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GAME SUMMARY SUMMARY First Third Wins: Cards 30 Opponents 22

By on Jun 4, 2022, 5:25pm EDT +

"I'll tell you what stat I will be paying attention to: WINS. You can take all your talk of walk rates and OPS and ISO (whatever the heck that is!) and stick it where the sun don't shine. There's only one stat that matters at the end of the day and that is wins. You don't win, none of that stuff means anything. So do me a favor and spare me your fancy schmancy statistical analysis--leave that stuff to the nerds with their nerdy nerdness. All that matters, and you should probably write this down seeing as how you've somehow forgotten what's important here, is wins...." --Nate De Graaf's Grandpa, April 11, 2022

My game summaries are a quantification of the winning point of view quoted above. For each win, position players earn stars based on their individual success in helping to score one more run than the opposing team (all insurance runs are irrelevant to the win). For pitchers (and position players who make extraordinary plays), stars are awarded based on how many outs they get in wins. For losses, no stars are awarded to any players, only "black marks".

GAME SUMMARY SUMMARY First Third Wins

Cards 30 Opponents 22

Defense: To win 30 games it required 810 outs. From starting pitchers, these were were obtained as follows: Mikolas (121), Wainwright (116), Hudson (100), Matz (77), Liberatore (29), Hicks (23). The bullpen provided outs in winning efforts as follows: Helsley (59), Cabrera (51), Gallegos (45), Pallante (41), McFarland (24), Wittgren (23), Whitley (22), VerHagen (17), Rondon (15), Thompson (12), Naughton (10), Walsh (10), Woodford (9), Brooks( 8), Pujols (3), Molina (3).

Clearly the BEST STARTER was Mikolas, followed very closely by Waino. The BEST RELIEVER was Helsley.

Offense: To earn a star, a player had to contribute to the runs necessary to defeat the oponent by one run. The contribution might have been a hit, walk, stolen base, sac fly etc as long as it led to one of the key winning runs. Insurance runs were not counted nor were runs wasted in losses. A total of 166 stars were awarded in the 30 wins as follows: Nolan Arenado (20), Paul Goldschmidt (20), Tommy Edman (19), Harrison Bader (14), Tyler O'Neill (12), Corey Dickerson (11), Albert Pujols (10), Dylan Carlson (10), Brendan Dooan (8), Paul DeJong (8), Edmundo Sosa (6), Juan Yepez (7), Yadi Molina (6), Andrew Knizner (5), Lars Nootbaar (5), and Nolan Gorman (5).

The BEST OFFENSIVE PERFORMANCE is a tie between Goldschmidt and Arenado. My vote for BEST BARREL is also a tie between Nado and Goldy. Arenado's 379 ft, 96.2 mph, 28 degree HR on Apr 20 single-handedly beat the Marlins 2-0; Goldschmidt's 383 ft, 99.3 mph, 35 degree HR 0n May 2 single-handed beat the Royals 1-0.

The biggest surprise is the combined contribution of Pujols and Dickerson to Cardinal wins. As irritating as this is to VEB, together they have won 20 stars for their performance in the Cards 30 victories. Apparently if they play well, the Cardinals win. Or perhaps it is the other way around and they only play well in games the Card's win. Considering that I do not count their poor performances in losses, we can only imagine how much stronger our offense would be with a real DH.

My vote for BEST DEFENSIVE PERFORMANCE goes to Bader. We all know he is the Cardinal starting center fielder because of his excellent defense, but he has accumulated 14 stars in Cardinal wins so far this season despite his batting position deep in the Cardinals line up. It is difficult to contribute to a winning run when the batters before and after you are weak.

Overall, my experiment to measure performance based strictly on winning as suggested by Nate De Graaf's grandpa appears to agree well with J.P. Hills analysis (June 4, 2022) based on advanced statistics.

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