Baseball Nation: All Posts by Dan Moore

Play the St. Louis Cardinals rotation graveyard-whistling home game

2013-05-24T12:00:16Z

Other deadlines are keeping me from a full post this morning, so I'd like to take this opportunity to play a very simple and vaguely depressing St. Louis Cardinals game: How many starts will each member of the St. Louis Cardinals' pitching staff make this season?

So far we know that Jaime Garcia will make nine of them. That leaves 153 to go, of which 37 have already been taken by someone who is not Jaime Garcia.

	GS
Adam Wainwright	10
Shelby Miller	9
Jaime Garcia	9
Lance Lynn	9
Jake Westbrook	6
John Gast	2
Tyler Lyons	1

Yes: That's one pitcher away from the group that made every Cardinals start in 2004. Meanwhile, the 2013 Cardinals are carrying Joe Kelly, Carlos Martinez, and Seth Maness, all of whom seem like a good bet to make at least one start this year. In reserve there's Chris Carpenter somehow, Michael Wacha, and Nick Additon, who's just waiting to become the other other left-handed rookie in the rotation.

Other potential concerns: Westbrook's health and which (if any) of the left-handers is most likely to take advantage of it, Shelby Miller's final inning total, and the possibility that Lance Lynn will have another rough summer just to screw with me.

My random guesses: A full season for Adam Wainwright, mostly because I'm not prepared for this season to take that particular turn; a mostly full season for Shelby Miller, who looks too in control, at his best, to trigger the inning-limit alarm bells; and a surprising amount of Carlos Martinez, because I'm still trying to figure out what they brought him up for in the first place.

	GS
Adam Wainwright	34
Lance Lynn	32
Shelby Miller	31
Jake Westbrook	21
Carlos Martinez	13
Jaime Garcia	9
John Gast	9
Joe Kelly	5
Tyler Lyons	4
Michael Wacha	3
Randy Flores	1

Cardinals at Padres Open Thread: Adam Wainwright vs. Edinson Volquez

2013-05-22T02:10:05Z

Current Series

Padres lead the series 1-0

Mon 05/20	WP: Jason Marquis (6 - 2) SV: Huston Street LP: Shelby Miller (5 - 3)	2 - 4 loss
St. Louis Cardinals Viva El Birdos @ San Diego Padres Gaslamp Ball Tuesday, May 21, 2013, 10:10 PM EDT Petco Park Adam Wainwright vs Edinson Volquez Partly cloudy. Winds blowing out to right field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 65. Complete Coverage >
Wed 05/22		10:10 PM EDT

Current Series

Padres lead the series 1-0

Mon 05/20	WP: Jason Marquis (6 - 2) SV: Huston Street LP: Shelby Miller (5 - 3)	2 - 4 loss
St. Louis Cardinals Viva El Birdos @ San Diego Padres Gaslamp Ball Tuesday, May 21, 2013, 10:10 PM EDT Petco Park Adam Wainwright vs Edinson Volquez Partly cloudy. Winds blowing out to right field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 65. Complete Coverage >
Wed 05/22		10:10 PM EDT

On Shelby Miller and the St. Louis Cardinals losing to Jason Marquis

2013-05-21T12:00:15Z

Jason Marquis has spent his entire career on life support. He's finished a season with his ERA over six twice and under four twice; he's was 33-years-old before he pushed his K:BB ratio over two for the first time in his career. He's a sinkerballer who allowed 1.3 home runs per nine innings while pitching for Dave Duncan. Baseball Reference says he's worth six wins above replacement as a pitcher (in 1852 innings) and four as a hitter (in 679 plate appearances.)

For a while I was surprised—every time I saw him in a new uniform—that Jason Marquis was still playing baseball. Eventually the surprise turned on itself, ate its own tail, and on my deathbed, now, I think I'll be surprised when someone tells me he isn't stashed somewhere in the back of the Raleigh-Durham BattleKatzz's bullpen.

For all that, he's now 118-111 in a career that looked like it could have been over before he turned 30.

Shelby Miller will probably never catch Marquis as a hitter, but at the rate he's going he might have already matched the best pitching season of Marquis's career, per rWAR. That distinction is one of the reasons replacement level made intuitive sense to me in the first place—it explains how the shape of Marquis's value is different from, say, Kyle Lohse's or Shelby Miller's.

You don't want to end up with Jason Marquis in your rotation all year. He's replaceable, and the players you can replace him with are usually more pleasant to watch on the mound, if not at the plate. But he'll soak up innings, and every so often he'll turn in an above-soaked performance. There's value there—he's a major-league baseball player—it's just not value you want to draw on.

The St. Louis Cardinals have dug up nearly all of their front-line prospects—which is why it's a little weird that whether the Cardinals should bring up the last one, Michael Wacha, has become such a flashpoint. Now we're into the prospects for which Cy Young Awards are not the 90th-percentile projection.

Tyler Lyons and John Gast—and Joe Kelly—can all hope for better individual seasons than Jason Marquis ever had, at least if you're starting from his peripherals. But Jason Marquis is going to cross 2000 innings pitched in his career, and now he's beaten the Cardinals six times. All of them could certainly do worse.

Brewers at Cardinals open thread: Marco Estrada vs. Lance Lynn

2013-05-18T23:00:06Z

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Fri 05/17	WP: Jaime Garcia (5 - 2) SV: Edward Mujica LP: Wily Peralta (3 - 4)	7 - 6 win
Milwaukee Brewers Brew Crew Ball @ St. Louis Cardinals Viva El Birdos Saturday, May 18, 2013, 7:15 PM EDT Busch Stadium Mostly sunny. Winds blowing from right to left field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 80. Complete Coverage >
Sun 05/19		2:15 PM EDT

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Fri 05/17	WP: Jaime Garcia (5 - 2) SV: Edward Mujica LP: Wily Peralta (3 - 4)	7 - 6 win
Milwaukee Brewers Brew Crew Ball @ St. Louis Cardinals Viva El Birdos Saturday, May 18, 2013, 7:15 PM EDT Busch Stadium Mostly sunny. Winds blowing from right to left field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 80. Complete Coverage >
Sun 05/19		2:15 PM EDT

Jaime Garcia injury: Mitchell Boggs's return and the St. Louis Cardinals' replacements

2013-05-18T22:29:17Z

As it turns out, intense, unceasing skepticism about Jaime Garcia's shoulder turned out to be the right move. Garcia's back on the disabled list with a shoulder strain, which is bad, but this part is worse: He's worried about it. Surgery-worried. Jenifer Langosch:

Garcia said shoulder pain is worse this year than last. He's legitimately concerned about needing a procedure to address the issue.
— Jenifer Langosch (@LangoschMLB) May 18, 2013

The amazing thing about Garcia is that his last two starts were exactly as bad as they needed to be to make sure that he continued to be Jaime Garcia. Take a look at his numbers to date, which is how they'll look on the baseball card if he needs surgery:

Year	Age	W	L	W-L%	ERA	GS	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	H/9	HR/9	BB/9	SO/9	SO/BB
2010	23	13	8	.619	2.70	28	163.1	151	64	49	9	64	132	143	8.3	0.5	3.5	7.3	2.06
2011	24	13	7	.650	3.56	32	194.2	207	100	77	15	50	156	104	9.6	0.7	2.3	7.2	3.12
2012	25	7	7	.500	3.92	20	121.2	136	58	53	7	30	98	98	10.1	0.5	2.2	7.2	3.27
2013	26	5	2	.714	3.58	9	55.1	57	26	22	6	15	43	105	9.3	1.0	2.4	7.0	2.87
5 Yrs		39	25	.609	3.45	90	551.0	565	258	211	41	167	437	111	9.2	0.7	2.7	7.1	2.62

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Injured or healthy, ball-in-play lucky or unlucky, it's seven strikeouts per nine innings, a solid K:BB ratio, and (not pictured) a high ground ball rate. (In fact, higher in his nine 2013 starts [1.75 per fly ball] than ever before.)

Which is why, I guess, I've always been (unjustifiably) optimistic about Garcia's health. His shoulder problems haven't yet pushed him out of the statistical profile that makes him an effective pitcher. Now he's hurt again and Scott Kazmir is throwing mid-90s fastballs, so what do I know?

His replacement on the roster is Mitchell Boggs, probably because Ryan Jackson did something truly despicable a few years ago and he knows what it is. Boggs walked five and struck out four in his six AAA appearances, but/and most of the trouble was in his last appearance, when he walked three and allowed two hits in the course of retiring one batter. Six relief appearances—well, that's for the scouts to figure out.

His replacement in the rotation might be Michael Wacha, but I'm at least as interested to see what the Cardinals plan on doing, in the medium term, with the three starters (Trevor Rosenthal, Seth Maness, Carlos Martinez) that are currently sitting in the bullpen.

Pete Kozma, Ty Wigginton, and the question Ryan Jackson actually answers

2013-05-18T17:28:52Z

Ryan Jackson is nothing if not persistent. Earlier this month he was hitting a BAbip-heavy .341 and I suggested he simply didn't have enough gravity, as a Cardinals prospect, to Wally Pipp Pete Kozma so long as Kozma was doing his replacement level thing.

In the week-and-a-half since I said that, of course, Kozma has hit for even less power (.233/.314/.267) and Ryan Jackson has hit .486 with six doubles and two home runs. Now he's hitting .385/.453/.525.

It's easy to discount Jackson's season so far, and necessary, even though his breakout is now 50 at-bats longer than Kozma's was last year. But the problem, as Bernie Miklasz discussed earlier this week, isn't whether Jackson should replace Kozma, but whether Jackson is good enough to be on the 25-man roster, taking at-bats from him.

That answer is almost certainly yes. But the Cardinals' weird bench construction on the infield has forced them into a situation in which their replacement level is lower in the major leagues than it is in Memphis.

Yes: This is another thing that is Ty Wigginton's fault. Ty Wigginton has taken seven more plate appearances than Adam Wainwright. He's played 40 innings on defense.

There's a cost to having a Ty Wigginton on your team—one roster spot—that used to be much simpler for teams to absorb. Before bullpens got huge and hyper-specialized you could afford to stash a third catcher or a backup-backup-pinch-hitter who was really just a good clubhouse guy on the 25-man roster, because what were you going to do with 25 men, anyway?

In the last 20 years teams have mostly gone with lefty specialists instead of clubhouse specialists. The cost of trying to do both isn't just Wigginton's at-bats—it's the way it makes the positions he's supposed to be backing up worse, the inefficiencies it creates.

And the weird thing is that the 2013 Cardinals seem desperate to prove how inefficient he can make them. Every player he touches on the depth chart is locked in a slump—David Freese, Daniel Descalso, Pete Kozma—and every player he's blocking (Ryan Jackson, even Matt Adams) is off to an unexpectedly strong one.

Getting regular playing time has been good news for Jackson, who wasn't even assured of a regular job in Memphis after last season. But he's done everything the Cardinals could have hoped he would with those at-bats, and the big league team's absurd bench construction has forced us to think of the Cardinals' infield in terms of Jackson or Kozma when that shouldn't be the question at all.

This is the question Ryan Jackson, a 25-year-old prospect with diminished defensive scouting reports and a limited history as a hitter, should be answering: Wouldn't it be nice to have another genuine middle infielder with a little offensive upside to turn to when Descalso, Freese, and Kozma are all struggling?

When will Randy Choate face more batters than your favorite anonymous St. Louis Cardinals journeyman?

2013-05-17T15:33:13Z

In football all the longevity-related records are usually qualified—at least in conversation—with something like this: A real player, I mean. Not a kicker or a punter. I grew up a reasonably devoted Sean Landeta fan, so that's not me talking, but it's just how the game works. He turned 30 the same year as Herschel Walker; he's four years older than Michael Irvin; he played until 2005.

The St. Louis Cardinals signed Randy Choate to a three-year contract, which gives him just one guaranteed year fewer than Matt Holliday, but I don't feel a need to get accustomed to him in the same way because he is the punter. He comes into the game; I get unduly excited when he uses his weird alien talent to devastating effect against a bunch of unprepared normals; he leaves immediately, if all goes according to plan, and somebody else finishes the inning. He's has led his league in appearances twice, and he's pitched 50 innings once.

He pitched to five batters on Thursday, which was nearly 20 percent of his season-to-date total.

He's Randy Choate, and at his current pace he'll probably face 10 or 15 batters more than Trevor Rosenthal has so far.

Here are some lists.

Five Cardinals pitchers who faced more batters than Choate has so far

Chad Hutchinson, 2001
Mark Worrell, 2008
Bryan Augenstein, 2011
Josh Pearce, twice
Carmen Cali, twice

When will Randy Choate face more batters than my favorite anonymous Cardinals journeyman?

Troy Cate: Mid-August, 2013
Mike MacDougal: Late September, 2013
Jorge Sosa: May, 2014
Sterling Hitchcock, Britt Reames: Early August, 2014
Victor Marte: Mid-August, 2014
Esteban Yan: Late 2014
Ron Villone, Travis Smith: Early 2015
Sidney Ponson: Late 2015
Jeff Weaver: 2016
Jeff Fassero: 2017
Gene Stechschulte, Mike Matthews: 2018
Kip Wells: 2020
Brett Tomko: 2021
Todd Wellemeyer: 2028

A few people have written recently (and pretty compellingly, I think) that a lot of things that make for optimal baseball strategy, from a sabermetric perspective—walks and strikeouts, particularly—are less-than-optimal for baseball as a spectator sport.

I'm conflicted about lefty specialists. I can grant these two points to the aesthetics crowd: The actual mechanics of putting in a lefty reliever and then taking him out again after six pitches are incredibly tedious, and the kind of specialization that breeds lefty relief pitchers makes baseball feel less like an organic game and more like a weirdly arbitrary out-making bureaucracy.

But I love lefty specialists because they're the ungainly result of the kind of what-if questions we normally can't answer. What if teams set up platoons based on the ability to hit certain pitches? Football fans are left to speculate about the value of ROBO-PUNTER (comment six), but every so often baseball surfaces players with one hilariously overgrown skill for managers' (and our) amusement. What if a guy just swung as hard as he could every time? What if you never swung the bat?

What if you were so mediocre against right-handed hitters that you basically had to walk all of them?

Mets at Cardinals Open Thread: Dillon Gee vs. John Gast

2013-05-15T00:21:29Z

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Mon 05/13	WP: Lance Lynn (6 - 1) SV: Edward Mujica LP: Scott Rice (1 - 3)	6 - 3 win
New York Mets Amazin' Avenue @ St. Louis Cardinals Viva El Birdos Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 8:15 PM EDT Busch Stadium Dillon Gee vs John Gast Mostly clear. Winds blowing out to left field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 80. Complete Coverage >
Wed 05/15		8:15 PM EDT
Thu 05/16		1:45 PM EDT

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Mon 05/13	WP: Lance Lynn (6 - 1) SV: Edward Mujica LP: Scott Rice (1 - 3)	6 - 3 win
New York Mets Amazin' Avenue @ St. Louis Cardinals Viva El Birdos Tuesday, May 14, 2013, 8:15 PM EDT Busch Stadium Dillon Gee vs John Gast Mostly clear. Winds blowing out to left field at 5-10 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 80. Complete Coverage >
Wed 05/15		8:15 PM EDT
Thu 05/16		1:45 PM EDT

Baseball Nation: All Posts by Dan Moore

Play the St. Louis Cardinals rotation graveyard-whistling home game

Cardinals at Padres Open Thread: Adam Wainwright vs. Edinson Volquez

Current Series

Padres lead the series 1-0

Current Series

Padres lead the series 1-0

On Shelby Miller and the St. Louis Cardinals losing to Jason Marquis

Brewers at Cardinals open thread: Marco Estrada vs. Lance Lynn

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Jaime Garcia injury: Mitchell Boggs's return and the St. Louis Cardinals' replacements

Pete Kozma, Ty Wigginton, and the question Ryan Jackson actually answers

Toward a Unified Theory of Ty Wigginton

When will Randy Choate face more batters than your favorite anonymous St. Louis Cardinals journeyman?

Five Cardinals pitchers who faced more batters than Choate has so far

When will Randy Choate face more batters than my favorite anonymous Cardinals journeyman?

Mets at Cardinals Open Thread: Dillon Gee vs. John Gast

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0

Current Series

Cardinals lead the series 1-0