the pitchers at the plate)

the starting pitching is almost a full game over .500

and the bullpen, with its late collapses, is 4 games under.

The offense, minus the pitchers, was averaging 1.2 games over per month before September, so they are playing well below average.
The starters were averaging over 0.3 games over per month, so they are playing above average.
The bullpen was averaging over 1.6 games over per month, so they are WAY below average.