chris carpenter randy wolf
xFIP - 3.27 xFIP - 1.53
cy young awards: 1 cy young awards: 0
the cardinals face a left-hander today. i think our troubles of yesteryear may be gone with the disappearance of the left-handed outfield of doom and the left-handed-third-baseman-who-wouldn't-really-have-been-adequate-with-a-platoon-partner-but-it would-have-at-least-put-some-variety-in-the-suck. albert pujols historically hits lefties just fine, thank-you-very-much, and has had success against wolf (and i hate small sample size like this but here goes), with albert going 5-16 against him, felipe lopez 7-21, and matt holliday 5-16. if anything soothes me about the above small sample sizes, these guys basically all hit lefties as well as righties or better (career wOBA's of .457, .329, .378 against LHP), as do yadi (.326) and brendan ryan (.317). ryan ludwick's reverse split still holds, oddly enough - .336 wOBA v. LHP and .367 v. RHP, even after 645 PA's v. lefties and 1200+ v. righties (today might not have been a bad day to give luddy a rest and start craig in RF). throw in mather and freese, and sinister pitchers shouldn't seem so sinister in 2010.
randy wolf's 2009 is interesting and reads like a bit of a mirage. he did pretty much what he does every year - strikes out a few (6-7/9IP) walks not too many (2.5-3.5/9IP). doesn't get a ton of groundballs (38-40%). he benefited from a fair amount of luck on LOB% (77% v. lifetime 73.5%) and BABIP (.257 v. lifetime .294). he's still a good pitcher, but his 2010 is likely to show some regression.
stl lineup
lopez 2b
ludwick rf
pujols 1b
holliday lf
molina c
freese 3b
mather cf
ryan ss
carpenter p
mil lineup
weeks 2b
edmonds cf
braun lf
fielder 1b
mcgehee 3b
hart, hart to rf
kottaras, welcome back c
escobar ss
wolf, hungry like the p
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