How Badly Did We Need a Holliday?

Apparently, pretty badly.

Statistics are interesting because they can highlight trends or factoids not normally made plain to the casual fan (i.e., me). Here's my current favorite one: St Louis is 31-11 since acquiring Holliday from the A's. Here's a close second, although it qualifies more as a factoid: the Cardinals have not lost ground in the Central since taking over the outright lead in the division on August 7. Of course, it hasn't hurt they've gone 24-6 over that stretch (.800 baseball).

Trevor Hoffman is one of the best closers in baseball who, as a mostly San Diego resident, I've had the pleasure of watching pitch for most of his career. His fastball isn't what it once was (most forget he used to routinely hit 92-95 with it before the arm surgery), but that change up is still devastating. That said, he is susceptible to the long ball, which Holliday provided last night. The loss won't affect Hoffman - one doesn't accumulate 584 saves without knowing how to put a bad outing behind one - but the win will affect the Cardinals, who rightfully believe they are never out of a game, and are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea they don't need to rely solely on AP to deliver in high-leverage situations.

I'm hope the Cardinals don't face Manny Parra again this season. I may have to create the Manny Parra Effect to describe what happens to Redbird bats when he pitches or is scheduled to pitch. How else to explain a guy who's 2-1, sub-2.4 ERA against STL and 8-9, 7.49 against everyone else? Even when he leaves the game early (neck spasms, day-to-day), the Cardinals can't solve Brewer pitching.

Cardinals look to win the series today.

Magic Number Watch:

Clinch Division: 13 (Cubs beat Pirates 9-4)

Eliminate Rivals:
- Milwaukee - 8
- Houston - 8 (Lost to Atlanta 2-1)
- Cincinnati - 5 (Lost to Colorado 3-1)
- Pittsburgh - ELIMINATED

Current Cardinal Brendan Ryan sports #13. Before him the immortal Sidney Ponson stretched the number across his prodigious backside (2006).

Other news:

- Cardinals are reportedly very interested in bringing Mark DeRosa back for next year. Money quote:

"Recognizing where we are, the thought is we'll talk about it and that we're still hopeful that he's someone we could sign and bring back," Mozeliak said. "He's a very valuable person to this club."

Given his reputation as a leader on whatever club he plays for (as reported in various media stories about what's wrong with the Cubs, as well as ancedotal conversations with people having insight into the Cubs locker room), I view this as a good move.

- Rasmus is suffering from a sore heel/achillies tendon. This sounds like plantar fascitis to me. Granted, I'm not a doctor, and the media reporting on his injury is probably purposefully vague, but left heel/foot pain and a sore achillies plagued me earlier this year; when I went to the podiatrist, he diagnosed plantar fascitis, and prescribed shoe inserts (which, incidentally, have helped). So I'm willing to bet that's Rasmus' problem too. It didn't bother me when I was hitting, but it did when I pushed off to chase flyballs, etc, in the OF.

- Lohse to rotation, Boggs to bullpen. Came up in the comments yesterday. Boggs pitched much better his last time out against Pittsburgh, and was serviceable in his previous start vs Milwaukee, so he's not being shifted due to a lack of performance. I think LaRussa wants to see Lohse pitch to determine his availability and effectiveness going into the playoffs. This is a sensible and rational move. A healthy Lohse, pitching like he did last season and in April 09, is a big asset and a dangerous #3/4 starter - more so than anyone else the Cardinals can run out there, including Smoltz (more on him in a moment). The team needs to know what they've got with Lohse going forward in 2009. I think Lohse will make 4 starts the rest of the year and then we'll see what the team does in the playoffs.

- Smoltz's line yesterday - 5 IP, 3 ER, 0 BB, 7 K. We talked earlier about his first two starts being aided by the weak lineups he was facing. Against a good hitting team his last 2 starts, he's given up 3 ER in each start (it just happened to be the same team). This is the level of performance we should expect to get from a John Smoltz start at this point in his career. The problem is each of his starts taxes the bullpen, in that they need to get up to 12 outs.

Now granted, the Cardinals have thrown the fewest relief innings in the NL this season (372.0 -next lowest is San Francisco at 386.2), so bullpen burnout isn't as serious an issue as it may be for the Dodgers, but in the short series playoff format, burning out the pen in one game can hamstring LaRussa for subsequent games, and potentially bring on unfavorable matchups or cost the team a game. So I believe Smoltz will be used exclusively in relief once the post season starts, even if Lohse remains lousy these next 3 weeks.

What About a Four Man Rotation?

Brad Thompson getting suspended, while Guillermo Mota walks free, is an absolute farce. Hitting a guy up by 13 to protect your hitter is OK, but buzzing a guy up by 7 to protect your hitter isn't? Mota threw with intent, Thompson didn't.

Anyway, on one of the recent United Cardinal Bloggers Radio Hour shows, Pip from Fungoes raised the question of LaRussa going with a 4-man rotation. After all, Todd Wellemeyer, Brad Thompson, and Mitchell Boggs haven't exactly lit up the scoreboard. Well they have lit it up, just the wrong way - 10-15, 5+ ERA. Why not just skip that spot in the rotation?

This idea intrigued me.

Starting tomorrow, the Cardinals have 59 games left. With a 5-man rotation, that's 12 starts each for the first 4, and 11 for the #5 slot. With a 4-man rotation, that's 15 starts each for Carpenter, Wainwright, and Piniero, and 14 for Lohse.

There are a number of off-days between now and the end of the season - 6 to be exact. If they line up right, then the Cardinals could skip 6 starts by the #5 guy. This is good, right?

Well, it's not that good. The off days don't line up exactly like one would want:

6 Aug - Off day
6 games
13 Aug - Off day
10 games
24 Aug - Off day
6 games
31 Aug - Off day
9 games
10 Sept - Off day
6 games
17 Sept - Off day
6 games
24 Sept - Off day
10 games
End regular season.

CC Sabathia threw his last 4 games in 2008 on 3-days rest. Not everyone is CC Sabathia. I definitely don't think the Cardinals will try and pitch Carpenter on 3 days rest, given his medical history. I doubt they'll take that chance/accept that risk with Wainwright or Piniero.

So, if they try to keep them all on 4 days rest, the off-days don't help, and they'll have to use a #5 starter 9 times.

So LaRussa would save himself two starts from Wellemeyer's replacement.

Doesn't sound like its worth it. I like the idea of going with a rotation of Carpenter, Wainwright, Piniero, and Lohse, but it won't work in practice. Sorry, Pip.

I was afraid of that

I mentioned on my radio show Tuesday, Brad Thompson had pitched well since returning to the Cardinals and joining the rotation, and that he merited serious consideration for staying in the rotation when Kyle Lohse comes off the DL (at the expense of Todd Wellemeyer).

Then I noted that because I had said that, he'd probably get knocked out in the second inning of his start against the Mets.

The good news: He made it into the sixth. The bad: He allowed 5 runs in those five plus innings, and the Cardinals got destroyed 11-0. Ugh.

Yep, I was afraid of that.

Carpenter will try to win today and salvage a split of the series.

Other news: On that same Tuesday radio show we broke the news that all 6 living Cardinal HOF will be throwing out the first pitch at the All-Star Game on 14 July. Later that same night, the White House and MLB announce President Obama will be throwing out the first pitch.

Great. The first 'news scoop' of my 'journalistic career', and I'm squashed like a bug on a windshield as the President's motorcade drives by.

It remains to be seen how the Cardinals and MLB will coreograph this; most likely, the 6 Cardinals will throw out a first pitch, and that will be seen by the fans in attendance, then the President will do it for the National TV audience. At least having the President at the game will help boost ratings just befort the game starts and who knows - maybe those folks will stick around and watch the game.

McClellan coughs it up

As predicted yesterday, Jo Jo Reyes stymied the Cardinals for seven innings, allowing 3 hits and a run. Kyle Lohse needed to be better, and was, tossing six scoreless with six strikeouts.

Nursing a 1-0 lead, Motte navigated the seventh without incident.

Not so for McClellan. Much like Matt Garza's start (he's on my fantasy team, so I know these things), you can't walk the bases loaded and expect to get out of it unscathed. In Garza's case, Nomar (NOMAR!) cleared the bases with a double. In McClellan's, Diaz drove home two with a single. The two that scored were enough. Mike Gonzalez struck out the side in the ninth (remember him from his days with Pittsburgh?), and Atlanta had a 2-1 win.

It's tough to win 1-0 in this league, but when you need six outs to get there, or in McClellan's case, one more out to get out of the eighth, its especially tough. Pittsburgh did lose again, so the Cardinals maintained their 2 1/2 game lead in the division, so that's something.

Rubber game today - Wainwright vs Javier Vasquez. This is Vasquez's first season with Atlanta, after 3 with the White Sox. He's bounced around, starting in Montreal, with stints in Arizona and the Yankees. He's 2-6 career against St Louis, with a 4.01 ERA. At the TED he's 5-5 with a 3.24.

Break out the brooms

The bridge crew searches for an effective Met pitcher

Albert Pujols brought the whooping stick. Rick Ankiel saw past his cheesy porno mustache and made a fantastic catch to go with his first HR and 2 RBI. Lohse pitched 5 exciting innings, but wiggled off the hook when needed.

Under the bright sunlight, St Louis swept New York out of town, winning the finale 12-8.

For all the good in this game, and offensively, there was a lot of good, the bullpen continues to be a question mark. Called upon to get 12 outs, they responded by giving up 6 runs. Most of that fell on PJ Walters, but his pen mates did a lousy job stranding inherited runners.

With the reshuffled rotation, Lohse's start today marked the beginning of the fourth time through. Looking back at the first three trips through, some interesting items have come up.

- As Rick Hummel mentioned in yesterday's article, Piniero's effort on Wednesday was the first quality start since Wellemeyer's 13 Apr start at Arizona.
- After averaging 6 1/3 innings per starter the first time through, they're averaging 5 2/3 innings since. Which is a lot of work for the bullpen. Piniero's Wednesday start marked the first Cardinal starter to get into the seventh since that same Wellemeyer start.
- Cardinals starters haven't left the game behind since Carpenter's 9 April start. Yes you read that correctly. Lohse and Wellemeyer were tied when they left the game this week.
- Don't expect to see Reyes or Walters pitch tomorrow. Everyone else should be available.

No bullpen statistics yet that I'm willing to talk about here. I discovered tonight that one of my metrics (K/9) is messed up. This is because I'm using 0.3 and 0.7 to signify 1/3 and 2/3 of an inning, respectively. Well, that messes up the metric; for instance, if a guy throws 2/3 of an inning, and has 2 strike outs, he should have a K/9 of 27. But if 2/3 of an inning is represented by .7, the calculation is 25.71. I'll figure out how to correct that this weekend.

The evil empire comes to town tomorrow. We owe these guys. Let's keep rolling fellas!

Lohse near perfect. My house hates old people

We'll get to the second half of the title at the end.

First, Kyle Lohse. He gives up a leadoff single on the first pitch of the game, then retires 24 in a row. And they were efficient; he struck out 4, but only threw 89 more pitches to get through the first eight. The ninth may have been his most taxing, where he threw 22 pitches and faced the tying run in Lance Berkman. I'll assume LaRussa had someone up in the bullpen (ESPN.com doesn't say).

Lohse's complete game was really important from a bullpen usage point-of-view. As has been chronicled elsewhere, the team has only one off day between now and May 11. Although the bullpen hasn't been overtaxed - Thompson leads the group with 5 IP, mostly in blowouts - LaRussa freely used them during the homestand. Stealing a day off for the corps, as it were, is big. Everyone's reset for the road trip.

Boy this opening homestand couldn't have gone much better. Perhaps winning the game they should have one on Opening Day would improve things a bit. But for a team picked by most to finish third to start 5-2, sweep one of its bitter rivals, torch an ace who's tortured them for years? Break up the Cardinals.

I'll point out that in 2004 they were also picked to finish third, behind Chicago and Houston. Seven games do not a good comparison make, and that 04 team had a better lineup, and probably a better bullpen, than this one; but it's interesting nonetheless.

So it's off to Arizona. Wellemeyer vs. cancer survivor Doug Davis, Carpenter vs. Univ of Missouri product Matt Scherzer, and Piniero vs Jon Garland.

Now, to the second part of the title.

Yesterday was Easter, and so we had some family/friends over to the house for dinner. One of them, a family friend of long standing, had never been to our house (which we moved into about this time last year), so I was giving him the dime tour. We had finished looking at the downstairs, and were headed up stairs (I was in front of him about 3-4 steps), when I heard a thump. Apparently he missed, or tripped, over the first step, and fell, hit his head on a stair, and knocked himself out for about 15 seconds. Luckily, our stairs are carpeted and padded, which softened the blow a bit (he's 6'1"), however, when you're 80 any fall is tough to take. We called the paramedics to come check him out; he was fine (Thank God), but a little unsteady, so they took him to the local Sharp hospital for evaluation (as of 2100 last night he had passed all the tests they ran).

About six weeks before my father-in-law had tripped in almost the identical spot and fallen; however, he managed to brace himself quite gracefully (and miss my 18 month old son, who was hanging on him and probably contributed to the event) and was unhurt.

So, if you're old enough to collect a social security check, and come by the house, I'll be handing out helmets; the stairwell will also be lit up like a grand opening with floodlights and neon signs pointing out the stairs. It's not that we don't trust your balance, our your depth perception, its my house apparently doesn't like old people.

The Ben Sheets Question

I keep hoping my schedule will clear up enough to take a detailed look at Ben Sheets (statistics, win share, injury history, recommended value), but it never seems to. I will continue to hope, but we'll see.

I was enjoying my morning coffee (mmmmmm hot) to take the chill out of my bones (it was FORTY EIGHT DEGREES this morning! My GOD that's cold!) and surfing around the Cardinal web. Something C70 said today caught my eye:

"Ben Sheets apparently wants a guaranteed contract. Of course, we can't always get what we want, as some obscure rock group sang. That said, if he'd go with an $7-8
million guarantee with some incentive clauses built in, I still think it makes sense for the Cardinals. Even if he goes down, the odds of getting their money back on the contract are pretty high."

$7 to 8 Mil for Sheets? That would be a pay cut; he hasn't been paid that little since 2005 (you'll have to scroll down to find Sheets, the link is in alphabetical order). Even given the current state of the economy, and the slow free agent market we've experienced this off-season (101 free agents still out there, some really good players with out a home yet), I'm not sure Sheets would be happy taking that little.

Then again, I'd be very happy if my employer compensated me for my time with a Seven Million Dollar salary. Especially if I'd made upwards of Forty Million Dollars so far in my lifetime playing baseball for a living. But that's me.

A modest pay cut has got to be better than sitting on the sidelines all year with nowhere to play. Maybe Mo is playing poker again, like he did with Lohse; that worked out pretty well for us last season.

So who knows what will happen.

I will say this, though: Ben Sheets' injury history remains a big red flag for me. However, IF we could sign him for less than Joel Piniero is going to make ($7.5M to suck - God Bless America) that's a win in my book. And something that should be seriously pursued.