welcome back, walter jocketty. the guys at SB Nation brother site Red Reporter asked my opinion of their team’s new gm over the weekend, and i gave ‘em some thoughts; read all about it.

and au revoir, matt morris. he’s the second not-that-long-ago mainstay of the stl rotation to get released this month, following woody williams. seems like they’ve been gone ages, doesn’t it? but morris has been out of cardinal red for just over two seasons (2006-07, plus a month of 08), woody williams just over three (2005-07); they started games 1 and 2 of the 2004 world series (and of that year’s nlcs / nlds, for that matter). kind of arresting how quickly it can all go south for a pitcher.

this is probably not the time to point out that morris is the last cardinal pitcher to throw 120 pitches in an april game --- or was, until wainwright did it the other day. morris achieved the feat against the astros too, on april 6 2002 --- burned through 125 deliveries in only 6 innings, which is even harder on the arm than wainwright’s 9-inning effort on saturday. during his time in st louis, la russa has asked only two other pitchers to throw 120 or more pitches in an april game: garrett stephenson (april 22, 2000) and alan benes (april 30, 1997).

if we lower the pitch-count threshold to 115 pitches, we find wainwright and morris crossing paths again. matty mo was the last st louis pitcher --- until wainwright, this month --- to toss 115 or more darts twice in the same april. matty did that two aprils in a row, in 2002 and 2003; the only other pitcher who’s ever done it under la russa is alan benes, in both 1996 and 1997. . . . .

okay okay (you ask), so morris stephenson and benes all had short careers --- what does that prove? and i answer that it doesn’t prove anything, but it’s still a pattern that concerns me (as it does houstoncardinal, who wrote about this yesterday). after wainwright’s outing, jeff passan pointed out at Yahoo sports that while opinions remain sharply divided about the correlation between high pitch counts and injuries, the fact is that pitch counts are being watched much more closely; it’s very rare for any pitcher to throw 125 pitches in a game anymore, let alone in an april game. passan notes that only 14 starts lasted 125 or more pitches in 2007, and only 26 went that long the year before that; only 2 of those starts came in april (by schilling in 2006 and barry zito last year).

in that article, la russa blithely waves off the pitch-count issue (just more of that stat-geek crap) and cites subjective observation as the only fatigue meter that matters: "You watch and see a guy all game long. When he starts to change, it means most times he’s losing stuff, getting tired, losing concentration." wainwright, says tony, has the ability to "make pitches when he has to," and that’s true --- in both of his long starts this month adam got into trouble as his pitch counts mounted but made the pitches he needed to and got out of the jams; the cards won both games. he’s got guts, he’s got willpower; we can all see that and admire it. but if those qualities encourage la russa to make wainwright play the hero every second or third start, it is likely to catch up to the pitcher and the team --- and sooner than we might like. in his last 16 starts (going back to last august 5), wainwright has thrown 115 or more pitches 5 times; that projects out to 10 times over a 32-start season. is that a lot? only 3 pitchers have done it during tony's sojourn in st louis.

using the amazing Baseball-Reference Play Index, i looked up all starts by st louis pitchers in the la russa era that lasted 115 or more pitches; here’s the list. and below is a table listing the pitcher-seasons (st louis only, la russa era) with the highest number of outings that lasted 115 pitches or more. the DL column lists the pitcher’s next trip to the disabled list after (or during) the season in question:

a sobering list. again, this doesn’t prove anything --- it’s not a scientifically rigorous study --- but experience can be a great teacher. if i were a big-league manager, and every single pitcher i rode too hard ended up getting hurt within a year and was out of baseball within 5 years, i might learn something from that experience. osborne, alan benes, and stottlemyre were never useful big-league players again after carrying their heavy workloads; they, and all the other pitchers on this list, retired before the age of 35. ok, i’m lying --- stottlemyre attempted a comeback at age 37, which lasted 21 innings (0-2 record, 7.52 era); and i’ll admit that we don’t know how long kile would have lasted in the big leagues, but he did need shoulder surgery after the 2001 season. . . . insofar as the cardinals have wainwright under club control for 5 seasons after this one (through his age-31 season) and are on the hook for guaranteed money for 3 seasons after this one, maybe tony ought to at least consider the stat-geek crap. or at least, he should do that if he wants wainwright's career to last longer than matt morris's did.

since darryl kile’s name keeps coming up, i’ll add that i thought of him when word of morris’s release came down. kile mentored morris, and no cardinal was wounded more deeply than matty when darryl died. i sensed a trace of kile’s influence --- his maturity, his humility --- in matty’s statement after being released: "It was a great segment of my life. I really can't wait to move on and be with my family. It's a sad day, but it's also a joyful day. ... I'm proud of my career."

we’re proud of ya too, matty mo. thanks for the thrills, and much success to you in all things in the future.

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.

let’s start with ankiel’s 17-pitch at-bat. it was nearly as long as the brewers’ entire 9th-inning rally (19 pitches); that’s what type of an at-bat it was. the pitch-per-AB data at Baseball-Reference’s playfinder index stretch back 20 years, to 1988. in that entire span, no cardinal hitter ever took a 17-pitch at-bat. the longest lasted 15 pitches: mike deflice against bartolo colon on june 14, 1997 (he walked) and pedro guerrero against don robinson on april 25, 1989 (also walked). another 4 st louis at-bats of the last 20 years lasted 14 pitches (one of them happened last year, rolen vs jake peavy on august 8; he popped out); 7 at-bats lasted 13 pitches.

so we’re talking about an historic event here; rick’s legend grows. here’s the whole list of 13-pitches-or-more at-bats:

i love some of the matchups here. on the one hand you’ve got heavyweight collisions like rolen v peavy and jordan v big unit --- two mean, stubborn guys who’ll be damned if they’re gonna give in. edmonds v wade miller would also fall into this category --- miller was still effective in june 2004 (he got hurt later that year and has never been the same). so would guerrero vs don robinson (the latter was a 230 lb intimidator). you can easily imagine how two badass guys like this would end up in a marathon confrontation. ditto for any pair of evenly matched mediocrities like pagnozzi v bottenfield or clayton v delucia; both parties are always out there grinding away, just trying to survive. but the most intriguing at-bats to me are the mismatches. how does dave stevens (career era 6.02) hang in there for 13 pitches against mcgwire (in the midst of his 70-homer season)? and 10 of the pitches were strikes! he must’ve thrown mcgwire every pitch in his meager arsenal, to every part of the plate, yet somehow he emeged with his head still attached to his body. the mike defelice matchup itself is pretty interesting, a battle of rookies. defelice in 1997 put a .238 / .297 / .331 line; colon (who was only making his 6th big-league start at the time of this at-bat) went 4-7 that year with a 5.65 era. the following year colon was an all-star, and the year after that a top-5 vote-getter in the cy young polling; defelice never got any better than what he was in 1997.

p.s. --- does it mean anything that 4 of these 14 at-bats were taken by catchers? (superior ability to think along w/ the pitch calls and anticipate the pitch?) ok, probably not. but how does cody mckay hang for 13 pitches against any hurler? kinda weird that has at-bat took place 4 years to the day before ankiel's.

alright, enough about that. a few other thoughts this morning:

• i disagreed w/ the decision to send wainwright back out there in the 8th, and particularly the decision to let him face ryan braun as the potential tying run. adam’s location was way off that inning; he went to 3 balls on the leadoff man before retiring him, then gave up a hit and a walk; when braun stepped in wainwright was at 113 pitches for the game and 19 for the inning. fortunately, it isn’t necessary to throw braun a strike (he has 0 walks this season); he chased a fastball in off the plate and got himself out. tony must not have liked his options; mcclellan was unavailable, and apparently the overused franklin needed the night off too (at least, i never saw him warming up). that left reyes and thompson as the only options. against the top of the order, tony trusted adam more; adam justified the faith.
• pujols’ catch in the 9th; whew.
• and speaking of that: was anyone warming up behind izzy? the cutter was not cutting, and his regular fastball wasn’t popping (he only threw three of those all inning). but that’s what makes izzy such an unusual closer --- he can fall back on his 3d-best pitch (curveball), which he did against weeks, to get out of trouble. there’ve been a few troubling signs out of him this spring, but at least he’s throwing strikes --- he wasn’t doing that when the hip was bothering him.
• the cardinals’ #8 hitters --- ie, pitchers and pinch-hitters --- rank 12th in the league with a .535 ops, ahead of 3 teams (sf, chicago, and atl) who use position players there. the giants’ #8 hitters have struck out more than the cardinals’ have.
• the cardinals have only reached base via error 3 times this year, tied for last (with the rockies) in the nl. whatever they’ve scored so far, they’ve scored on merit.

I don't know about the rest of you but I'm ready for some real baseball.  Don't get me wrong; I like Spring Training and all but I'm ready to watch some games that count.  Just a little over a week till that first game. . .

Derrick Goold has an article up today discussing Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright whom the Cardinals have positioned to anchor their rotation over the next 3-5 years.  In it John Mozeliak says,

"The one thing that we were looking at constructing this contract was some flexibility should we have an injury," Mozeliak said. "There's no doubt any time you sign a pitcher, you're one pitch away. But in his case, where he is with his physical and how he looks, being in the shape he's in, we're pretty bullish on him."

With the signing of Lohse this past week, Mo was asked on Bernie Miklasz radio show about how much flexibility there would be mid-season to add a player if needed.  Mo made all the right platitudes about management being committed and willing to add players at the right cost.  It was exactly what you'd want to hear and exactly what he should have said.  Anyone else catch that buzzword though?

Flexibility.

A team (read: payroll) that can quickly react to the market and the opportunities each offseason and trading deadline is obviously a desirable thing. The best way to create that scenario is cost-controlled talent, namely players from your farm system, but that's a subject which is approaching dead-horse status. Let's take a quick glance into the future to see what commitments we have from 2009 on.

What you see here are the contractual obligations through 2013 in no particular order.  The options line is the amount of committed money if all options (both player and club variety) were exercised that year.  The club has options on Mulder and Clement next season and Glaus has a player's option as well.  That's a hefty amount of semi-committed money.  Depending on those decisions the Cardinals could make a lot of noise next offseason. While I don't want to wear out my crystal ball too much, one name that immediately jumps to mind this offseason is AJ Burnett.  I'll say no more.

What did Wainwright's shiny new contract mean in terms of flexibility though.  The last two seasons are club options at what would probably be below market rates.  The first three years in the table above buy out his arbitration years.  Obviously, these years are meant to continue a player's cost controlled time without being the total screw job that the pre-arb years are.

Looking at his Baseball Prospectus page, PECOTA is quite the fan of Wainwright.  Not only does his ERA improve over the next 5 years but it isn't even forecasting any significant injury with his IP sitting around 180. Some people will disagree with that but I'm not an injury prognosticator -- well, not often at least -- so I'm gonna stick with those totals. 

Doing some back of the envelope calculations (that I hope to make nice and pretty to show you in a later post), Wainwright looks to be about 2.7 wins above replacement level next season. If we anticipate him maintaining that level over the next 5 years, I'd estimate his free agent value around $40M.  Try not to get too caught up in where I got those numbers, but for those who really care to know its a WAR calculation and Tom Tango's salary scale.  Again, I hope to lay that all out in more detail in the future but for now I want you to focus on those adjectives before "value" because that's the hitch.  Wainwright isn't a free agent so we have to do some kind of pro-rating on his salary for his arb years.  Tango uses .4/.6/.8 coefficients to calculate the three-arb year values based off of the free agent value.  Doing the same, I'd guess Wainwright's value during the arb years is about 20M if he went year-to-year.

That is a well done contract by John Mozeliak.  If you want to point to something that he's done right this offseason, here's a great example.  The contract saves the team something in the neighborhood of 7M over the next 3 years and both of the options are club options meaning it's all upside for the team those seasons.  If he's playing well, they'll get him at below market rates.  If not, they can cut and run.  This was quite the coup.  Now that's not to imply that Wainwright didn't get something in return.  He certainly did -- security.  He's set for life financially at this point.  Everything else is gravy.

It's impossible to say for certain that Wainwright won't blow his elbow out this season.  Hell, that's exactly what happened to the other half of the Cardinal's pitching "core".  This is a team friendly contract, however,and it locked up a player that's likely to be one of the prominent (and marketable) faces of the franchise over the next 5 years. I've been critical of some roster management lately but this deal gets two thumbs up from me.