As I watch our Cardinal middle infield every day/night I have been asking myself--Good Lord, how bad is our middle infield trio? I don't think I'm sharing any trade secrets when I say "pretty bad". The trio of Kennedy, Miles, Izturis isn't exactly putting fear in anyone's hearts (except some Redbird faithful).

I know there is the obvious "it's early" caveat. I get it. But I did want to see exactly how bad our middle infield has been compared to rest of the National League. What I did find is that while the Redbird triumvirate it isn't the worst in the NL it certainly is close. Allow me to use OPS as the measuring stick if that's ok.

Here are some basic findings before the good ole statistics. The Cardinals MIF (abbrevation for middle infield) is joined by only the San Diego Padres duo of Greene and Iguchi as the only ones to not hit any home runs so far in 2008. Although I would put my substantial (if $453 is substantial) life savings on the fact that the SD group will hit more round trippers than the STL crew. Meanwhile, only one other group (the Pittsburgh Pirates) has a worse slugging percentage than the Cardinal group.

Basically--the ONLY saving grace for the Cardinals is the high BB/HBP numbers of Izturis and the fact that Kennedy has hit a lot of singles. Anyway, here are the findings from best to worst in the NL (in OPS order).

Los Angeles         .329/.409/.550/.959

Philadelphia         .295/.349/.577/.926

Florida                    .286/.345/.526/.871

Chicago                  .308/.375/.491/.866

Atlanta                     .275/.366/.471/.837

Houston                  .276/.353/.418/.771

Arizona                     .271/.325/.443/.768

Cincinnati               .278/.333/.417/.750

Washington            .264/.328/.393/.721

New York                  .269/.330/.379/.709

Milwaukee               .229/.313/.350/.663

St. Louis                  .254/.346/.291/.637

Colorado                   .216/.284/.331/.615

San Diego               .231/.298/.293/.591

San Francisco         .208/.286/.305/.591

Pittsburgh                  .202/.238/.240/.478

There is no way Tulowitski will be as bad as he is--the Rockies are clearly better there. Ditto for Greene/Iguchi in San Diego and Weeks/Hardy in Milwaukee. Pittsburgh does have a former batting champ with Sanchez and Wilson is just back from the DL so I doubt they stay that low. Honestly, the only thing keeping the Birds from having the worst MIF in the NL the minor league group in San Francisco.