How do the St. Louis Cardinals' stats at the one-quarter point of the 2015 season compare to the VEB projections?

By Ben Humphrey May 22, 2015, 9:00am EDT

The St. Louis Cardinals played their 41st game of the 2015 season on Thursday afternoon in New York. That means they have played one-fourth of their 162 games this year so far. Actually, if we want to get specific, the Cards had completed one-quarter of their schedule after the bottom of the fourth inning on Wednesday night against the Mets—25% of 162 is 40.5.

Since our Cardinals have completed the first quarter of the season, I thought it might be fun to see how their batting stats compare to the preseason VEB Community projections. For the uninitiated, there are numerous projection systems for baseball out there and all of them use an analytical regression approach to forecasting performance in the season to come. At VEB, we add a human element by way of crowd wisdom. We collect projection submission from VEB Community members for the various Cardinals, average them, and see how our collective forecasts stack up against the spreadsheet projections at the end of the year.

Today, though, we aren't going to compare the VEB Community projections to the spreadsheet forecasts. We're going to compare them to the players' respective performances through the Cardinals' first 41 games. This allows us to see who is under- or over-performing expectations and in what ways.

Yadier Molina

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	514	60	12	68	4	.291	.343	.424	.767	.347
2015	149	8	0	15	0	.294	.345	.353	.698	.306
% or Diff	29.0%	13.3%	0.0%	22.1%	0.0%	+.003	+.002	-.071	-.069	-.041

Matt Adams

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	521	65	21	79	2	.283	.328	.476	.804	.356
2015	133	10	4	18	1	.244	.271	.370	.641	.277
% or Diff	25.5%	15.4%	19.0%	22.8%	50.0%	-.039	-.057	-.106	-.163	-.079

Kolten Wong

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	564	74	15	63	24	.276	.330	.423	.753	.339
2015	166	23	5	22	3	.309	.355	.467	.822	.354
% or Diff	29.4%	31.1%	33.3%	34.9%	12.5%	+.033	+.025	+.044	+.069	+.015

Matt Carpenter

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	642	104	11	67	6	.294	.381	.427	.808	.371
2015	166	29	7	24	0	.311	.373	.574	.947	.403
% or Diff	25.8%	27.9%	63.6%	35.8%	0.0%	+.017	+.008	+.147	+.139	+.033

Jhonny Peralta

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	594	64	18	75	2	.271	.334	.438	.772	.347
2015	171	19	6	21	1	.296	.363	.487	.850	.367
% or Diff	28.8%	29.7%	33.3%	28.0%	50.0%	+.025	+.029	+.049	+.078	+.020

Matt Holliday

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	593	90	21	91	3	.286	.367	.464	.831	.375
2015	165	17	3	23	2	.328	.442	.463	.905	.392
% or Diff	27.8%	18.9%	14.3%	25.3%	66.7%	+.042	+.075	-.001	+.074	+.017

Jon Jay

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	480	59	4	45	7	.283	.339	.370	.709	.315
2015	115	11	0	6	0	.248	.330	.267	.597	.272
% or Diff.	24.0%	18.6%	0.0%	13.3%	0.0%	-.035	-.009	-.103	-.112	-.043

Jason Heyward

	PA	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS	wOBA
VEB	609	91	20	82	19	.283	.367	.452	.819	.364
2015	160	23	4	12	4	.245	.300	.388	.688	.301
% or Diff	26.3%	25.3%	20.0%	14.6%	21.1%	-.038	-.067	-.064	-.131	-.063

FanDuel

SBN has entered into an exclusive partnership with FanDuel for daily fantasy baseball. Max Scherzer is starting against the lowly Phillies lineup—a matchup that is at once boring and makes Scherzer expensive in FanDuel. Mike Leake sports a fair-sized platoon split, with lefties hitting for a wOBA 25 points higher than righties over his career. Leake faces the Indians today. Jason Kipnis has posted a career .292 wOBA vs. lefties and a .350 wOBA vs. righties. Due to the combination of their platoon splits, I like Kipnis against Leake. You can play FanDuel by clicking here.