The Dominoes Start to Fall

Since we last spoke, Mark DeRosa signed a 2-year, $12 million deal with the Giants, and Jason Bay signed a 4-year, $65 million deal with the Mets.

DeRosa stated he was 'Tired of being someone's Plan B'. That's a veiled shot at the Cardinals, isn't it? You know what? I don't blame him for moving on. Even if he waited until Matt Holliday signed, the odds of Mark DeRosa not playing somewhere next season hovered around 0.000001%; the amount of money he would make next season, however, probably rode an inverse proportion relationship with when he signed. The longer he waited, the more anxious he would get about signing on with someone, and the less money he might have been forced to take to play.

To you and me, the difference between $4 mil and $6 mil is like the difference between apple and watermelon Jolly Ranchers - apple is clearly better than watermelon, but in the end they're both pretty darn good. For a guy trying to maximize his earning power using perishable physical gifts, that's a pretty big difference. So Mark took the best deal with a team he didn't mind playing for. Good for him.

One guy out of the LF sweepstakes.

The Cardinals never expressed real interest in Jason Bay, for which I remain thankful. We've had plenty of decent-bat, no-glove guys patrol that corner (see Gant, Ron; Sanders, Reggie; and Duncan, Chris), and I hoped that pattern wouldn't repeat itself with Bay. The more important outcome of Bay joining the Mets is the price tag. He's to make $16.25 mil per year. Since most observers rank Holliday a better outfielder than Bay, I believe we've just firmly established the floor for the Holliday negotiations.

Boras/Holliday won't accept less than $16.25 million per season to play for the Cardinals. The length of contract, opt-out clause, no-trade protection? All just contract language. First, we must agree on price. Chet Novak posted on Facebook his guess: $17 mil per/8 years. If the $18 million figure bandied about before the season ended becomes the high end of the range for Holliday, this is a completely reasonable guess at a per year cost for his services. But boy, I really hope the Cardinals don't ink him for 8 years. Paying a guy $17 million a year for his age 37-38 seasons seems a tremendous waste of money to me. Should the Cardinals go with a 8-year contract, I'd prefer to see a mutual option each year for the last 3 years written into the contract language. That would at least protect the club should a Vernon Wells-type decline in skill start, and not make the contract a millstone.

Arbitration Results and Brad Penny

I thought Matt Holliday would decline arbitration, but that DeRosa and/or Pineiro might accept. Holliday did indeed decline, and so did Mark and Joel. So that's that.

No one reading these words should be surprised Holliday declined. He's 26 and $cott Bora$ is his agent. He's about to become a very rich man. DeRosa's move to decline was perhaps influenced by the big deals Placido Polanco (3 yrs/$18M with Philadelphia) and Chone Figgins (4 yrs/$36M with Seattle) signed. Erik Manning posted an article over at Fangraphs today which neatly summarizes DeRosa's value. I think Mark saw the two aforementioned deals and realized he could command between 7-9 million dollars, even while coming back from wrist surgery. Can't blame him for chasing the funds.

Pineiro, well, he had expressed interest in staying a Cardinal. However, he probably thinks based on this past season he'll get something north of the $6.5M he made in 2009, and get a multi-year deal. He may be right. Again, he's chasing the money and long-term security.

There is still a chance Joel could return to the Cardinals, but that chance became a lot longer based on the widely reported imminent signing of Brad Penny. There had been discussion about bringing a veteran pitcher on a short term deal like a 1-year contract. John Smoltz dominated that discussion. Ben Sheets also seemed a viable candidate. But Brad Penny? Wow.

Why would the Cardinals give Penny $7.5M in base salary after he struggled for most of last year? Penny finished 11-9 with a 4.88 ERA in 173.1 innings for the Red Sox and Dodgers. Doesn't seem to make sense. Let's look a little deeper. His FIP was 4.46. That's not great; in fact, it's the fourth highest FIP of his career (his worst FIP season was 2008 - 5.27). His K/9 was 5.66, the second lowest of his career. BB/9 ratio? 2.14 (fifth BEST of his career, and best since 2006). K/BB (2.14) and BABIP (.307) were right on his career averages (2.17 and .303 respectively), and his HR/9 ratio was slightly elevated (0.88 career vice 1.14 in 2009).

Other than his strikeouts being down, what caused his bad year last year? Well his fly ball percentage was the worst of his career (38.4%), and in a park as small as Fenway is, that probably killed him. Guys also didn't swing at his stuff out of the strike zone as much as they did in years past, which would also explain his lower strikeout totals.

Penny becomes an intriguing guy for next year's rotation. He won't be as good as he was with the Giants (and in their pitching-friendly ballpark), and he won't be as bad as he was with the Red Sox (and their hitting-friendly park). Not sure if he's worth $7.5M, but Mozeliak is a better judge of market pricing than I am.

Welcome, Brad Penny.

Arbitration Offers

During a recent UCB interview, when asked which Cardinals would be offered arbitration, Matt Leach (mlb.com) replied he thought only Matt Holliday would get an offer. Here's the quote (question starts at 17:25 on the recording):

"I think that this front office has shown that it has a real hesitation to offer arbitration to anybody who even might accept that they might be worried about having to pay the salary. I think that they have pretty consistently shown that. Each of the past two years I have been surprised at some of the decisions, and I have yet to be surprised with them offering to somebody. If I had to guess I would guess that there's a pretty good chance that Holliday is the only guy they offer to. They've just shown themselves to be very risk adverse when it comes to the possibility of somebody accepting arbitration.

Now if the negotations start going somewhere that kinda leads you to believe things are different, that's one thing - but also remember that under the new CBA [collective bargaining agreement] that not offering arbitration is not the sort of 'death knell' in negotiations that it once was. So to some extent, not offering is no longer the risk that it was. Again, this is one area where I actually disagree with them - I think that you should be willing to take those risks. I think the draft picks are so valuable. But I think they have shown themselves to be very, very risk adverse when it comes to the possibility of players accepting arbitration."

Apparently the Cardinal Front Office has reconsidered their position and decided to accept the risk, because today they offered arbitration to Matt Holliday, Mark DeRosa, and Joel Pineiro. According to about.com's baseball page, that's all the Type A/B free agents the Cardinals had this season.

What are the implications? Baseball's arbitration rules are summarized here. Bottom line is Holliday, DeRosa, and Pineiro have until midnight EST on 7 December to accept/reject arbitration. If they accept, they go back on the Cardinals 40-man roster even though they do not have a contract in place yet, and negotiations for compensation continue. If they reject they return to the free agent pool. The Cardinals will get a compensation pick (or two in the case of Holliday, a Type A free agent) when/if they sign with someone else.

My take on the why.

Prospect Replacement. The Cardinals traded away a large chunk of their high value prospects to acquire DeRosa and Holliday. If in the worst-case all 3 reject arbitration, the Cardinals would receive 4 compensation picks. They traded away 5 in 2009 (Perez, Todd, Wallace, Mortensen, Peterson), so those 4 picks would go a long way to evening the scales in the minors. Granted, picking up raw talent to replace MLB-ready guys like Perez/Todd/Wallace isn't a fair swap or comparison, but at least there will be some return on the DeRosa/Holliday investment.

Third Base Situation. At the start of the off season there was a lot written about David Freese getting a real shot to play third next season, and although no one in the Cardinal organization anointed him the starting third baseman in 2010, it 'seemed' to be the case. Freese may not be ready. Bringing DeRosa back would allow him to develop a little further in the minors, and perhaps hold down a bench position on the major league club while learning. Call it risk mitigation going forward for the big club. Not a bad move.

Who Wouldn't Want These Guys On The Roster? Holliday is a bona-fide power hitter giving the Cardinals additional thump in the lineup. DeRosa should - will - hit much better in 2010 when fully healthy than he did the second half of 2009 with a bum wrist. And Pineiro thrived last year under Duncan, using his sinkers to force hitters into pounding the ball into the dirt (Career year concerns do exist for Pineiro, but his ground ball dominance continued a trend he's had for a couple of years, and is a repeatable skill in my opinion).

Prognosis. Holliday is due for a big payday this off-season if he stays a free agent. I would expect Holliday to reject arbitration. Pineiro already expressed interest in returning to the Club for 2010 and beyond. I think Pineiro accepts as well. DeRosa, with the bum wrist, isn't as desirable this off-season as he was last. The Cubs may make a real run at him; if they've already been in contact with DeRosa, and have a tantalizing offer on the table, he'll probably reject arbitration. Absent that I would expect DeRosa also returns.

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.

DeRosa Injury Far Worse than Hoped

Stltoday.com is reporting DeRosa has a partially torn ligament sheath in his left wrist. So much for a simple strain and rapid recovery.

This is bad. David Ortiz suffered a similar injury last year. He went on the DL 1 June and came back 25 July (7 weeks).

Assuming DeRosa's recovery follows a similar arc, he won't be back on the field until the last week of August.

Chris Perez has been so bad for the Cleveland Indians since the trade, you wonder if the fates intervened to even out the karma.

In any case, Rasmus needs to stay hot, and Ludwick needs to continue doing what he did last night (3-run shot after intentional walk to Pujols), since the team's big bat acquisition will only play in September, at best.

Where's DeRosa? (and other ideas for the defense)

One of the reasons the Cardinals exceeded last season’s expectations was superior hitting and fielding. They stayed in the race even though their pitching was decidedly average. The team ranked fourth in the league in runs scored, and second in OPS. Defensively, they were third and fourth, respectively, in the NL in UZR and UZR/150. The biggest driver for their offensive success was the OF, which led baseball in OPS; one of their defensive drivers was vastly improved infield defense across the board, with Troy Glaus and Cesar Izturis having Gold Glove caliber seasons.

This year the team has experienced a significant drop off in both areas, despite improving overall in pitching. They are ninth in fielding (UZR and UZR/150). The stack up sixth in the league in runs scored, but eighth in OPS. And the outfield? They left their potency in 2008 (13th in OPS). They have been hurt by free agency (Izturis left for Baltimore), injury (Glaus), and social anxiety disorders.

Something needed to be done, so the team went out and got Mark DeRosa. His 13HR and 50RBI in Cleveland make him second on the Cardinals in both to Albert, so he’s going to play every day. But where?

I took a look at the Cardinals fielders, based on starters only, through Monday’s games. Here’s a listing of who’s started where, and what their UZR/150 numbers are, for the first 78 games of the year.

From this list, several folks are either in AAA or on the DL. So we remove them from the list.

Now we begin to understand why Thurston’s played a lot of third base this season. To spice things up, and because baseball isn’t just about defense, let’s add in each player’s OPS for 2009.

Granted, the small sample size in terms of games started hurts the statistical validity of the analysis, but some interesting things jump out.

- How far the mighty (read: the OF offensive) have actually fallen in 2009. This team will not contend for the playoffs unless it starts getting better production from all three outfield positions.

- Skip Schumaker has the second-best (less DeRosa) OPS on the club among guys who can play the outfield – better than Ludwick, Ankiel, and Duncan. So why is he still playing second?

- Joe Thurston’s OPS is about 40 points lower than Schumaker, but the swing in defensive ability is 25 on the UZR scale. Based on Wins Above Replacement (WAR), Schumaker has been spectacularly average this season (-0.1), as has Thurston (0.3). Thurston gets the nod for his defense.

- Ludwick’s WAR (0.7) is more valuable than Ankiel (0.4), although like 2B the difference is negligible. Ludwick is the better hitter to this point, although Ankiel’s LF defensive numbers jump out, most likely due to the small sample size. Would Ludwick be able to play LF and approach Ankiel’s defensive prowess? Likely.

- Chris Duncan? His big bat (.734 OPS is third in the OF) is overshadowed by his lousy glove (-8.9). He’s WAR is also spectacularly average (0.1), which for this analysis sends him to the pine.

- There really was a huge hole at 3B defensively, and there still is. DeRosa's bat helps, but he's not the answer with the glove.

Based on all this, some suggestions:

- Start Thurston at 2B, and close that hole.

- Start Ryan at SS, and leave him there.

- Start Ankiel, Schumaker, and Rasmus across the outfield. However, LaRussa should strongly consider moving Ludwick to LF, keep his bat in the lineup, and bench Ankiel.

- DeRosa is the best of the team’s current options at third.

Not mentioned anywhere here is Khalil Greene. He should be shut down for the season. He showed lots of improvement playing a bad KC team, but if his 0-16 stretch after that returned him to the depths of depression his mental issues won't be fixed with another 15-day DL stint. He needs professional help, and apparently intensive professional help. Best wishes and Godspeed to Khalil.

Other than the transcendent Albert Pujols, this team struggles mightily to score runs. They can’t afford to give away runs with sub-standard defense anymore. Once DeRosa’s wrist is healed, the starting lineup should reflect the best possible opportunity to win every night. That means the lineup should look something like this:

Schumaker CF
Rasmus RF
Pujols 1B
DeRosa 3B
Ludwick LF/Molina C
Molina C/Ankiel LF
Ryan SS
Thurston 2B
Pitcher’s spot

Obviously LaRussa will mix/match based on pitcher handed-ness and success/failure of his players against specific hitters. But, in my opinion, the base lineup from which all changes are made should be the one above.

Comments welcome.

Cards trade for DeRosa, Mike changes site in celebration

Derrick Goold is reporting tonight the Cardinals shipped Chris Perez to Cleveland for Mark DeRosa.

DeRosa, the Bugs Bunny of players because he can play all over the diamond, has ostensibly been brought in to play third for the Cardinals.

This begs several questions.

(a) Is the Khalil Greene experiment at third base over? Khalil played short in today's 5-3 win, after playing the previous 7 games at third. Why did the team let him work at third if it wasn't a long term solution? Khalil's UZR at third is 0.00, with the usual caveat that a seven game sample is not statistically significant.

(b) Will DeRosa actually play third? He played mostly second while with the Cubs, although he's played either at third or in the OF with the Indians this year. He did play some third with Chicago, and his UZR numbers are good, but he didn't play 60 games there in his two seasons on the north side. He played 42 games at third for Cleveland, with a UZR of -5.4.

For his career he has negative UZR at third. Defensively his best position is RF, which is not a spot we need more candidates for.

Based on his and Khalil Greene's UZR numbers, and assuming he plays the infield where the team needs assistance, I suggest he play short and leave Khalil at third.

(c) where will DeRosa hit in the order? With Cleveland he hit all over - #2 (28 times), #4 (3), #5 (19), #6 (12), #7 (6), and #8 (2). Heck, hit him fourth - only Pujols has more than his 13 HR and 50 RBI this season on the Cardinals (Ludwick is next with 11 and 38, respectively). Never mind he's 1 for 12 hitting cleanup this year, I'm sure that's a statistical abberation.

So, to summarize: Cardinals sent Chris Perez to Cleveland for Mark DeRosa. Don't be surprised if DeRosa plays short and hits fourth tomorrow.

BT BT

I had some time last night to mess with the site a little bit. You'll notice some improvements throughout the page. Allow me to summarize them for your convenience:

- Added a widget for Blog Talk Radio. Now, instead of having to go to the site, you can listen to all the UCB episodes from here with a click of the button.

- Added a Cardinals schedule widget. You'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see it; I tried it in the margin, but it doesn't fit well. I assume it will be updated with actual wins/losses as they happen, although early returns don't indicate that'll be the case.

- Added a photo of the Cardinal retired numbers. I've always wanted to inlcude that on the list. I finally 'stole' the one from here, because it's the best one I'd seen.

- Re-ordered the blog links in the margin. All the blogs that were formerly there are still, but I decided to break them into new categories: "recommended", "cardinals blogs (which do not include the couple which are recommended)", and "other sites of interest". I had the title of the last post at each site included in addition to the logo and time since last update, but that got too cumbersome. I don't display all the blogs in those respective categories, but the list does reorder as sites are updated. Also, there's a link you can click to see all the blogs in that particular list.

- Changed the blog archive section. Instead of a pull down menu, it now shows stuff by year, with sub-folders for months. No real reason for doing it other than I thought I'd try it out.