There’s been a lot of discussion of late about whether or not the Cards should resign Matt Holliday, who they should pursue should the fail to resign him, and whether or not Hal McRae should return as the Cards’ hitting coach next year. Someone ought to, at some point, study the impact that hitting coaches have on an offense, to the degree that that’s possible. Look at the table below and see if anything stands out.

	P/PA	wOBA
Cards	3.66	.325
Rockies	3.99	.340
Phillies	3.86	.340
Dodgers	3.88	.331
Yankees	3.88	.366
Red Sox	3.94	.352
Angels	3.88	.346
Twins	3.86	.338

Did anyone else know that the Twins’ offense, featuring Nick Punto, Brendan Harris, Matt Tolbert, and Carlos Gomez for almost 1600 PAs, was better than ours – and it wasn’t even really close. The Cards’ offense, featuring clearly the best hitter in the game, was the worst of the playoff teams. Only the Giants saw fewer pitches per plate appearance than did the Cardinals. That’s right – we were the 29th most patient team (or 2nd most impatient team) in the major leagues in 2009. Our most patient hitter – Albert Pujols – averaged 3.84 P/PA, barely above the league average of 3.82 P/PA. Actually, everyone’s favorite whipping boy – Chris Duncan – averaged 3.91 P/PA in just 304 PA.

Let’s look at the team as a whole.

	2009 P/PA	2008 P/PA	2009 wOBA	2008 wOBA
Pujols	3.84	3.83	.449	.458
Ludwick	3.83	3.83	.336	.406
Skip	3.73	3.58	.336	.341
Yadi	3.60	3.36	.337	.323
Ryan	3.62	3.78	.324	.277
Ankiel	3.52	3.82	.288	.360
Holliday	3.62	3.88	.390	.418
DeRosa	3.78	3.90	.327	.376
Rasmus	3.61		.311
Lugo	3.90	4.04	.342	.317

The table says a lot about Ankiel’s struggles this year, in particular. I can’t account for the decreases in Holliday’s and DeRosa’s numbers but they both saw their wOBAs fall this year as their P/PA did as well. The bottom line, however, is that the Cards like to swing the bat. The league average % of pitches swung at was 45% and the Cards swung at 48% of the pitches they saw – only the Giants were higher. Again, we were 29th in the big leagues.

Individually, only Albert (42.6%), DeRosa (44.3%), and Lugo (40.1%) swung at less than the league average 45% of the pitches they saw. The others were all above league average – Skip (45.5%), Yadi (50.4%), Ludwick (49.9%), Ankiel (54.1%), Ryan (46.9%), and Holliday (49.6%).

Is this a problem of the players or the team’s approach to hitting? I can’t really say but, to me, there’s little doubt of a connection between the team’s impatience and the team’s struggles at the plate. We can blame Hal McRae if we want but, w/o a little more evidence, that’s a little tough for me to swallow. In order to properly evaluate McRae, it seems to me that we’d have to see how hitters perform for McRae and how they perform elsewhere and see if there’s a trend. Are hitters less patient as a result of McRae’s tutelage? Again, we’d have to compare the "with McRae" to the "w/o McRae." Lugo, DeRosa, and Holliday all provide some info but the sample sizes are awfully small. Plus, we’re talking about players who, at one point in the transition, changed leagues. It’s not as cut and dried as we may think it is.

Still, there’s a problem w/ the team’s offense. We can look to fix it at 3B and I’d expect Rasmus to improve in year 2. But Ryan’s not going anywhere, nor should he b/c of his defense. Yadi’s hardly the problem and, while it wouldn’t surprise me if only one of Holliday and Ludwick return, they’re not the biggest culprits either. Certainly extricating Ankiel from the lineup will help some and maybe replacing McRae is the solution. I know that something’s gotta change, however b/c we’re going to be hard-pressed to pitch as well next year as we did this year.

The NLCS begins tonight on TBS w/ the Phils heading out west to meet the Dodgers. Needless to say, I’d rather be doing this for the Cards and Phils but here we are. It appears, on paper, to be a fairly evenly matched series. See below.

Dodgers	wRC	PA	RC/PA	UZR/150	Phillies	wRC	PA	RC/PA	UZR/150
Furcal	74.3	680	0.109	6.7	Rollins	79	725	0.109	2.3
Kemp	101.1	667	0.152	3.9	Victorino	97.7	694	0.141	-1.9
Ethier	105.3	685	0.154	-13.1	Utley	123.8	687	0.180	8.8
Ramirez	75.7	431	0.176	-14.7	Howard	122	703	0.174	1.4
Loney	79.7	652	0.122	0.7	Werth	110.7	676	0.164	5.7
Blake	79.5	565	0.141	7.0	Ibanez	91.2	565	0.161	8.1
Belliard	36.9	287	0.129	3.9	Feliz	61.3	625	0.098	3.1
Martin	60	588	0.102		Ruiz	48	379	0.127
Total			1.084		Total			1.153

The Phils’ potent lineup averages about .07 runs created per PA more than the Dodgers’ balanced lineup does. The Phils’ defense, overall, is better than the Dodgers’ – even historically wretched fielders such as Howard and Ibanez were above average this year by UZR – but the Dodgers’ is better up the middle (2B, SS, and CF). Let’s now look at the pitching.

Dodgers	RAR	IP	RAR/IP	Phillies	RAR	IP	RAR/IP
Kershaw	38.9	171	0.227	Hamels	35.5	193.2	0.183
Wolf	29.2	214.1	0.136	Happ	17.4	166	0.105
Kuroda	20.6	117.1	0.176	Lee	61.8	231.2	0.267
Padilla	20.4	147.1	0.138	Martinez	5.6	44.2	0.125
Kuo	3.9	30	0.130	Blanton	21.2	195.1	0.109
Belisario	7.0	70.2	0.099	Eyre	-0.3	30	-0.01
Sherrill	13.6	69	0.197	Madson	13.3	77.1	0.172
Broxton	27.3	76	0.359	Lidge	-7.2	58.2	-0.123

The Dodgers have the home field advantage, a lot of lefties to match up w/ the Phils’ hitters, and the advantage of being in a better position to set up their rotation. The Phils have the more potent offense and the better defense. It sets up to be a great, evenly matched series but I see that the Dodgers have 2 major advantages.

First, the Dodgers have a ton of lefthanded pitchers ready to face Rollins, Victorino, Utley, Howard, and Ibanez. They’ll start 3 lefties in 6 games and they’ve got Kuo and Sherrill – 2 very good lefties – ready to give them innings out of the pen. As a team the Phils have actually performed slightly better against lefties this year than against righties. In fact, Utley and Ibanez have crushed lefties this year from the left side and Werth and Victorino have been solid from the right side. However, for his career Ibanez has given up about 90 points of OPS against lefties and Utley’s given up about 30. Howard just isn’t good against lefties and there’s only so much damage Victorino – a very good player – can provide. Plus, Kershaw and the rest aren’t ordinary lefties. Sherrill and Kuo, for example, would right now be the best two pitchers in our pen.

The other advantage is at the back end of the pen. Brad Lidge has been absolutely awful this year and has barely survived the series against the Rockies. Broxton, though he wasn’t dominant against the Cardinals, was the best closer in the NL over the course of the season. I’d take him over any closer in the NL at this point. It helps also that the Dodgers have the home field advantage. As I said, it’ll be a great series but I’m going to take the Dodgers in 7 – surviving 2 starts against Lee – to advance to the World Series.

The Cubs lost, leaving us w/ a magic # of 1. This means that we've clinched a tie for the division. God help us if we can't win 1 of our last 10.

Smoltz wasn't too bad in his 2nd start since his 10 day layoff. Of course, we still can't hit Bud Norris. If the plan is for Smoltz to pitch in the bullpen in the playoffs, isn't it time to see if he can warm up quickly and otherwise get his arm ready to pitch out of the pen?

The Cards voided the contract of Wagner Mateo based on some issue related to his vision. Put aside the notion that we might use those $3 M toward resigning Matt Holliday. The team's budget and the player development budget are 2 different budgets and 1 doesn't affect the other.

The team promoted 4 players and guess what...Allen Craig isn't among them. Why should they? With Troy Glaus a healthy, productive, right handed bat w/ power off the bench, why would we need another? Instead the team chose David Freese, Tyler Greene, Josh Kinney (who actually MIGHT play a role in the postseason) and Matt Pagnozzi, the prodigy behind the plate who "batted" a robust .221/.299/.308 in the hitter-friendly PCL this year.

Tony says that, despite team splits of .235/.312/.367 against lefties, we have nothing to worry about in the postseason. If that's true, why did he start Skip Schumaker in CF Monday against Wandy Rodriguez instead of Rasmus or Ankiel? Could it be b/c of this? Now, Skip's not a lot better against lefties and he certainly isn't better in CF than Rasmus, but he does give the team a slight improvement at the plate over Colby. Of course, it's doubtful that he's worth what he costs the team defensively but the very fact that Tony's experimenting w/ CF the way he is indicates that he's not completely sold on the team's ability to hit lefties. (I apologize for any suggestion here that the team is flawed, btw!) If you look at what would be the starting 8's splits vs. lefties as Cardinals this year they are .271/.357/.434 w/ Skip and .264/.350/.436 w/ Colby. Both are respectable. However, that's also w/ Albert getting 179 PAs -- approximately 20% of the total. Needless to say, in the postseason he'd get slightly more than 11% of the PAs. Ryan Ludwick, FWIW, has 2 homers against lefties in 142 PAs this season.

Finally, right now the Cards sit in 3rd place in the NL -- just behind the Dodgers and Phils -- in the race for home field throughout the playoffs. If the playoffs began today, we would play the Dodgers and the Phils would play the Rockies. I think the Dodgers are the team I'd prefer to play in the first round. Sure, they have Wolf and Kershaw but the Phils have Lee and Hamels. Ubaldo Jimenez is really tough and I'm not sure we're better off facing him twice out of 4 or 5 games than we would be facing him in a 7 game series. The Phils may have the weakest pen but they also have the best lineup. Which team would you prefer to face in the first round? Or...discuss whatever you want to discuss (as if you need my permission!).

"Kyle Lohse’s had a lost season." Big Al uttered those words during the ballgame last night. Based on last year’s results, the Cards were expecting a lot more from Lohse this year. It’s not unreasonable to think that, if he’s healthy this postseason, he could be a productive 4th starter in the playoffs, when one is needed, thereby allowing Smoltz to pitch from the pen. Let’s face it, this guy threw 200 innings last year w/ a 3.78 ERA. The guy won 15 games for a fairly pedestrian Cardinals team and received a lucrative long-term contract as a result.

This is the prevailing attitude among the Cards’ broadcasters and, undoubtedly, among the St. Louis media. I’m sure it’s the attitude of many in the Cards’ brass as well. Once this guy’s healthy, he’ll go back to being the 15-win, under-4 ERA-generating, 200-inning starter the Cards were counting on heading into the season. He’s not yet past his prime; he won’t turn 31 for another couple of weeks. He still has some good years ahead of him; this year’s undoubtedly a fluke.

If you look at the table below, you’ll see his true talent level. The reality is that he’s a much better pitcher than he’s been this season.

	ERA	K/9	BB/9	K/BB	HR/9	GB/FB	FIP	tRA
2001	5.68	6.38	2.89	2.21	1.59		5.16
2002	4.23	6.18	3.49	1.77	1.30	0.89	4.77	5.87
2003	4.61	5.82	2.01	2.89	1.25	0.95	4.29	5.21
2004	5.34	5.15	3.53	1.46	1.30	1.22	5.06	5.58
2005	4.18	4.33	2.22	1.95	1.11	1.31	4.55	5.67
2006	5.83	6.89	3.13	2.20	1.07	1.15	4.34	4.94
2007	4.62	5.70	2.66	2.14	1.03	0.89	4.53	5.36
2008	3.78	5.36	2.21	2.43	0.81	1.43	3.89	4.80
2009	4.83	5.72	2.95	1.94	1.16	1.16	4.57	5.25
Total	4.68	5.63	2.75	2.05	1.16	1.11	4.54	5.35

Tell me again, Al, which season is the outlier? The only season that stands out here as being unique is 2008 – the season that garnered him the big $40 M contract. It’s true that the number of innings pitched is different both in this year and in his rookie year – 2001. In that season, he threw just 90.1 innings and he’s thrown only 100.2 innings this year but the quality of the innings he’s thrown this year is about the same as he’s thrown every season of his career. I understand that the conventional wisdom in St. Louis is that Dave Duncan turned Lohse into a ground ball throwing machine and turned a #4 or #5 starter into a #2 or #3 starter but you’ll notice that his ground ball to fly ball ratio has reverted to his pre-2008 levels this year. That’s, of course, the primary reason his home run rate has risen – to his career average, I might add.

Has Lohse been a victim of bad luck this year? Nope. His BABIP is just .297 – 11 points below his career average. His HR/FB is 10.7%, only slightly above his career ratio – 10.1%. In fact, last year his HR/FB was 8.6% -- a full 1.5% below his career average, indicating that he was probably pretty fortunate last season.

The point here isn’t that Kyle Lohse sucks. He’s not Todd Wellemeyer. He’s not Adam Wainwright, either. He is what he is – a #4 or #5 starter who has some value when he can throw 180-200 innings and is a liability at an $8-10 M salary when he’s pitching half that many. This is not, as Al claims, a "lost season" for Lohse. He’s not simply been a victim of injuries. All the injuries have done is reduce the number of innings he’s thrown. They haven’t made him pitch worse. He’s pitching worse b/c he simply isn’t as good as he led many to believe last season.

Can he be a viable 4th starter in the playoffs should we need one? Perhaps, but he shouldn’t be expected to shut down the competition. He’s not "a much better pitcher than he’s shown this year." He’s worse than what he showed last year. What we’ve witnessed this year is a half-year sample of Lohse’s true talent level.

With the regular season nearing an end, I thought that now would be a pretty good time to take a look at the ’09 team in comparison w/ the ’04, ’05, and ’06 teams. How good is this team compared to the 100-win teams or the team that won the World Series? I compared the main hitters on the 4 teams by wOBA, UZR/150, and WAR. I compared th pitchers using FIP and WAR. For players who came over mid-season, I used their full season numbers so that we could more accurately compare the quality of the players rather than the amount of their contributions to the team.

The 2004 Cardinals:

Pos	Player	wOBA/FIP	UZR/150	WAR
C	Matheny	.273		0.4
1B	Pujols	.439	3.6	7.9
2B	Womack	.330	4.9	2.8
SS	Renteria	.312	0.4	1.9
3B	Rolen	.421	22.1	8.8
LF	Sanders	.341	10.3	2.2
CF	Edmonds	.436	1.3	8.1
RF	Walker	.432	0.7	3.2
SP1	Carp	3.85		3.2
SP2	Morris	4.93		1.1
SP3	Williams	4.10		2.7
SP4	Suppan	4.77		1.3
SP5	Marquis	4.55		1.9
MR	Kline	3.68		0.5
SU	Tavarez	2.92		1.3
CL	Izzy	3.02		1.1
Total WAR				48.4

The ’05 Cardinals:

Pos	Player	wOBA/FIP	UZR/150	WAR
C	Molina	.282		0.9
1B	Pujols	.436	1.0	7.7
2B	Grudz	.321	9.9	3.0
SS	Eckstein	.335	-3.6	3.4
3B	Rolen	.308	21.7	1.5
LF	Sanders	.384	-5.5	2.1
CF	Edmonds	.386	9.7	5.9
RF	Walker	.382	-12.2	2.0
SP1	Carp	2.90		6.8
SP2	Morris	3.99		2.7
SP3	Mulder	4.30		2.2
SP4	Suppan	4.53		1.5
SP5	Marquis	4.95		0.7
MR	Reyes	3.12		1.1
SU	Tavarez	4.01		0.3
CL	Izzy	3.60		0.7
Total WAR				42.5

And now for the World Champs:

Pos	Player	wOBA/FIP	UZR/150	WAR
C	Molina	.261		-0.2
1B	Pujols	.448	4.5	7.7
2B	Belliard	.313	-0.8	1.3
SS	Eckstein	.310	-0.6	1.5
3B	Rolen	.373	14.4	5.6
LF	Duncan	.399	-7.5	2.0
CF	Edmonds	.350	7.6	2.6
RF	Encarnacion	.320	7.1	1.1
SP1	Carp	3.44		5.2
SP2	Suppan	4.70		1.7
SP3	Weaver	5.47		0.5
SP4	Mulder	6.01		-0.4
SP5	Marquis	5.90		-0.6
MR	Looper	3.46		1.0
SU	Wainwright	3.31		1.1
CL	Izzy	5.70		-1.0
Total WAR				29.1

How in the hell did that team win the World Series? Especially when the others didn’t!

And this year’s Cards (all numbers are to date and are not final – duh!)

Pos	Player	wOBA/FIP	UZR/150	WAR
C	Molina	.331		2.9
1B	Pujols	.460	0.8	8.2
2B	Skip	.335	-6.9	1.0
SS	Ryan	.317	14.4	3.0
3B	DeRosa	.330	-6.8	1.6
LF	Holliday	.391	2.1	5.0
CF	Rasmus	.320	14.0	2.6
RF	Ludwick	.341	1.0	1.9
SP1	Carp	2.75		5.1
SP2	Wainwright	3.25		4.9
SP3	Pineiro	3.02		5.0
SP4	Lohse	4.57		0.7
SP5	Wellemeyer	5.26		-0.1
MR	Miller	3.48		0.4
SU	McClellan	4.18		0.1
CL	Franklin	3.27		0.9
Total WAR				43.2

A few random thoughts on this off day:

First of all, great stuff by Dave Cameron over at fangraphs re: Albert. In 6 games, his WPA has been 1.38.

Second, there's been some discussion here over the last week about the merits of "pitching to contact" vs. being a strikeout pitcher. The notion is that getting an out on 1 pitch is better than getting strikeouts b/c strikeouts increase pitchers' pitch counts so the best way to have your starter pitch deep into games is to have him "pitch to contact." The problem is that this is a false comparison. Of course, getting an out on 1 pitch is better than getting an out on 3 pitches (provided the 1 pitch doesn't allow base runners to move up or score!) but when a batter puts a ball into play, it doesn't always end up an out. Strikeouts end up as outs nearly 100% of the time.

NL batters have 75,182 ABs so far this season -- 15,516 of which have ended w/ a strikeout. Of the 59,666 balls put in play, 19,468 of them have resulted in base hits (.326). So nearly a third of the balls put in play this season in the NL have led to the batter reaching base successfully. 11% of the base hits have ended in home runs and another 22.7% have resulted in doubles and triples. Exactly 0% of the strikeouts this year in the NL have ended in extra base hits. Additionally, another 766 batters have reached base successfully via the error. All told, nearly 34% of the time a ball is put in play, the batter reaches base successfully and many of those have resulted in extra base hits. That's approximately 34% more often than batters reach base successfully when struck out. (I'll acknowledge that a handful of batters have reached base this season when struck out, due to a passed ball or wild pitch. Still, that number has to be extremely small.) Additionally, there have been 595 sacrifice flies in the NL so far this season. This means, of course, that runners have scored nearly 600 times JUST ON FLY BALLS b/c the ball was put in play.

Additionally, there's the argument that pitching to contact is better than strikeouts b/c sometimes a double play is better than a strikeout. That's true, of course. 2 outs are better than 1. However, the league strikeout % for pitchers is 18.1% The league's DP% for pitchers is 11%. That is to say that the average NL pitcher is 7% more likely to get a strikeout than a double play in a DP situation and the likelihood of a batter reaching base when he hits the ball is 3 times greater than the likelihood of him hitting into a double play. Therefore, in most cases, I'd rather NOT intentionally walk hitters to set up the double play. Why add an extra base runner when a DP just isn't that likely? Among Cards' pitchers, only Joel Pineiro, Kyle McClellan, Blake Hawksworth, and Brad Thompson are more likely to get a DP than a K.

The comparison of a 1-pitch out to a 3-pitch strikeout is therefore incomplete. The best way to limit pitchers' pitch counts is to limit the number of batters they face and the best way to do that is to avoid allowing batters to reach base successfully. Batters have reached base successfully more than 20,000 times so far this season just by putting the ball in play -- 20,234 to be exact. I'd be willing to bet that's 20,000 MORE TIMES than batters have reached base successfully via the strikeout. Anyone want to take that bet? It's hard to score and hard to run up pitch counts when they're making u-turns to the dugout.

Ground balls are good, to be sure, as long as batters are putting the ball in play. Grounders are less likely to end up as extra base hits and hardly ever end up as homers. But they do end up as hits fairly often. All things equal, in a big game, I'd rather have Chris Carpenter and his 6.97 K/9 and 55.4% GB%, or Adam Wainwright and his 7.68 K/9 and 51.5% GB% on the mound than Joel Pineiro and his 4.26 K/9 and 61.2% GB%.

Perhaps this weekend I'll have a chance to get into Derrick Goold's ridiculous article yesterday on the prospect of Matt Holliday receiving some MVP consideration this season. I suppose it's not ridiculous that people might vote for him, but realize that his WAR in the NL is lower than Colby Rasmus's and it's far lower than Manny Ramirez's was last season. I guess I'm not saying it's ridiculous that people might vote for him. I'm saying it's ridiculous to consider him worthy of MVP consideration. Additionally, he points out that Chris Carpenter is putting on a Rick Sutcliffe-like show and may warrant the Cy Young despite having fewer IP, CG, shutouts, WAR, RAR and many other stats than Tim Lincecum. I love Carp as much as the next guy but at some point don't we have to set aside our fandom and evaluate these guys somewhat objectively? Particularly if we're newspaper reporters? I can understand Cards' fans pushing for Carp to win the Cy, but objectively, if the season ended today, he simply doesn't deserve it. 2nd? Maybe. 3rd? Maybe. 4th? No way! Lincecum's the best pitcher in the NL and has demonstrated that throughout the season. Wins or not, he's deserving of the award and it's really difficult to objectively argue otherwise. As a Cards' fan, I'd love to see Carp win it but as someone who also loves intellectual honesty, I have a difficult time stomaching voting for anyone except Lincecum first.

 

Pineiro	Maholm
3.07 FIP	3.91 FIP

I've said all I have to say about Pineiro in the previous thread. I'd like to see him get back to getting the ball down more consistently but it was probably unreasonable to expect him to pitch all season the way he did for the first 4 months.

As for Maholm, how many times have we faced this guy this season? Are they messing w/ their rotation just to guarantee that we see him in every series? Will they trade him to the Brewers so that we see him later in the week? Actually, we've only seen him twice and we're 1-1 against him, putting 4 runs on him each time. We have faced him 9 times in his career and have hit him fairly well -- surprising considering we haven't hit lefties all that well over the last few years. He's faced the Astros, though, 12 times, the Reds 14 times, and the Brewers 15 times. I guess he owes us a few games.

Trying to get another sweep. Win or lose, it's been a good week and we should run out a fairly tough lineup considering what we gave Boggs to work with yesterday.

I have to admit to being a little bit stumped this morning. What’s there to say? We’re playing great baseball, though it helps that we’re playing bad teams. Tied for the best record in the NL. Biggest lead in baseball. We run out our 2nd string against the Pirates and still manage to win the game. Pineiro goes today and he’s been a little shaky his last few starts. I mean, relatively shaky. When you go most of the season w/ an ERA under 3 then the last 5-6 starts haven’t been that great. If we’re comparing him to the Pineiro of old, he looks great. Since the beginning of August, he has a 4.35 ERA and has given up 4 homers in 41.1 IP. That doesn’t sound like a lot of homers but consider that he had given up just 3 homers in the first 4 months of the season, 4 in 1 month and 1 start is a lot. His ground ball % over the last 6 starts is just 58%. Again, that’s very high but lower than his % for the entire season. The bottom line is that he’s been getting more pitches up over the last 6 starts and been getting hit harder as a result.

Baseball Prospectus has this stat that they call secret sauce. It’s their supposed measurement of ability to succeed in the postseason. I think, by now, we all recognize that the postseason is basically a crapshoot. The people at BP have looked at all sorts of statistics to find their relationship to postseason success -- # of veterans, success down the stretch, # of homers hit, etc. They found that only 3 stats had a statistically significant relationship to postseason success – fielding runs above average (defensive ability), K/9 by the pitching staff, and WXRL (how good your closer is). Right now, according to big league teams, the Cards are 12th in the secret sauce report and 4th among possible NL playoff teams. We’re behind the Dodgers, Giants, and Rockies but way ahead of the Phillies. Brad Lidge is really weighing them down.

The problem I have w/ their numbers for the secret sauce report is that they use numbers for the entire pitching staff (K/9) over the entire season rather than trying to weigh them according to projected postseason usage. Brad Thompson doesn’t strike out anyone but if he’s pitching in postseason games we’re not going to win many games, and it isn’t b/c he doesn’t strike anyone out. They should try and weigh the numbers according to the fact that Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright, and Ryan Franklin will be pitching an inordinately high % of the innings. None of them are huge strike out pitchers but they still strike out more than Thompson and Kyle Lohse. In 2006, we were very low in the secret sauce report primarily b/c we were getting killed by WXRL. Izzy was horrendous that season but wasn’t even on the postseason roster. There was no accounting for the fact that Wainwright would be closing games. Would it have made a big difference in the report? Maybe not but my main argument is that they use what has been rather than what will be and that affects the validity of the report. Take it w/ a grain of salt.

I was curious about how tough our competition has been so far this season so I decided to look at the OPSes of NL starters’ opponents. It turns out that Wainwright has faced much tougher competition than either Carpenter or Pineiro so far this season. Out of 53 NL starters who’ve pitched 120 innings, Wainwright’s faced the 18th highest opponent OPS -- .731. That’s 11 points and 23 spots higher than Tim Lincecum, btw. Pineiro is 38th (.722) and Carp is 45th (.718) out of 53 in terms of the toughness of their competition. Jason Marquis, btw, is 50th so some of his good season can be attributed to the fact that he’s faced relatively weak competition.

As far as our hitters go, out of 124 NL hitters w/ 300+ PAs, Skip Schumaker has faced the 5th easiest pitchers, Colby Rasmus the 11th, and Albert Pujols the 14th, as measured by SLG against. Chris Duncan was 17th, Brendan Ryan the 48th, Ankiel the 52nd, and Yadi the 54th easiest pitchers. Somehow Ryan Ludwick has gotten screwed. He’s had to face the 78th easiest pitchers – much tougher competition than most of the lineup. We’ve faced some pretty light competition this season, a fact that shouldn’t be all that surprising considering there’s just 1 other team in our division above .500, and they’re barely above .500.

Finally, when Rasmus was picked off 1st base last night I got the idea to compare our baserunning this season (something BP measures relatively well, most agree) to previous seasons. There’s been a lot made of Joe Thurston’s baserunning escapades, for example. Right now we sit 12th baseball in overall baserunning. Our baserunning has added about 0.208 runs to our total so far this season. Oakland’s been the best in baseball, according to the report, adding more than 11 runs – and 1.1 wins – to their total by being good at running the bases this season. The worst has been the Orioles who have cost themselves more than 19 runs, and nearly 2 wins, on the bases. So our baserunning’s basically had a neutral effect on our win total this season.

Here are our totals since 2004.

	EQBRR
2009	0.209
2008	-6.441
2007	-11.478
2006	-7.020
2005	7.608
2004	7.632

We were first in baseball in ’04 and 3rd in ’05 and this year’s the only season we’ve had a positive number since ’05. It’s also probably our 3rd best team (behind ’04 and ’05) over that time period. Interesting. Gotta get a game thread up soon. Early game. Late riser. Not a great combination!