One reason why the Card's start is not surprising

by Epistibrain on May 3, 2008 5:11 AM EDT

It's curious that among all the knocks on the Cardinals starting rotation that I read before the season started, I never saw anyone address this elementary question: what was the Cardinals' record in games that these guys started last year? Going into Friday night's game with the Cubs the 2008 Cardinals had a .620 winning percentage. In the 84 games that Looper, Wainwright, Pineiro, and Wellemeyer started for the Cardinals in 2007, the Cardinals were 52-32, a .619 winning percentage. What a shocking development--these guys are doing exactly what they did last year!

If their current rotation stays healthy there is no reason to believe the Cardinals can't contend. After all, they have won well over 60% of the games with these guys starting in a sample of over a hundred games. The biggest danger at this point is someone getting hurt or, even worse, Mark Mulder getting "healthy."

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Yeah...

You really can’t say enough about how much it helped to remove Kip Wells, Anthony Reyes and shudder the Mike Maroth/Mark Mulder combination from the rotation. I was trying to explain to a friend who doesn’t pay much attention to blogs or individual games just how bad they were last year, and ended up writing a blog about it. Here’s a snippet:
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When you think about last year, you notice how bad the starting pitching was. A lot of those guys are back this year. However, consider this: the quartet Kip Wells, a struggling Anthony Reyes, a still-hurt Mark Mulder and Mike Freaking Maroth put up this pitching line:

Starts: 56
Wins: 9
Losses: 39
ERA: 6.63
Strikeouts: 222
IP: 319

You subtract that element from the rotation and everybody else has a 69-45 record. Amazing, isn’t it? Now, all they have to do is get league-average performance from Looper, Pineiro, Wellemeyer and Thompson-and then Carpenter and Mulder (and possibly Clement) and we’re talking a team that’s already AT LEAST 10 games better. The rotation should be a lot better, and I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people. There’s almost no way it could even come close to being as bad as it was last year. Look at those numbers again-that’s more than a third of the starts from last year.
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—
The problem with these numbers is, of course, that it’s highly likely they won’t even be able to get league-average performance from more than two of the Lohse/Looper/Piniero/Wellemeyer/Thompson group, and that Mulder will come back and be terrible again. None of that would surprise me at all.

Still, there are reasons to be optimistic.

by mattisnotfrench on May 3, 2008 7:05 AM EDT reply reply 0 recs

Mulder

I’m really not looking forward to Mulder coming back either. His first start in AAA consisted of 7 earned runs in 3 2/3 innings. Some pitchers just never really come back from surgery, and I’m starting to think he might be one of them.

"I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it."- Rogers Hornsby

by redbirds8233 on May 3, 2008 8:59 AM EDT reply reply 0 recs

Mulder and Maroth

Those numbers are frightening. According to the Hardball Times’ version of win shares Maroth had negative six wins shares last year, two fewer than anyone else who played in 2007. In fact, the only other player to do that much damage in the four years they have available is Hideo Nomo, but he took 84 innings to get his negative six in 2004, while Maroth needed only 38 innings.

Still, Maroth was only on the team out of an extreme need for pitching, one of three Cards starters who were (more or less) released by another team, so barring a lot of injuries that won’t happen again. I am more worried about Mulder, as it seems like the guy with the greatest potential to hurt a team is someone who once pitched well but has lost it. In the above mentioned 2004 season the Dodgers gave Nomo 18 starts while he ran up an 8.25 ERA. Jose Lima’s 21 wins in 1999 entitled him to 42 starts over the next two seasons during which his ERA was over seven before the Astros finally gave up on him. Barry Zito is an ongoing example. If a player had come up with the Cardinals and put up exactly the same numbers as Mulder has done for St. Louis, at this point he would not be guaranteed a roster spot let alone a rotation spot. I’m not saying his fine years at Oakland should not count for something, but after last year I think he needs to earn his way back into the rotation.

by Epistibrain on May 3, 2008 10:44 AM EDT reply reply 0 recs