Last night's game was more of the same ol' same ol'. The hitters yet again could not come through when it mattered. It's become a reoccurring theme, WPA tells the grim story of these first 10 games.
Here is the Cardinal WPA as a team-
(Sorry if the fonts are a bit small, had trouble with some formatting. If you have Firefox, just hit control++)
Despite the hiccups of Thompson and Springer, the bullpen has done their job. The starters so far have done their job. The hitting has been turdriffic. Here's the culprits:
That's pretty damning. Chris Duncan has been the offense so far. Aside from Dunc, only Aaron Miles, Gary Bennett and So Taguchi who have positive WPA values. (Adam Wainwright has a positive .08, I suppose I could've mentioned him.) Everyone else is in the red, with the main drags being Preston Wilson, Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen and Adam Kennedy. It's time to get it going boys. Another way to slice it a stat called Batting Runs Above Average (BRAA). BRAA is similar to WPA but it takes the situational stuff out of the way, aside from base runners. It calculates all of the hitter's deeds, regardless of what they did for the team's chances to win in that game, and throws them together to give you a total number of runs that the hitter has created. Looking at that should be telling. Here's the positive contributors-
Pujols is in the positive there...barely. And here's the stragglers-
The BRAA data is not including last night's game. Cumulative BRAA going into the game was negative 18.44. Yikes. Kennedy has gotten off on the wrong foot for sure, and Jim Edmonds and Preston Wilson are following close behind in the suck fest. Sorry for getting down and nerdy there, I just thought some of my fellow geeks here would enjoy the visual aids. Bottom line: Slumps happen. The offense just is garbage now, some of which is bad luck, most of it is just plain suckiness. It's time for the bats to wake up, and that isn't an easy task to do against Ben Sheets. I'm sure the Brewers will load their lineup with lefties to face Looper, love to see him shut'em down to get Sackmann of our backs. :-)
