i had a perfect view of the play ----- 15th row in section 142, about 20 feet behind 3d base. albert got a tremendous jump, had the base stolen easily; he was 25 feet past the bag and under a full head of steam by the time the 2bman decided to throw it to first. reminded me vaguely of lawrence taylor on a blitz as he charged around the corner. i didn’t think they’d even have a play on him, but helton got rid of the ball incredibly fast (watch it on the replay; it’s like the ball bounces off him) and made a perfect throw, almost got him . . . . . maybe did get him. but the tie goes to the runner, right? what a thrill; i’m a pretty undemonstrative fan, but this brought me out of my seat hollering (only half-voluntarily) "come on albert!" i don’t think i’ve seen a prettier dash since that time back in 1975 when one of the casten boys (can’t exactly recall which of the brothers it was) bolted out of the shadows at half an hour past midnight to win an epic game of capture-the-flag. . . . . and i had just been thinking how the cards’ failure to get a couple runners home from third with less than two out was probably gonna cost them the game. so they go and get a runner home from second on a groundball.

vince coleman couldn’t have done it better himself.

albert’s run took our attention off another feeble late-inning at-bat from rick ankiel; from the 7th inning on this year he’s hitting .105 / .171 / .184 in 41 trips to the plate. it’s a tiny sample size and surely not predictive, but it’s definitely descriptive --- ankiel looks anxious up there in big situations. easy to say about rick given his history, but am i just imagining it?

ron villone puts on a nice show. he’s got a niche only a left-handed pitcher can have; you’ll never see a grizzled right-handed reliever brought into the game to fearlessly chuck his 87-mph fastball (or so it read on the stadium gun) over the plate. his cadence could only be a left-hander’s, too. he gets a whole lot accomplished between pitches: stalk around grass on 3d-base side of mound, glance at fielders, climb hill, tug at belt, glance at hitter, flick pitching arm, draw limbs into position, read sign, set, kick, throw. bet you didn’t know (i didn’t) that villone was a very high draft pick --- 14th overall in the 1992 draft. bet you also didn’t know that his career k/9 of 7.11 is among the top 100 in the history of baseball (minimum 1000 innings pitched); he ranks 74th. i didn’t know either, until just this very second. his confrontation with hawpe (2 on, 2 out in the 5th) was a triumph of stubbornness; away, away, away on every pitch. hawpe figured it out after the first couple of pitches (by which time he was down 0-2 in the count) and stopped swinging, worked the count to 3-2 and forced villone to come in with one of those crappy fastballs; villone put it on his hands and hawpe fouled it off. and then he went back to the outside corner with a slider, and hawpe couldn’t resist the bait and waved at it, struck out.

i was happy for mike parisi, to whom i’ve paid way too much attention as he has climbed the rungs of the system. he was fired up for that first inning, came right after the hitters and made it look easy; after he struck out matt herges to end the inning (his first big-league K) yadi handed him the ball on the way back to the dugout. in his second inning of work (the 7th) parisi just couldn’t get the fastball over; he was overthrowing it, leaving it up. the long flyout off the bat of the tiny shortstop, quintanilla, seemed to shake him (horrible route to that ball by ankiel, by the way; i think the altitude fooled him); after holliday and helton reached base the kid was looking over his shoulder, out to the bullpen, where (oh shit) nobody was warming up . . . . . the first pitch to atkins passed about a foot over his helmet, and it looked like the rookie was gonna buckle, but he steadied himself and got out of the jam. for some reason parisi completely abandoned his curveball that inning; he did throw one on the first pitch to atkins (the one that went over his head); given how sharp the hook looked in the 6th (he got all three outs on it), i don’t know why he would turn away from it vs the top of the order.

the cards made more than enough mistakes to lose the game, probably should have lost it. the sight of pujols barreling home will stay with me for a long time.

items:

• what a dreadful game for chris duncan; they can't hide him in coors field's gi-normous outfield. with left-handers going the next 3 days, he needs to take a seat.
• dreadful game for mark mulder too, rehabbing at memphis. the p-d's correspondent says mulder threw consistently between 85 and 87 mph; sounds like he is toasted.
• the cards are 9 games over for the first time since september 21 2006 . . . .
• BP's christina kahrl, in a cameo at the new york sun, says all those walks to pujols are helping the cardinal offense.

Lohse	Parra
2-0, 1.48	1-1, 5.40

stat of the day: albert pujols has seen more balls this year --- 166, or 54 percent --- than strikes (143, or 46 percent). from 2001-07 he saw strikes about 58 percent of the time, and never less than 56 percent strikes in any given year. for the sake of comparison, from 2001-03 barry bonds only saw strikes 46 of the time and averaged 175 walks a year (albert’s on pace for ~140 walks). in 2004, when bonds drew 232 walks, only 40 percent of the pitches thrown to him were strikes. . . . last night was albert’s second 3-walk game of the season, and we’re just 20 games in. he’s never had more than three 3-walk games in a single year. . . . .

ryan ludwick’s misadventure in the 8th inning last night got me curious about the overall play of the cards’ outfield defense. you may recall that i wrote a post last month about the sharp sag in the cardinals’ fly-catching ability in 2007. how are they faring so far in 2008? by the numbers, much better. the outfielders have chased 166 catchable flyballs so far (ie, flyballs minus home runs) and put 119 of them away, a 72 percent rate --- that’s about average. but they were well below average last year (only caught 67 percent of the catchable flyballs), so mere competency from the outfielders is a big improvement.

the infield defense, on the other hand, remains outstanding: through 20 games the cardinals are the best in the league at turning groundballs into outs. opponents are batting .177 on groundballs, vs a leaguewide average of .222. that means the cardinal infield has saved 12 base hits over an average team, or about 9 runs ---- nearly half a run a game. the cardinals are a full run a game better than average at run prevention so far (3.55 runs allowed / game, vs a league average of 4.53); if the defense accounts for about half of that savings, then the pitchers get the rest of the credit. they have walked the fewest men in the league (56) and allowed the second-fewest homers (14). avoid free passes, keep it in the park, keep it on the ground . . . . . perfectly executed pitch-to-contactism. but those of us who like strikeouts also have reason to cheer --- the cards’ strikeout total is nearly average this year. they rank 10th in the league in that category, with 6.4 k/9 --- haven’t ranked that high since 2004.

the pitchers’ strong start is probably the main reason the cards are talking such sense about mulder’s return. in 2006 and 07 they were panicky with him, rushing him back (with disastrous results) because they hated the available options (i.e. reyes). but the rhetoric from tony in today’s paper about mulder is refreshingly sensible: "He needs to come up not in a process of rehabbing" (emphasis added). amen. mulder’s rehab assignment began april 15 and can run 30 days, so the team doesn’t have to make any change at all until may 15 --- three more weeks. we’ll know a lot more about mulder by then, but more important we’ll know more about todd wellemeyer, braden looper, and joel pineiro --- as well as (vain hope) anthony reyes. . . . . .

impressions at random:

• i was extremely impressed by glaus’s at-bat in the 8th inning against guillermo mota. a quick re-set: the score was tied 2-2; ludwick was on 3d after hart’s 3-base error; pujols was on 1st (after an ibb), and there was one out (ankiel had popped out just ahead of glaus). troy looked terrible on the first pitch, swung at a changeup way out of the zone; he fell behind 0-2 and you and i and all of us were thinking he was gonna strike out and the cards were gonna fail to get that damn runner home from 3d. glaus barely stayed alive by fouling off on an 0-2 change (the 3d one he’d seen in that at-bat); mota wasted a couple of fastballs to set him up, then came back with a changeup at the knees on 2-2, hoping to get a groundball (and an inning-ending DP), but glaus recognized the pitch and laid off. mota came back with another on 3-2; glaus recognized it again and didn’t bite. it was glaus’s first at-bat against mota since 2005 --- he hasn’t seen the guy’s pitches in quite some time. so he made a hell of a quick adjustment to avoid a costly out. kennedy’s sac fly ensued, but glaus’s walk was easily the best at-bat in that inning --- the only truly good one in a "rally" that essentially consisted of two fly balls (one misplayed for an error, one caught for a sac fly).
• wainwright relied on his 3d-best pitch, the slider, to escape trouble in the 7th inning --- both kendall and hardy grounded out on it. the curveball deserted adam that inning --- he threw 6 of them, and 5 missed the strike zone. but 3 of the misses were probably quasi-intentional --- they came against rickie weeks, and adam seemed to be pitching around him to get to jj hardy, who hasn’t hit a ball out of the infield vs wainwright this year (0 hits in 7 tries --- 3 groundouts, 2 pop ups, 2 strikeouts).
• here’s one of those little splits that is not predictive --- ie, we shouldn’t count on the trend to continue --- but is mildly descriptive: the cardinal hitters in 2008 have been the most productive in the league in innings 7 through 9. that split comes courtesy of Baseball-Reference. through the first 20 games they’re hitting .302 / .392 / 493 in the final 3 innings. the cardinals have played most of their games to date against three of the league’s weakest bullpens (milwaukee san francisco and houston), which is one reason we shouldn’t expect them to keep this up.

Sanchez	Looper
0-1, 6.00	3-0, 2.70

I suppose the best thing about Pineiro’s start yesterday was that he was able to keep the ball down – getting 14 ground balls to 9 fly balls w/ 3 line drives. He was hit harder in his first start, of course, managing just 8 ground balls to 8 fly balls and 5 line drives. Aside from that, though, it wasn’t a well-pitched game. Once again, he had no K’s. He did have just one walk, but for the season, 10 IP, he has yet to strike anyone out – not a good sign. Out of the 157 pitches he’s thrown in 2 games, he’s only had 9 swing-and-misses. (Wellemeyer’s averaging 10.5 per start so far this year) According to fangraphs, his velocity isn’t lacking – he’s averaging 90.6 in his 2 starts – and he was at 90.8 last year. It must be location that’s a problem, though he only has 1 BB so far. Hopefully, he’ll round into form as he pitches. He really didn’t have much of a spring. Tony doesn’t seem to be worried. I’ll agree that it’s still a little early to be concerned. From the other side, the Giants can’t hit but that Lincecum’s pretty good.

This just in – Albert Pujols, too, is pretty good. He may be off to his best start yet, also. He has 75 PA’s so far and has reached base via walk or hit in 37 of them – a .493 OBP. His career SLG is .620 and this year he’s off to a .644 start. His OPS+ right now is 203. It’s almost gone unnoticed, also, considering Ankiel’s start, and Skip’s and Ludwick’s and Wellemeyer’s, etc. Other players have given us so many pleasant surprises that Albert’s great start hasn’t really appeared that great.

Albert’s reached base in every game this season – even the one in which he didn’t start and he had just 1 PA (intentional walk). He strikes me as, paradoxically, more patient and yet more aggressive at the plate. He seems to have reached a Bondsian grasp of the strike zone, to which his 16 BB’s and 5 K’s attest. But he also seems to be more aggressively attacking pitches to hit early in the count.

Last season, Albert swung at only 83 of the 353 first-pitch strikes he saw – 23.5%. This was an uncharacteristically low number for him. This season he has swung at 13 of 37 first pitch strikes –35% -- more in line w/ his ’06 and ’05 numbers. Here are his career totals:

It stands to reason that the number of strikes Pujols has seen has fallen throughout his career. He’s become one of the most feared hitters in the game and pitchers don’t want to just serve them up. It also stands to reason that he would be swinging at a lower % of first-pitch strikes as well. He’s become a more patient hitter, as demonstrated by his increasing walk rate. Last year, however, there was a big difference in his approach. He let 270 first-pitch strikes go by w/o pulling the trigger. He also had the worst (by his standards) season of his career. This year he seems to be back on track. He’s looking for his pitch to hit and, when he sees it, he’s hitting it. When they don’t give him the pitch he wants, he’s willing to take the walk.

Just to get a glimpse of how well he’s beginning this season, his OBP is far and away the highest of his career – 54 points over his previous career high in 2003. He’s on a pace for 144 BB’s and only 45 K’s. Those truly are Bondsian numbers. I’m not sure he can continue this pace throughout the season. The other hitters in the lineup are likely to slump and he may put more pressure on himself to produce, thus swinging at bad pitches. I, for one, hope he can keep it up. He doesn’t seem to be swinging at any bad pitches and when he sees one he likes, he’s drilling it.

Isn’t it time, considering all we’ve learned about the importance of on-base percentage over the last several years, that we stop saying things like, "Pujols was 0 for 3 w/ a walk yesterday?" It’s time we started calling that 1 for 4. The second game of the year Pujols was 2 for 2 and walked 3 times. That’s 5 for 5 in my book. Anybody gets on base 5 times in a game needs to be recognized for it…period. He had a 4-5 game against Houston (2 HR’s) and a 4-6 game in SF. He had 1 hit and 5 BB’s in the 3 game series against the Nats earlier in the season – a sweep, by the way. Most would say he was 1-7 in that series. I would say he was 6-12. There’s a huge difference in perception and the 6-12 number is, IMO, a better indicator of his importance to the offense in that series. The Cards didn’t win 3 DESPITE Pujols going 1-7. They swept the Nats partly BECAUSE he went 6-12.

Looper goes for the Cards today against a guy I want to see pitch – Jonathan Sanchez. Looper’s been pretty good so far (2.70 ERA) but those 5 BB’s last time out concern me. He still has yet to give up a homer this year though (knock on wood) and as long as he keeps the ball in the yard, he’s going to be OK. Some teams may single him to death but he’ll have more good starts than bad if he doesn’t give up the homers. It’s not as if he’s facing the ’27 Yankees today either. We haven’t lost a series yet. Let’s see that trend continue today.