St. Louis Street Sense

Winners get all of the attention. When things are going good, luxury accoutrements tend to fall into your lap. Sure, there will always be detractors who throw stones at the throne out of jealousy or some similarly misguided sentiment. Altogether, though, it is usually good to be on top. For those who watched last weekend’s Kentucky Derby, it should come as no surprise that the frontrunner can be severely disappointed. In baseball, the season is long enough for a team to languish in mediocrity for months at a time before finally righting the ship toward a championship, such as the 2006 edition of the Minnesota Twins, who underperformed into June, but still won 97 games and the most competitive division in all of baseball. Underperformance, overvaluation, and plain bad luck all contribute to teams coming slow out of the gates, but smart teams have a way of systematically reversing these trends over a 162 game season. Certain teams stand out as early underperformers this year, especially the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Today, I will look a little deeper at the team’s struggles to discern truth from fiction and see if they have it in them to pull a Street Sense and win going away.

The Cards are not only an excellent case study in slow starts, but the debate surrounding their season going forward legitimately has to sides. Remember two key factors coming down on the side of the pessimists: first, the team backed into the playoffs last year, icing over to an 83 win finish only to thaw out in time to win 11 postseason games behind pitchers who overachieved then left town (Suppan, Weaver). Also, their preseason outlook was not very rosy, especially when run through the computers, as Nate Silver from Baseball Prospectus commented, “I’ve publicly disavowed PECOTA’s projection that the 2005 champs will finish with 90 losses, but it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if that’s where the 2006 champs wind up.” Thirty games into the season, the Cardinals are playing more like a 95 loss team than a 90 loss team (.400 Win%) with an individual performance-adjusted record to match.

The issues afflicting the Cardinals are not limited to run scoring or run prevention alone. As of Monday, the team ranks dead last in the NL in runs scored, just two runs behind the Nationals, who play with Styrofoam bats and bowling balls in their canyon-like dwelling. Their runs allowed, certainly aided by the deft bullpen management of LaRussa and Duncan, still puts them 5^th to last in the league with 146 runs allowed. The problems even extend across situations, as the entire team has a .614 OPS at home, a .658 OPS on the road, a .658 OPS against RHP, and a.576 OPS against LHP (aided by Kip Wells’ impressive 3.500 OPS in exactly 2 plate appearances). In other words, they are hitting like the Nats and pitching like the Pirates, two fates a defending champion usually does not endure.

On offense, part of the problem is that two of their five most valuable offensive contributors have been starting pitchers Kip Wells and Adam Wainwright. And while there’s nothing wrong with a team adding pitchers that can hit, it becomes a problem when you have only two regulars and So Taguchi who can out-produce them at the dish. They are currently getting sub-replacement level contributions out of second base- free agent “bargain” Adam Kennedy and Aaron Miles alike-, shortstop- David Eckstein’s hitting 216/.283/.245 in 20% of a season-, third base- Scott Rolen is scarcely better-, center field- Jim Edmonds might be cooked-, and right field- Preston Wilson, Skip Schumaker and Scott Speizio are all individually below a 0.0 VORP. Even Albert Pujols has under-performed, hitting .259/.357/.464. A line like that would be a letdown in a normal year; when the team needs him to be Lou Gehrig, it is even more harmful. Only Chris Duncan has impressed, hitting .320 and slugging well over .500.

The starting rotation, a major point of concern in the off season, has also had major difficulty. Braden Looper, of all people, has chipped in with a 2.66 ERA in 7 starts, bolstered by the fact that he is not giving up homeruns, period. The rest of the rotation, including Anthony Reyes, Wainwright, Wells, and Randy Keisler, has been at or below replacement level. Wells came into the season as one of those pitchers who needed to earn his way into a rotation rather than out of one, and he has done nearly enough to earn his way out, even without a clear alternative. Getting only one start out of Chris Carpenter has not helped matters in the least. At least the bullpen has been a bright spot, as all of their standard matchup-heavy retreads have produced like only Dave Duncan can make them.

At leas there is room for optimism with the team. Looking at the offense, there is absolutely no way players like Eckstein and Rolen can continue playing so incredibly poorly, especially with established track records indicating a much higher level of ability. PECOTA projected Rolen to hit .283/.367/.504 and Eckstein to hit .278/.338/.348. These guys are .100 points off of both of their OBP and SLG; such an oddity is not a decline, it’s an aberration. Even Adam Kennedy should eventually come around to a level commensurate with a Major League player, if not the star he was for that one afternoon in 2002. Pujols will start raking again, and even Yadier Molina has made a few less outs, putting up a .345 OBP so far, albeit at the cost of some slugging.

The onus for the outfield rests on GM Walt Jocketty, who has to find somebody better than the deadweight in right field, and may have to find a way to gracefully manage the Edmonds situation if his head injuries are still affecting his performance. As for the pitching situation, Reyes and Wainwright are talented pitchers who will improve to average performance at very least, and they may have lucked into a quality starter with Looper. Waiting out the three months for Carpenter’s return with only these three legitimate starters will be a sizable problem, though, maybe big enough to necessitate a move.

For the record, I have counted up a total of nine black holes for the Cardinals so far: second, third, short, center, right, and four starting pitchers. The three infield spots and two of the rotation spots will almost certainly fix themselves as time goes by and players break out of nasty slumps. Center field is a mystery to me, because Jim Edmonds appeared to be at a crossroads heading into the year, and instead of choosing a path, he ran into the fork in the road and knocked himself out. Right field and the other two rotation spots will present major problems for the team, at least until August, when Carpenter may or may not return to anchor the rotation. In the meantime, the Cards have nine full games to make up on the surging Brewers, and four other teams to overcome. Given that this team probably did not have a large margin for error to start, giving themselves a degree of difficulty was probably not a good idea. I can imagine the team getting back to .500 in a best case scenario, but even then, the playoffs are quite a stretch. After seeing a horse pass 18 other horses to win the Derby in ¾ of a mile, I know that stranger things have happened. Still, don’t bet on it.