Tracking the 2014 St. Louis Cardinals outfielders' batting stats

On Wednesday, we looked at how the St. Louis Cardinals infielders' 2014 batting stats tracked against their end-of-season totals. Because we used the Baseball-Reference game logs, which have a player's running batting rate stats throughout the season, we had four graphs for each player: batting average (BA), on-base percentage (OBP), slugging percentage (SLG), and on-base plus slugging (OPS). Today we'll do the same for the outfielders, including Jason Heyward.

Remember, each graphs has two lines. The red line is the player's cumulative end-of-year stat. The blue line is his running total. Comparing the two gives us an idea of the player's peaks and valleys relative to the constant of his overall performance.

The horizontal axis is based on team game number. So opening day is Game 1. The final game of the regular season is Game 162. I attempted to use dates but doubleheaders and Google's auto-formatting of the horizontal axis range made that more difficult. The horizontal axis includes only those MLB games that a player played in, even though they're numbered by team game. So, for example, if a player sat on the bench for the entirety of Game 21 without taking a plate appearance, his chart will contain data points for Game 20 and 22, skipping Game 21.

Some observations:

• Peter Bourjos had a really bad year at the plate, but it was particularly ugly in terms of BA. Bourjos didn't hit for a BA of more than .230 until August 23. It was a long slog upward after his horrendous start to the season. Then, once he hit the .248 mark, his BA plummeted to its final resting spot of .231.
• Jay's had a lot of peaks, valleys, mini-peaks, and mini-valleys. Part of that is because of his low PA total, which allows for a bit more volatility than a hitter who notches 600 or more PAs. I didn't appreciate that Jay ended the year by hitting .215/.276/.229 over his final 76 PA. That surprised me.
• Jason Heyward got off to a slow start, gradually saw his numbers climb upward, and then stay pretty consistent till season's end.
• Matt Holliday's charts kind of surprised me. His BA and OBP were rather consistent. It was his power that was lacking (nonexistent?) early and then gradually climbed upward according to SLG. I suppose I should find this too terribly surprising since Holliday hit just six dingers in the season's first half, which consisted of 93 games for him, and 14 in the second, eight of which came in his final 29 games of 2014.

The charts are interactive, so feel free to run your mouse over them to view the exact BA, OBP, SLG, or OPS as well as the team game number and share your thoughts in the comments.

Jon Jay

Jay BA:  Running vs. End

Jay OBP:  Running vs. End

Jay SLG:  Running vs. End

Jay OPS:  Running vs. End

Peter Bourjos

Bourjos BA:  Running vs. End

Bourjos OBP:  Running vs. End

Bourjos SLG:  Running vs. End

Bourjos OPS:  Running vs. End

Jason Heyward

Heyward BA:  Running vs. End

Heyward OBP:  Running vs. End

Heyward SLG:  Running vs. End

Heyward OPS:  Running vs. End

Matt Holliday

Holliday BA:  Running vs. End

Holliday OBP:  Running vs. End

Holliday SLG:  Running vs. End

Holliday OPS:  Running vs. End