Fixing the Cards Pythagorean

Part 1: Fall of the MV3

The same Sabermatic community that thinks the STL Cardinals are the joke of baseball once called the St. Louis Cardinals "a Juggernaut" just 2 years ago.

All this talk about missing pitching we still have to keep the Pythagorean in check, however, the desperate need for pitching gives nice stealth to the huge decline in offense since the start of the Empire, 2000.

When Making the Playoffs their Average Actual Wins per year 95.5 games with a 93.3 Pythagorean. Through 2000-2005 the cards have averaged 837 runs, with 3 seasons over 850. The difference between the 2002 Division title with 787 runs scored vs the 2003 3rd place team that scored 876 runs was pitching. I'm not advocating ignoring the horrid need for pitching, however, the current offense can't support even a stellar pitching staff.

If the card's don't change the offense and score around the same runs they did this year, 726, they would need the pitching staff to come up with around 595 runs allowed. To put that in perspective, the best team in the NL has already given up that many runs, The Padres. As it stands you have Wainwright, Looper, 1/2 of Carp, and question marks to turn into the 90s Braves.

I looked at some runs generated by the mv3 since 2003. The only thing to note is in 2003 Pujols played the OF so I moved Martinez on paper to the OF.

Rolen was hurt and only contributed 25 runs. Healthy Rolen averages around 112 runs. Nuniez's 53 + Hurt Rolens 25 = 34 Runs difference. If Rolen wasn't hurt and had an average year, the Runs Created would have looked like:

You can already see what an impact 1 hurt Mv3 member means. If Rolen didn't have that collision at first in 2005, from 2003 - 2005 a healthy Mv3 would account for almost half of the runs scored:

In 2006 instead of Rolen being hurt, Edmonds suffered from the Post Concussion Syndrome and leg injuries, that cost him half oh his normal Runs Created (Jimmy from 2000-2005 averaged 121 RC, his 2006 total was 59).

Here you can see, again, how an injured mv3 member drastically lowered the Runs created. Here is what the Table would have looked like if Jimmy was Jimmy that year:

This would have changed our Pythagorean Wins from 82 to an almost respectable 88.

So looking forward to 2008, what can you really expect from the Mv3? Does Jimmy have one more left? Will Rolen recover? Is this a freak down year for Pujols, maybe even conventional wisdom right for a change and he had no protection?

This was by far the most brutal year for the MV3 with both Jimmy having his 2nd straight year where he has performed over 50% less effective with a 2 year average of 52.5 and Rolen didn't complete the season and had a RC of 51. With less then two weeks left in the season the RC table looks like:

Once we establish the range of RC for Rolen and Edmonds, then we can see if the new boys will make up for that and were we could up grade. Otherwise even with a huge and improbable add like Jake Peavey won't do any notable damage and probably cost the team some bottom line revenue (per Nate Silver's Win Curve article)