Loop	Soup
5-1, 3.95	1-2, 5.22

In considering the Izzy situation, I’m less ready than others to write his obit just yet. He’s had some bad outings, to be sure, but we forget that he was pretty good as the year began. He didn’t just lose it between April 9 and April 12 of this year. What’s interesting is that the year started with him coming out like gangbusters – he pitched in 6 of the Cards’ first 9 games and had 5 saves and 5 baserunners allowed w/ 7 K’s in his first 6 IP this year. Granted, it’s a small sample size but w/ closers we’re almost always dealing w/ small sample sizes.

Yet, something did change after that 6th game. Did LaRussa use him too much in the first week and a half? I’d have a hard time believing that. We’re talking about 6 freaking innings. Thursday, LB referred to the fact that so few of his strikes have been on swings-and-misses but that problem has been magnified since his April 9 outing against the Astros. In his first 6 appearances, he had 9 swing-and-misses. Since then, in his last 12 appearances he’s only had 11. During this stretch of 12 games, he’s walked 6 and given up 16 hits in 9.2 IP. He’s given up his only 2 homers of the season and only struck out 4 batters. It’s a distinct difference from the way in which he started the season. This gives me hope.

Is Izzy done? I don’t think so. His first 6 IP (small sample size caveat) were too much like last year and the rest of his career for me to think he lost it for good between his 6th and 7th appearance this year. Still, though he has suffered some tough times in his career, with the exception of his injury-riddled 2006, it’s the roughest stretch of his career. Other bad stretches:

Though this is the roughest stretch of his career, he’s been through rough times before. He even went through a fairly rough stretch last year and one in the Cards’ 100 win season (2005). What strikes me about this stretch and, to a lesser degree, last year’s is the high number of walks and the low number of strikeouts. 4 K in 9.2 IP, to me, is problematic – more so for him than for Ryan Franklin b/c Izzy depends on the K much more than Franklin. That K rate is about half his career average – a sizable dropoff and one that needs to be fixed if Izzy’s going to have any success this year.

Tony chalks this up to mechanics and Izzy insists he’s not injured. I’ve seen nothing to contradict that. His fastball still gets up there in the 92-94 range and his curveball still has a lot of bite. I see no indication he’s injured or that his stuff is significantly worse than in the past. The results are, of course, a lot worse but I don’t see why it’s not correctable. There’s one thing I definitely see and that’s that his cutter’s not cutting. Right now it’s a terrible pitch – like a slider that just spins in the middle of the zone. Tony believes that fixing his mechanics can get him on the right track; I hope he’s right. I can say this – he’s got to get that cutter out of the middle of the zone or he’s going to get hit hard often.

I got to wondering about similar closers and when they seemed to "lose it." Is it possible that Izzy really is done? His top comparables from baseball-reference include people like Ugueth Urbina, Jeff Brantley, Armando Benitez, Rod Beck, Todd Worrell, Jeff Shaw, and Robb Nen. All of these guys, at one time, were pretty good closers. Nen was fantastic until injury ended his career. Benitez, at times, was dominating. So, how old were they when they just lost it? Urbina – 30; Brantley – 33; Benitez – 33; Beck – 30; Worrell – 37; Shaw – 33; Nen – injured and never threw another pitch following his age-32 season. Yikes! Izzy is now 35 years young. Is it possible we’re lucky to have gotten those extra 2 years out of him? While I would argue that Izzy’s been better than most of those guys on that list, baseball-reference found that Izzy’s numbers were more similar to these guys than people like Hoffman, Rivera, and Billy Wagner.

Even so, I expect to see Izzy pitching in the 9th again this season. Friday, LB predicted that Franklin would get the first call and yesterday’s game proved him correct. Franklin handled it well, though Ludwick’s 9th inning, 2 out single helped provide a buffer to settle any butterflies that Franklin may have had. Tony’s planning a closer-by-committee approach for the time being – using Franklin, Springer, and maybe even Flores (gulp!) in the 9th until he’s ready to stick Izzy back in there. To me, that’s the biggest indicator that Tony sees this as temporary. Nobody’s more in favor of relievers having definite roles than Tony. If Tony felt Izzy’s problems couldn’t be fixed, he’d try to find a permanent closer, whether it be Franklin, Springer, McClellan, or Chris Perez. The fact that he’s going to go closer-by-committee tells me he doesn’t anticipate Izzy throwing in mop-up duty for too long.

Unlike a lot of others, I thought the saddest news of the week (Cardinal version; let’s not get too carried away in talking about sadness w/ tens of thousands killed in a cyclone in Myanmar) was the Pads’ release of Jim Edmonds. While I see Izzy’s situation as temporary, there’s little doubt that Jimmy is done. He was pretty bad for us last year and has been awful for the Padres this year. Who’s going to pick him up? Anybody think Jimmy’s going to be willing to go to AAA to try and fight his way back to the majors? Me, neither. Looking back, it would’ve been great if he had just sailed away into the sunset following the Cards’ tremendous postseason run in ’06 but….well, we all know the rest.

When he was traded last December, I waxed poetic (as poetic as I get, which isn’t very damned poetic, BTW) about Jimmy’s leaving the organization and his chances of making the Hall of Fame. I’d like to draw your attention back to that post – not b/c I think it was Pulitzer Prize winning stuff – but b/c, w/ Jimmy about to begin his 5 year clock, I surprised myself when I was able to make a pretty good case for him getting into the Hall of Fame. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think he’ll make it but I started that journey believing him to be in the mold of Andre Dawson or Dale Murphy. He was much better than that. I still think he’s about 2 pretty good seasons from being a definite Hall of Famer but he still merits discussion.

That post compared Jimmy’s Hall of Fame numbers to the average Hall of Fame CF, using metrics established by baseball prospectus. His career WARP3 was 105.2, compared to the average Hall of Famer’s 109.1. Just 4 wins short for his career. And the average Hall of Fame CF includes people like Mays, Mantle and Dimaggio. His peak WARP3 was 5.5 wins higher than the average Hall of Fame CF and his JAWS score is slightly better than the average Hall of Fame CF. Jimmy’s problem, as I said then, was that a lot of Jimmy’s value came from the fact that, in his prime, he was a fantastic defensive CF. That means, of course, that his offensive numbers are lacking, compared w/ the other CF’s. There are no CF’s in the Hall of Fame b/c of their defensive ability alone. If Ozzie or Bill Mazeroski played CF, they wouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. Granted, Jimmy was better than those 2 offensively but he wasn't Mantle or Mays.

I have no idea how the Hall of Fame voters will act when his name appears on the ballot 5 years from now. Hell, it’s hard to predict what they’ll do w/ Clemens and Bonds, to say nothing of people like Jim Edmonds but it would be a tragedy if he doesn’t get the 5% required to be on the ballot a 2nd year. It’s likely Jim friggin’ Rice will make the Hall of Fame this year and Rice is nowhere near as good a ballplayer as Jimmy Edmonds was.

It won’t, however, be tragic if Jimmy never becomes a Hall of Famer. It won’t even be a miscarriage of justice. It is, though, if not tragic then extremely unfortunate the way his career ended. Jimmy deserved better than that. At the time, I supported the trade to the Padres. The job of the Cards’ front office is to put together a team that will win games and Jimmy just wasn’t in the game-winning business anymore. And David Freese isn’t doing too badly w/ Memphis – his first year above A ball. He’s not ready to take Glaus’ spot at 3B, but he might be this time next year. Still, I would’ve liked to have seen Jimmy return to St. Louis w/ the Pads in mid-July and the standing ovation that he would have received, even as a member of the Padres. Alas, it was not to be. You’ll be missed Jimmy. You were a helluva player and baseball, and St. Louis, was better off b/c you played the game.

Well, here we are. Another Sunday, another rubber game. Our old friend, Supp, takes the mound for the Brewers. It’s fitting, I suppose.

heads up from will carroll: he’ll have an interview today with cards’ assistant gm john abbamondi on Baseball Prospecus radio. you can download the show here.

last night’s game . . . . . where to start? they squandered too many scoring chances; that pattern continues. for the second time this year, pujols made a fielding misplay that cost the cardinals a late lead. above all, isringhausen blew another save and took another loss. i’m not trying to downplay the concern over the bullpen, because it’s serious; they need to get that problem under control before it starts costing them bushels of games. but it hasn’t cost them bushels so far; it only seems that way. i can really only fault the pen for 2 losses: last night’s, and the april 25 loss to the astros. in both games, the cards’ win expectancy was above 90 percent until the bullpen got involved. have there been other blown saves? sure, but no bullpen is perfect; you can’t hold every lead or preserve every tie. the cards have played a lot of close games this year, and they’ve won more than their share.

we tend to lose sight of that fact when we witness maddening failure as we did last night; we tend to forget how often the bullpen has come through and sealed a win --- as it did just a couple nights previous, on monday, when four relievers pitched 6 innings of 1-run ball and enabled the cards to steal a very tenuous win. or the night before that, in the sunday night ESPN game, when the relievers held the cubs to 1 run over 4 innings and brought home a 5-3 victory. last night’s defeat left the bullpen with a net WPA of about +0.23 for the season ---- not great, but far from terrible. and Baseball Prospectus’s win-expectancy metric, WXRL, has the pen at about +1 win for the year after last night. and both metrics look prettier when you eliminate brad thompson’s stats (0-1, 7.71 era as a reliever) from the equation. does the bullpen have issues? absolutely. but let’s keep them in perspective; the pen isn’t killing the team.

yet.

i might be telling a different story in a week or two, however, if they don’t get izzy out of the closer’s role. here’s the statistic that scares me about him: only 11 percent of his strikes have been swing / misses this year. throughout his career, that figure has been at 18 or 19 percent; even in 2006, 16 percent of his strikes came on whiffs. he’s just not missing bats anymore. here’s how it breaks down on a per-pitch basis:

his offerings are running into bats nearly 50 percent more often than they did last year, and 33 percent more often than they did even during izzy’s peg-legged 2006 season. the league whiff-per-pitch average is 9.9 percent, meaning izzy is well below average this season. it's not just a case of a few off games, or a few unlucky hits that have fallen in. isringhausen isn't the same pitcher he used to be, not by a longshot --- he can’t throw it past hitters anymore. and for that reason, the cardinals can’t keep sending him out there to protect leads.

before i go on: i don’t share the impassioned and unhealthy hatred for is’hausen that is so regrettably common among cardinal fans. he’s the most dependable closer in franchise history; his failure rate has been lower than hrabosky’s, sutter’s, or worrell’s and about even with lee smith’s. he’s appeared in 19 postseason games for the cards and only cost them one --- the kent walkoff homer in game 5 of the 2004 nlcs. the guy’s a great pitcher and a class act; sure it’s frustrating to see him blow games, but he doesn’t deserve the personal abuse that gets heaped on him. spew venom if it makes you feel better; i can’t stop you. but it says more about you than it does about izzy. to me, that guy’s a winner in every respect.

unfortunately, he’s no longer getting the job done; for the team’s sake, he’s got to be replaced. it will take a while (maybe weeks, maybe months) before la russa comes around to that conclusion; when he finally does, what options will he have? a quick look:

• chris perez. after last night’s game he has a 1.72 era at memphis, with twice as many strikeouts (20) as hits allowed (10). he’s got a dominating combo of pitches (fastball-slider) and a mean streak. perez still walks too many guys, but if duncan can get todd wellemeyer to throw strikes than he ought to be able to do the same with this rookie. he’d be my first choice; get him on up here. but hey, speaking of wellemeyer . . . . .
• todd wellemeyer. think outside the box w/ me here. welley has been unhittable in the first inning of his starts in 2008 --- 26 batters faced, 2 hits, 2 walks, 9 ks, no runs allowed. in the one-inning closer’s role, he could be fearsome. there’s also the fact that, pitching out of the cardinal bullpen last year, wellemeyer posted a 1.26 era and held opposing hitters to a .174 average (albeit in a tiny sample of only 14.1 innings). if the team decides that perez still isn’t ready because of his control issues, my second choice would be wellemeyer. has he been good in the rotation? sure --- but let’s not act as if he’s irreplaceable. in 7 outings to date he has 2 quality starts; the cardinals have a pitcher at triple A (reyes) who can pitch at the back of a big-league rotation and another on the current roster (parisi) who probably can, too. this is my second choice. 
• kyle mcclellan. he didn’t exactly cover himself in glory last night; in fact, his line was nearly identical to izzy’s (one single, one triple, one out). the league is still just getting to know mcclellan, and there’s a pretty good chance he will start losing effectiveness once the hitters have a book on him. and let’s not forget, we’re talking about a guy who as of this time last year was in class A. but his k / bb data are great, he has only yielded 2 extra-base hits so far, and he’s kept 8 of 10 inherited runners from scoring. he’d be risky, but what the hell; they stuck a rookie out there (wainwright) last time izzy went down, and it worked out ok. my 3d choice.
• braden looper. he has experience in the job but was never particularly good at it; too valuable now as an innings eater in the rotation. leave him where he is.
• anthony reyes. no way. he’s not suited to it, and the manager doesn’t trust him.
• ryan franklin. if an when isringhausen gets replaced, franklin is probably going to get the first crack at the job by default. it’ll make a lot of folks foam at the mouth; i won’t like the decision either, though i’ll try to keep my outrage in check. there's a decent chance franklin can do a passable job in the short term. if dave weathers can close in the big leagues (he converted 33 of 39 opportunities last year), i reckon ryan franklin might be capable of it too. understand, i’m not endorsing this option; i think it’s a terrible idea. but i’m preparing myself to live with it.
• jason motte. like perez, he has twice as many strikeouts (24) as hits allowed (11) at triple A; he has walked just 4 men in 15 innings. but he’s got less than 2 years’ experience as a pitcher and hasn’t yet developed a quality second pitch to play off his scorching fastball. i love what i’ve seen so far, but i need to see more before i entrust him w/ a high-leverage role.
• mark worrell. only 4 saves last year at memphis, none this year. vulnerable vs left-handed hitters. not an option.
• al hrabosky. madness never dies.

so how would you handle it? vote below. i'll be at the game this afternoon, cheerfully neglecting my responsibilities; a win would give 'em three series in a row and sweep away last night's frustration. temporarily, at least. . . .

the cards are in first place by themselves for the first time since the final day of 2006. it’s only april 10 so it doesn’t mean much, but after going first-place-less for all of last season i thought this occasion worth noting. also worth noting is how easily the cardinals could be 9-0; their losses came by 1 and 2 runs, respectively, and both times the decisive run scored late in the game. of course, given how tight most of these games are (6 of the first 9 decided by 2 runs or less), with a little bad luck the team could very easily be 4-5 . . . . . again, it’s early. but not too early to enjoy seeing our crew at the top of the stack.

they still ain’t putting many runs on the board --- they’re currently 10th in the league in scoring, which is weird because they’re 1st in on-base percentage and 5th in slugging. dave smyth’s Base Runs formula says the cards ought to have scored 45 runs by now --- ie, 5 runs a game, a decent enough total. they’ve only scored 39 runs, or 6 under their projection --- 2/3 of a run per game. there are some easy explanations for the shortfall; they’ve hit only 6 homers so far this year, 12th in the nl (all but 3 cardinals are homerless), and they haven’t hit particularly well with men in scoring position (10th in the league in batting with RISP, 12th in slugging). again, it’s early and these are ridiculously small samples; way too soon to draw any firm conclusions. it’s possible --- possible --- that the cards’ run scoring will naturally rise to match the level of their component stats (ie, top 5 in the league). it’s also possible their component stats will drop to where their run total is (ie, below average). and the likelihood is that both will stabilize somewhere in between.

tony had a difficult tactical decision to make last night in the top of the 7th --- it didn’t generate any discussion on the game thread, so i thought i’d parse it out here. cards leading 5-3, 2 men on, 2 out, kyle mclellan at the dish, and a dwindling corps of relievers (all overworked) down in the pen with 9 outs still to go. do you pinch-hit or not? mclellan had just entered the game the previous half-inning and had thrown only 2 pitches; he was meant to pitch the 7th as well, but the cards put on so many baserunners in their half of the inning that mclellan’s spot unexpectedly came up. given how overworked the bullpen has been, tony must have been tempted to let mclellan bat, just to keep him in the game; kyle then would have stayed on to pitch the 7th against the bottom half of the houston order, and flores probably would have handled the 8th against bourn-pence-berkman. best-case scenario, franklin gets a much-needed night off. but la russa tried an opposite route to the same destination --- he sent up washington to hit for mclellan and tried to widen the lead to 3 or 4 runs right there; with a large enough margin, he could keep franklin (maybe izzy too) in his warmup jacket. it was a much riskier play, and it didn’t work; rico ended the inning, mclellan was gone, and tony ended up having to send franklin’s tired arm against the heart of the houston order for 4 outs. franklin breezed through the assignment, bless him, but the cards flirted with disaster there.

the bullpen’s workload issues are temporary --- thompson will be joining the pen soon (perhaps as soon as this weekend), wellemeyer shortly thereafter, and motte / perez are down at memphis if they’re needed. but in the short term, the overwork is a concern. izzy and franklin are tied for the league lead in appearances with 6 each (11 other guys are tied with them); i doubt either is available tonight. if they have to keep up this workload much longer, one of them is gonna get hurt. some people think franklin’s already hurt, on account of his heavy workload from last year.

my fearless predictions are up at the Daily Fix’s baseball contest. i didn’t distinguish myself last year in this contest, but i beat 3 or 4 of the other "experts" and thus avoided utter humiliation. i have the same modest goal for 2008 --- try not to embarrass myself too badly. i’ve got arizona and boston meeting in the world series . . . . . . i was the only guy to pick daric barton as my al rookie of the year.

and here’s an article that says ozzie smith had the worst season ever by a #2 hitter.