I'm Ready For February

I spent the week following basketball, and my attentions were rewarded. Michigan had its best week since 1998 and it's now back in the Top 25 for the first time since then. I caught a Pacers game on Friday, my first viewing of LeBron James in person. He's a remarkable ballplayer, able to drive to the basket, to shoot jumpers without squaring-up (something he probably shouldn't do anyway), and to hit the open man even if he's 30 feet away. Even if you're a lukewarm NBA fan, I'd recommend seeing him if you get the chance, the same way I'd recommend listening to Willie Nelson even though I can't stand country music. I also saw Butler beat Wright State on Saturday. Butler isn't a bad team, around 80th in the latest Sagarins and they have a shot at making the NCAA Tournament if they can get around Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the conference tourney. But what struck me is that those Butler kids are the same age as LeBron and no individual could match LeBron in one single skill except free throw shooting.

Anyway, it's a slow time of year for Cardinals fans. Mark Mulder evidently won't play in the WBC; the Dutch team seems to have named its roster without consulting the players. Isn't that why we fought the War of 1812? Tony LaRussa is saying his usual silly stuff heading into spring training, and for now I just want to ignore it. Assistant GM John Mozeliak may be headed to Cincinnati, in which case the Reds' attempt to clone the Cardinals' organization will have begun in earnest. I don't know what exactly Mozeliak does, so that's not exactly pulling my eyes away from Michigan's upcoming schedule.

With my focus elsewhere and my lack of interest in Baseball Prospectus already present, I didn't notice that PECOTAs were released last week to subscribers. No real surprises there, as you'd expect from computer projections. PECOTA's not as bullish about Rule 5 pick Juan Mateo (5.14 ERA) as ZiPS, the only noteworthy number I could dig from the spreadsheet. I don't play fantasy baseball, so from my standpoint PECOTA's main advantage over its competitors is its pretty presentation, specifically the comparables. It feels like pseudo-science, but it fleshes out the projection to some extent. There are some odd ones. For example, in spite of a mediocre forecast, Chris Duncan's top comps include Derrek Lee and Nick Johnson. In spite of a good forecast (3.39 ERA), Chris Carpenter's top comps are Erik Hanson, Shane Reynolds and Jon Lieber. Hmm, Reynolds was a better pitcher than I remembered.

Pujols's top comp is Frank Robinson -- learn from your father's mistake, Mr. DeWitt. My favorite list is for John Rodriguez: Michael Tucker, Irv Noren and George Altman. I'll admit I didn't know much about Noren and Altman, but it's cool seeing J-Rod matched up with a couple of former All-Stars.

I did a little googling on PECOTA and found this year-old post at USS Mariner. It's a doubly cautionary tale about these kinds of projections. On one hand, as Zumsteg in essence says, it's just a model. It can't encompass all variables and even if it could, there's always the problem that reality won't be right (see Tony Womack's 2004 season). While many have understood this for a while, I'm just starting to appreciate fully the limits to modeling. On the other hand though, well, there's a subtext to that USSM post. Mariners fans love Ichiro and they liked the Beltre signing a year ago -- he was 26 and coming off an MVP-caliber season -- but they didn't love PECOTA's projections so much. In spite of its limitations, PECOTA pretty much nailed Ichiro (311 / 355 / 415 v. 303 / 350 / 436) and you know how things turned out with Adrian Beltre. Unless you do a boatload of research, you won't outsmart the model, especially with hitters. And if you're not careful, playing with the numbers could lead you to some awful conclusions.

K Files, Season Two

I just got my Hardball Times Annual, and they handicapped the Netherlands' chances by saying their pitching is weak. So the GM for the Netherlands went out and got Mark Mulder and Dan Haren. OK, Haren is evidently a maybe, as he's on the US list as well.

With the way his peripherals have gone the last two seasons (more on that in a moment) I've been wondering if Mulder's pitching through an injury, and this would suggest the answer is no. That is to say, I sorta regard this as good news, even though in theory there is some injury risk here. It's not just the confirmation that Mulder isn't hurt, either. Mulder's body language on the hill is that of somebody who would rather be elsewhere, probably the golf course in this case. These extracurricular activities speak otherwise though.

* * * * *

I'm a little bit tired of looking at Mulder's numbers, but his decline in strikeouts goosed me into checking the latest Lahman database to see what exactly happens when pitchers' K-rates drop. I mean, I hear Monty Python yelling "Run Away!" when I look at pitchers like Mulder, so I decided to see if the bunny is as vicious as they claim. The query I set up had three criteria:

(1) The pitcher had to have at least three consecutive post-war seasons with 150 innings pitched.
(2) His K-per-nine in the first season had to be within 1.00 of Mulder's 2003 rate of 6.17.
(3) His K-rate in the first season had to be 25% more than it was in the third season.

Then I looked at the year-after for each pitcher. There are some ugly names on the list. For example, the legendary 1974 season for Steve Blass shows up as a projection comp for Mulder in 2006. Sidney Ponson's malodorous 2005 season pops up, as does Scott Erickson's 2000 season. Then again, there are some good names, like Tommy John (1971 and 1981 -- Mark Mulder is Tommy John), Tom Glavine (1994), Warren Spahn (1955 and 1963), and most impressive of all, John Tudor in 1985. Like Mulder, Tudor even had the league switch in his third year that should've fattened his K-rate. Doug Drabek appears twice, once good (1990, when he won the Cy Young) and once not so good (1998, when he was done).

All this is to say, there were some good years and some bad years. Well, that's not helpful is it? Weighting by innings, the average ERA is 3.83. Weighting by pitcher, the average ERA is 4.15. Maybe if I park-adjust or era-adjust or maybe if I include other peripherals or maybe if I look at age... then things would look a little different, but on the first pass I didn't find a smoking gun, or a smoking man for that matter.

* * * * *

I live in Indianapolis, but I haven't followed other sports much this offseason. Wednesday night will change that, as my alma mater squares off against Mulder's in college basketball. It's the biggest game Michigan's played since their last trip to the NCAA tournament in 1998. Yes, it's been that long and, no, Quinn Snyder isn't the worst coach on the face of the earth.

Should the Pitcher be pulled

I havn't played with this much, but I wanted to put it up so people can look at it:

Should the pitcher be pulled. It's a data visualization tool to help managers decide if the pitcher should be pulled. As a web application it's great, but I'm not sure how usefull it is. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Pitcher Ages

I greeted the news that the Cardinals signed Jeff Nelson with a sigh of relief, no awful wordplay intended. Nelson's the kind of player for whom a minor league deal makes sense, since he's been good over his career and at last check he still does a decent job against right-handed batters. One thing I didn't realize about Nelson until Monday was that he's 6'8". That and the three-quarters motion suggest the splits aren't a fluke.

I'm certainly not a fan of Jeff Nelson -- honestly I care more about whether Pujols will be on the 2016 roster -- but this could add a little depth while making Kirk Rueter's chances a tad smaller. Unless you're Brad Thompson's or Juan Mateo's accountant, the worst that can be said about this deal is that the 7th and 8th innings of Cardinal games could go on forever this year with all the likely L/R pitching changes. While I suppose we can complain about LaRussa's veterans, this isn't Jeff Fassero.

The latest Lahman database is out, and seeing as the Cardinals apparently have decided Sidney Ponson presently stands ahead of Anthony Reyes in the starting pitchers' derby, I've investigated recent preferences for pitcher ages.

The Nelson news makes the issue all the more relevant. Here's a breakdown of Cardinal pitchers' inning by ages, compared to the rest of baseball during the LaRussa Era:

I've prorated the others down to 14,501.3 innings so they scale similarly. This is a bit of a surprise to me. Well, the bias against 23-26 year-olds isn't a surprise, but the tail isn't that different. For example, I didn't realize that the Cardinals have had less than fifty innings total from three 38 year-old pitchers. Er, they've had three 38 year-old players pitch, but Bonilla and Gaetti aren't really pitchers. Anyway, the bias against young pitchers seems to favor 28-32 year-old pitchers, not geezers. Nelson incidentally will be 39 this year and Ponson will be 29. With his above-average G/F ratio and reputation for decent "stuff", Ponson looks like a prototypical TLR/DD pitcher.

Hmm, which is proper grammar, "less innings" or "fewer innings"?

There's an obvious response to the bias against very young pitchers found in the first graph: The Cardinals have been in win-now mode and they really don't have the luxury (I think that's how they see it) of sorting through young starters. So let's compare them against teams that have made the playoffs over the same period:

An a-ha moment. Same bias for guys right around the age of 30, but the bias is two-sided here. While playoff teams seem to prefer pitchers in the 27-32 age range, the Cardinals are a little more concentrated than most. Their distribution of innings is a little steeper and a little narrower. I have a graph for a World Series winners, but it's a mess. It seemed to indicate the key to winning the World Series over the last ten years is having a 37 year-old -- 36 and 38 don't work -- starter. Not very helpful.

One last graph, prompted by a recent VEB entry:

No surprise there. Whitey's profile looks similar to the "others" in the first graph, except he gave innings to 25 year-olds rather than 30 year-olds. Once again we see that the current braintrust like pitchers around the age of 30, but even lined-up against Whitey, there isn't significant prejudice for pitchers over the age of 32.

Significant Dates in St. Louis Baseball History

Today is the 96^th anniversary of the birth of Jerome Hanna "Dizzy" Dean, the legendary Hall of Famer and sparkplug of The Gashouse Gang (the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, who were World Series Champions that year). Note: some sources give Dean's birth name as Jay Hanna Dean vice Jerome Hanna Dean.

Not only was Ol' Diz one of the greatest pitchers of all time, he was also one of the most memorable characters the National Pastime ever produced. Dizzy pitched one game for the Cardinals in 1930 (a complete game win, in which he allowed only three hits and one run), and then made the team for keeps in 1931. In 1934 his brother Paul, also a Cardinal farmhand in earlier years, joined the team with his brother (the Dean brothers both hailed from rural Lucas, Arkansas, then squarely in Cardinals territory, so it was unremarkable that both came up in that organization). Dizzy, never modest about his own ability, was not modest about his brother's ability, either. "Me and Paul will probably win forty games." People thought he was merely bragging, but the Deans made good on Dizzy's prediction; Dizzy went 30-7, and was voted National League Most Valuable Player (Dizzy is the last 30 game winner in the National League; since that campaign only Denny McLain of the American League's 1968 Detroit Tigers has won 30 or more games in a single season in the majors), while Paul went 19-11; together the brothers won 9 more games than Dizzy predicted. Not only that, but the Cardinals went 90-63 for the season to win the National League championship, and then beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, 4 games to 3. For that matter, the World Series was pretty much "The Dizzy and Paul Show" (some journalists dubbed Paul "Daffy", as apparently they liked the alliteration of "Dizzy and Daffy", but in truth poor Paul was hardly the character that Dizzy was, and never really lived up to that nickname), as Dizzy won two games and Paul won two games--all the Cardinals' World Series victories in 1934 were with one of the two Dean brothers on the mound.

After being hit on the foot by a line drive by Earl Averill of the Cleveland Indians during the 1937 All Star Game, and sustaining a fracture of his big toe as a result (Dizzy's comment on being informed of the injury: "Fractured? Hell, the damn thing's broken!!"), Dizzy tried to come back too soon, and his attempts to favor the foot injury caused him to injure his arm seriously, thus ending his career too early. The Cardinals traded him to the Chicago Cubs in 1938, where he finished out the last four years of his career as a mere shadow of his former dominating self (not counting a one game, 4 inning appearance pitching for the St. Louis Browns in 1947). Despite his shortened career, Dizzy was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America voters in 1953.

After his baseball career, Dizzy made a name for himself as a broadcaster. Some memorable stories deal with Dizzy's tenure as radio broadcaster for the St. Louis Browns. My favorite: one day, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, on a state visit to the United States, made a stop in St. Louis, and was a special guest at a Browns game that day. Unfortunately, because of delays at the other functions the Queen had to attend that day, she arrived at the game late. As is usual with such high level VIPs, her arrival caused a bit of commotion in the area of Sportsmans' Park where she was to sit, and the game was delayed while Her Highness took her seat. Dizzy, broadcasting the game that day, mentioned to his radio audience that the game was being delayed because of some fuss surrounding "some fat lady sitting in the first base side boxes". Horrified, a Browns team executive rushed up to the broadcast booth to tell Dizzy the cause of the interruption. Thus informed, Dizzy turned to his microphone and said, "Well, folks, I've just been told that the fat lady causing all the ruckus in the first base boxes is the Queen of Holland!"

From his job broadcasting for the Browns, Dizzy broadcast national games. From 1960-65 he paired with fellow Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese to broadcast the national "Game of the Week" on CBS. In that capacity, Dizzy and Pee Wee paired to bring us one of the great dialogues in all of sports broadcasting:

REESE: Well, Diz, I have to say... We've been watching that young man pitch a pretty good game here, and I have to ask you something. You used to be a pitcher, and you've been watching that young man pitch. Perhaps you can tell the listening audience what that boy is throwing today.
DEAN: Yes, Pee Wee, I used to be a pitcher, and I've been watching him pitch all afternoon, and I think that makes me enough of an expert to tell you that this afternoon, what that boy has been throwing is a baseball.

I can think of no better summary than that voiced by Dean's long time Cardinals teammate (including the '34 World Series Champions), Pepper Martin:

When ole Diz was out there pitching it was more than just another ballgame. It was a regular three-ring circus and everybody was wide awake and enjoying being alive.

A few choice "Deanisms":

Son, what kind of pitch would you like to miss? [to a batter]

It ain't braggin' if you can back it up. [Sometimes rendered as "It ain't braggin' if you can do it."]

I never keep a scorecard or the batting averages. I hate statistics. What I got to know, I keep in my head.

Anybody who's ever had the privilege of seeing me play knows that I am the greatest pitcher in the world.

All ballplayers want to wind up their career with the Cubs, Giants or Yankees. They just can't help it.

I ain't what I used to be, but who the hell is?

I won twenty-eight games in 1935 and I couldn't believe my eyes when the Cards send me a contract with a cut in salary. Mr. Rickey said I deserved a cut because I didn't win thirty games.

It puzzles me how they know what corners are good for filling stations. Just how did they know gas and oil was under there?

Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say 'isn't' and they ain't eating.

Mr. Rickey, I'll put more people in the park than anybody since Babe Ruth. [Dizzy, making the case for a salary increase in the days before arbitration.]

Sure I eat what I advertise. Sure I eat Wheaties for breakfast. A good bowl of Wheaties with bourbon can't be beat.

The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing. [In one game, Dizzy "broke up" a double play when, as the lead runner, his head "intercepted" the throw from second to first. Stunned by the play, Dizzy was taken to a hospital for an examination. The headline in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat the next morning read: X-RAYS OF DEAN'S HEAD REVEAL NOTHING. Dizzy probably borrowed the headline for his own self-deprecating wisecrack.]

The dumber a pitcher is, the better. When he gets smart and tries to experiment with a lot of different pitches, he's in trouble. All I ever had was a fastball, a curve and a change up and I did pretty good.

The good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong body, a good right arm and a weak mind.

Anybody who's ever had the privilege of seeing me play knows that I am the greatest pitcher in the world.

I can't tell you why there's a delay, but stick your head out of the window and you'll know why. [Said by Dizzy during a rain delay. The background: Dizzy was broadcasting a St. Louis Browns home game during the World War II years. During that time broadcasters were not permitted to talk about the weather, for fear of providing the Axis with information that would be useful in planning air raids on U.S soil--at that time, there was a justifiable (though later unfounded) fear of such attack.]

The Cards had one pitcher who won fourteen straight games in a period of twenty-four days. Then when he lost his fifteenth game 1-0, his manager fined him fifty bucks.

Heck, if anybody told me I was setting a record I'd of got me some more strikeouts. [Dizzy's comment on setting the then single game strikeout record (in a game on July 30, 1933)]

Heck, if I knew that Paul was going to throw a no-hitter, I'da throwed one too. [Comment made to the press when Dizzy threw a two-hitter in the first game of a doubleheader. His brother Paul pitched the second game of the set, and threw a no-hitter.]

He must think I went to the Massachesetts Constitution of Technology. [Dizzy (who was not well educated), complaining about the vocabulary used by the very well educated Cardinals General Manager Branch Rickey]

Happy Birthday, Albert

Albert Pujols turns 26 today. Here are some deep thoughts on Pujols:

• There's always been talk that Pujols is older than he claims. The original basis for those claims is that Albert was really, really good in 2001. The problem though is that Pujols wasn't that good in 2000. Sure, a 930 OPS at A-ball is promising, but not if you're already 25. As Clay Davenport pointed out in 2004:

The more time a player has until he reaches 27, the more he is likely to improve. Moreover, the improvement is not linear; the average amount of improvement goes down as you get closer to age 27. A successful 20-year-old, on average, improves by more in one year than a successful 21-year-old does, and so on.

• With that in mind, I went looking for Pujols's 1999 stats in the Jayhawk League and instead I found this page:

Pujols could have been playing for the Red Sox. Boston came this close to drafting him in 1999, when it blew first-round picks on Rick Asadoorian, Brad Baker and Casey Fossum... [Red Sox scouting director Wayne] Britton asked Pujols, then an infielder at Maple Woods (Mo.) Community College, if he'd consider signing for ninth- or 10th-round money. Pujols said no, so Britton passed him up. The Cardinals took Pujols in the 13th round, initially offered him $10,000. He spent most of the summer of 1999 playing in the Jayhawk Summer League, then Pujols signed with the Cards for a $60,000 bonus late in August... (Jim Callis-Baseball America-11/04/04)

The idea of Pujols in a Red Sox uniform turns my stomach, which leads to...

• I'm pretty sure the Cardinals are done this offseason. The holes have been filled, and while Larry Bigbie and Braden Looper may not be ideal, it's not like the trade value of Jason Marquis or Adam Wainwright presents huge upgrade possibilities. So I'm starting to think about 2007 and beyond. I know a contract like Frank Thomas's can turn ugly -- Thomas's contract wasn't exactly an albatross either -- but I really would like to see Albert's contract extended way, way out there just the same. I understand there's risk involved. There's also the risk that the closer we get to the end of the current Pujols contract, the more likely he'll end up with the Yankees, Red Sox or Mets. Pujols can't challenge Stan Musial's career if he's playing in New York.

• In case you're wondering, the Bill James Handbook has Pujols ending up with 830 career homers, 3,845 career hits and 2,507 career RBIs. As it says at the top of the page though: These projections assume that the player will be healthy. Take out that assumption then according to Mr. James, Pujols has a 42% chance of 600 homers, a 33% chance at 3,000 hits and an 11% chance at matching Hank Aaron's RBI mark. My numerology side is hoping he ends at 3,630 hits.

• According to his page at BR, Pujols has the nickname "El Hombre." While there's a certain symmetry to that nickname, has anyone ever heard him called that?

• The sponsor of that BR page calls Albert "The Great Pujols." Three Nights in August expressed a similar reverence. It is reminiscent of Hemingway's Old Man's thoughts on DiMaggio, which I suppose it should be.

• BR has DiMaggio tops on Albert's comps, but its listing of Hal Trosky at #5 got me thinking of Leon Trotsky, who had a pretty good age-25 season of his own. Alexander the Great was pronounced a god during his age-25 campaign. Maybe Mozart works as a comp, although Mozart didn't have such a great decline phase.

• I still smile at the thought of that homer off Lidge. What sticks in my mind most prominently though is the sheer artistry of the arc as the ball went four-hundred-something feet. That and Lidge trying to bury his entire 6-5 frame under his glove.

• I didn't realize Pujols slugged 500 / 562 / 1000 in the 2004 NLCS. That was fun, wasn't it?

• Finally, on a note appropriate for today, a few months ago I was reading about Hispanics in pre-Jackie Robinson major league baseball. Apparently some players, particularly Cubans, were deemed completely fit for the majors if their skin was light enough. Some were partial qualifiers if their skin color was borderline. As a Cardinals fan, my thoughts turned to Albert Pujols. If he had been born 60 years earlier, would he have been allowed in the majors in 1941? If he had, would he have been stuck permanently behind the 1941 version of John Mabry even though he was obviously a better ballplayer? Would he have cleared waivers if he had been sent him back down to the farm? It's all absurd, and yet, that's the way it was.

Cincinnati: the New Lou

Interesting article in the Cincinnati Enquirer about the new (if approved) owners of the Reds and their Cardinal influences.

Having recently moved to the Natty, I've noticed some similarities between the two towns (river towns, storied baseball pasts, large German Catholic populations). But when I was eating lunch at Dewey's Pizza (owned by Andy DeWitt) in Kirkwood during the holidays, I began to wonder if there is some sort of devious plan afoot.

Are Cincinnatians trying to take over Saint Louis?

That's Better

• Sean Smith, aka Chone Smith, projects the NL Central a bit differently than I did. He has the Cardinals at 93-69, the best team in baseball.

• Matthew Leach has a mailbag up. He expects Brian Daubach will make the roster. I can't see LaRussa giving a spot to a 1B-only, though I don't see much point in roster spots for multiple backup middle infielders who can't hit. Leach also has the dimensions of new Busch:

LF foul pole -- 336 feet
LF power alley -- 375 feet
CF wall -- 400 feet
RF power alley -- 375 feet
RF foul pole -- 335 feet

• Remember when the Cubs' mighty farm system was going to steamroll the Cardinals? Corey Patterson was dumped, and the swag is slightly more valuable than Ernie Broglio. Of course the joke goes that Broglio is 70 years old. I don't know what you do with Patterson. He needs at-bats and he needs some good coaching, and the Venn diagram for teams bad enough to give him at-bats and teams with good coaching probably doesn't have a big intersection.

• I suppose I should care about the Hall of Fame candidacies, but I'm in a personal state of flux with regard to the Hall. If I want "best value" or similarly best statistics, then paying any heed to a BBWAA vote doesn't make much sense for me. I can churn through the Lahman database or Dave Studeman's Win Shares spreadsheet more effectively than Rick Hummel or Peter Gammons could.

That isn't to say there's no place for the Hall of Fame for stat-geeks. Actually Ken Arneson's line that "Awards are not measurements. Awards are celebrations." is more appropriate for the Hall of Fame than for MVP or the CYA. For example, Bruce Sutter's split-finger fastball seemed like it was from another planet when he started throwing it. I like to see that remembered. Bert Blyleven was a good pitcher who had some run-support problems (and maybe some choking problems), and that should be memorialized, even though I worry 26th century anthropologists will spend countless hours trying to understand the Cult of Blyleven. Andre Dawson was overrated, but let's not forget just how real collusion was. Who gets selected doesn't matter as much to me as good ballplayers getting some due.

• Carlos Lugo's Dominican Winter League report threw a little love Carmen Cali's way, implying Cali was a candidate for pitcher of the year. The Cardinals could have a very lefty-heavy bullpen at the end of 2006. I thought Hector Luna went to the DWL also, but I can't find anything, perhaps because SportsTicker has wiped out some regular season stats or perhaps because Luna didn't play. On the flipside to John Rodriguez's good news, Yadier Molina's 281 / 343 / 405 line against AA/AAA pitching probably falls in line with his unimpressive ZiPS projection of 264 / 315 / 369.

The J-Rod Update

This isn't a weekend post, since I have the pleasure of working on Saturday...

I guess the biggest Cardinals news in the last couple of weeks is John Rodriguez's sensational work in Puerto Rico. Matthew Leach mentioned J-Rod's walkoff homer to end the regular season, and from what my limited Spanish can deduce, it was a big one as Rodriguez's Manati squad finished a game ahead of Carolina thanks to Rodriguez's quadrangular. Rodriguez's final line was a gaudy 346 / 448 / 679 albeit in only 78 at-bats. Evidently it took the Valentin brothers a little bit of time to figure out Rodriguez can hit. Leach also pointed out that Rodriguez would've been among the top five in BA, OBP and SLG for the PR league if he'd had enough plate appearances.

Clay Davenport did some research a couple of years ago on the quality of these winter leagues and what the numbers might mean. The answers then were (a) the Puerto Rican league is about halfway between AA and AAA and (b) they mean a little bit, but don't get carried away. Still, like any worried Cardinal fan, I'll take any evidence I can get that Rodriguez won't go Bo Hart on us. Between his 2005 season, an 1100+ OPS in winter ball, and a solid 294 / 382 / 542 line at AAA Columbus in 2004, there's a lot to like about Johnny Rodriguez. The Phil Cuzzi at-bat can serve as one of those irrational markers in addition.

Even if he hits, there still are questions about his defense. See here (versus other leftfielders) or here for some numbers. Al Hrabosky thought/hoped it was the tall major league stadia that caused Rodriguez problems, in which case the shorter new Busch could help. However as fate would have it, I'm the world's worst softball outfielder among those with less than 15% body fat, and I see a lot of me in Rodriguez in the outfield, which obviously isn't a good thing. Just as you can't teach a color-blind man the difference between red and green, it's possible Rodriguez doesn't have the physical equipment to track flyballs. Naturally Rodriguez is a better athlete than I am, but then again, so is Manny Ramirez.

* * *

I've been looking for a $10 page at Baseball-Reference, and it was down to John Rodriguez, Al Reyes and the 1942 Cardinals, probably the greatest Cardinals team ever. J-Rod's mini-Bobby Thomson was the sign from the heavens I needed, and so I've left a message for Tony LaRussa and our Brewer fan friends.

* * *

In an unrelated development, John Donovan of Sports Illustrated lists Chris Carpenter in his "Five Likely to Fall." Uh, sorta:

The only other time Carpenter, who turns 31 in April, threw as many as 200 innings in a year was 2001, and that was followed by a flameout in '02, shoulder surgery and a missed season in '03. That may not be the fate for the big right-hander in '06. Since 2000, there have been 10 seasons of 241-plus innings by pitchers over 30 (Randy Johnson has four of them), and the year after has been better in about half the cases.

Catching Up

A notes entry:

• Fungoes notes that Pujols projects to be the Triple Crown winner according to ZiPS. Dan Szymborski showed up and posted this long comment that's worth a look:

These are purely computer-generated projections - I like to keep what the computer says and what I think separate. What's taken into account is the past years (with the most recent past year with the heaviest weighting, as is typical with these projections), historical aging trends by player type (this is something I've been meaning to compress into a presentation for a while, but haven't gotten around to it) and historical aging trends for certain indicators. They are translated to the future team's park and my estimate of the run environment (I weight the last 3 years since I don't have a time machine!)... It seems sort of odd for someone who's developed a complex projection tool to be saying this, but I probably have less faith in projections than most of the big stat geeks.

Darn it, I really meant to use the phrase "starting point" in the ZiPS entry. Using ZiPS as a starting point, I'd guess the Cardinals are a 92-93 win team, but I don't have good reads on guys like Mulder and Bigbie. I can see Mulder winning the Cy Young, pitching like he did from 2001 to 2003 (compare Mulder's 2000 and 2005 seasons), and I can see Mulder being released in mid-July.

• Scott of CN has a bias series up. You know, Hector Luna does remind me of a rodent and I'm not exactly sure why. This merits further study. Scott touches on a point about first base coaches. What does Dave McKay do and why has he been doing it for Tony LaRussa for so long? I mean, I once attended a minor league game where the Chicken was the 1B coach for the home team. There's got to be more to Dave McKay.

Having just finished a book on the 1934 season, I've also been wondering what the gut reaction to Dizzy Dean would've been if the media complex had been then what it is now. He bragged, he put down some of his teammates and of course he also had his mid-season strike and suspension (unrelated to the strike). While what I read didn't portray any kind of mean streak, ole Diz would've been perfect fodder for talk radio and the Internet. In 1934 they'd chant "We Want Dean!" at games, but it doesn't take a big leap to see Dean popularly perceived like Terrell Owens in 2006.

A commenter at CN pointed out this weird picture of Pujols wearing a #68 jersey. The Cardinals front office is pondering the merchandising opportunities.

• I've been playing around with pitching numbers from Tangotiger's website and running them through his FIP formula. Some quick and dirty analysis suggests that pitchers as a group decline from Day One, basically putting on 5-10 points of ERA each and every year. Obviously you'll find the occasional Carp swimming upstream or a MattyMo going faster than the current, but it's a consistent slide from start to finish. Tango's charts for K-rates suggest the best way to get power pitching is to pick it off the tree, because after it's been in the barrel for a few years it's rotted some. Anthony Reyes, Anthony Reyes, Anthony Reyes.

Kinda related to what Szymborski and CN are saying, the more I look at pitcher numbers, the more sympathetic I am to the idea of going with your gut. The actuarial models like ZiPS don't seem to have a lot of use beyond serving as a sanity check to avoid a rotation back-end of Tomko, Stephenson and Simontacchi.

• I haven't lived in St. Louis in many, many years and when I go back, I generally don't venture far from the stadium. So I'm wondering if the Civic Courts Building is an inside joke. From Michael's Architecture Page:

On top of the pyramid are two aluminum griffins that are twelve feet tall. Unlike mythological griffins, they have human faces that symbolize human mercy tempering justice.

Wow. Somebody paid money to put those things on top of that building?

The House that Albert Built

For those of us who can't make it down to the new stadium whenever we want, here's a glimpse of the progress as of the New Year. (Thanks to D-Mac for the pics.)

Zippity Doo Da

Not-so-happy new year!

ZiPS are up for the Cardinals and the executive summary isn't pretty. With the standard caveats about "computer projections" -- and the caveats shouldn't be taken lightly -- I've got the Cardinals scoring 810 runs and giving up 740, which would sum to a 88-win team. The problem isn't the offense, even with modest assumptions regarding production from the middle infield, Larry Bigbie and Yadier Molina. Rather it's the pitching, specifically the starting pitching. Again, there's stuff here that I don't think will happen in reality. ZiPS has left me with Mark Mulder's ennui face though.

Before I get to the gory details, a couple of notes:

• I did this last year and actually did pretty well according to BPro's adjusted standings. Of course there's the ongoing question of whether those extra 8 or 9 wins are luck or skill. I don't have a strong gut feeling, one way or the other.

• Unfortunately the Cardinals are moving into a new park. We're all going to live on the assumption that the Cardinals offense will be helped/hurt as much as the defense. Actually if the park plays like, say, Petco, that probably isn't the case for all those groundball pitchers. (And I'll be really ticked if we have to do those home/road splits for Pujols and Edmonds the same way they're done with Brian Giles. This could cost Edmonds a shot at Cooperstown and Pujols a shot at Musial.)

Numbers and notes below the fold.

First the hitters, using Extrapolated Runs:

PLAYER           BA   OBP   SLG    AB      XR  
Pujols         .337  .434  .652   575   144.8 
Edmonds*       .269  .387  .542   475    96.8 
Rolen          .285  .384  .522   525    99.4 
Spivey         .273  .356  .442   275    41.5 
Encarnacion    .284  .342  .450   525    75.6 
Rodriguez*     .259  .331  .461   300    45.0 
Eckstein       .284  .351  .372   550    69.0 
Redman         .263  .324  .420    50     6.5 
Bigbie*        .257  .328  .384   350    44.6 
Gall           .256  .314  .404    25     3.1 
Taguchi        .274  .309  .386   250    28.8 
Hernandez      .260  .335  .340    25     2.9 
Molina         .264  .315  .369   450    50.8 
Miles#         .270  .311  .365   200    21.7 
Cruz           .270  .299  .384   200    21.3 
Duncan*        .232  .309  .366    25     2.9 
Luna           .253  .314  .351   225    24.4 
Schumaker*     .257  .305  .339    25     2.5 
Hanson*        .235  .284  .359    25     2.5 
Bennett        .236  .303  .306   150    13.7 
Pitchers       .176  .211  .227   340    11.9 
TOTAL          .271  .340  .435 5,565   809.7 

• Pujols could have a decent little career, couldn't he? Some folks in my line of work spend their time projecting what will happen to their companies if a massive pandemic hits. My knee-jerk response is that (a) your company will go out of business and (b) nobody will give a rat's behind because everybody will be too busy trying to survive. That is to say, all we need to know about a serious Pujols injury is that it would very bad. The idea of Chris Duncan replacing Pujols in the lineup should provide plenty of comic material for jealous fans of NL Central rivals.

• Eckstein and Encarnacion's projections look aggressive, but Bigbie apparently is conservative. I've also got 600 at-bats in there for Cruz, Miles and Luna, which is a disgusting thought really. While this is Tony LaRussa's world, Prentice Redman's a decent enough RH OF that he should be on the roster over a fourth infielder who gets most of his playing time in the outfield. Besides, his middle name is Montezz.

• Just going by the stat lines Michel Hernandez looks like an improvement over Bennett. Why is Gary Bennett on the team again?

The pitchers:

PITCHER                ERA     IP      RA 
Isringhausen          3.10     60      23
Carpenter             3.16    180      69
Reyes                 3.72    130      59
Thompson              3.76     60      27
Looper                4.07     70      35
Flores*               4.13     40      20
Mateo                 4.21     35      18
Mulder*               4.22    180      92
Wainwright            4.50     70      38
Suppan                4.52    180      99
Ponson                4.57    160      89
Marquis               4.68    180     103
Johnson*              4.82     20      12
Rincon*               4.91     40      24
Rundles*              4.91     10       5
Cali*                 5.35     10       7
Pomeranz              5.52     10       7
Voyles                5.56     10       7
Webb                  5.77     10       7 
TOTAL                 4.58  1,455     741

• I know nothing, nothing about Rundles, Voyles and Webb and I doubt they'll be on the roster. They're this year's Jarvis, Journell and Pulsipher for projection purposes.

• I thought Jocketty was loopy when he said his main focus was starting pitching. Now I understand a little better why he was so hot for AJ Burnett.

• Suppan's projected ERA was 4.50 for 2004 and 4.52 for 2005. Maybe his whole Glavine-like "not giving in to good hitters" thing doesn't register with ZiPS. Or maybe Suppan's been lucky, although he's rattled off enough average seasons that I'd give him the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand you have Jason Marquis. I gave up my dream of being an NBA center at an early age and so spent my time learning fractions. Marquis has made more progress with his dream of being a great pitcher than I did with mine, but some day he'll have to accept his Suppan-esque role in life as an innings eater and shelve the curveball.

• In his recent interview with the Birdhouse, Jeff Luhnow said their high-powered projections for hitters aren't that different from the publicly available forecasts. It's the pitchers where they think they have the edge. Gee, I hope so. I'd guess MGL threw up his hands when asked to project a pitcher just out of jail. And thus I worry that the Cardinals' expectations for Sidney Ponson are based on experience with Bob Welch and Dennis Eckersley, and those comparisons just don't work for me. Welch had some great years with the Dodgers and Eckersley started the 1982 All-Star Game, while Ponson's muddled along. There seems to be an analogue for Nichols' Law of Catcher Defense, that the talents of players with personal problems are more highly regarded than they should be.

• Among the pitchers, the obvious downsides from the stats are Carpenter and Reyes. I'd feel better about both of them if Reyes had taken a few major league innings away from Carpenter. I made it twelve hours into the new year without a whine about LaRussa's handling of starting pitchers.

The Cardinals have their work cut out for them, don't they?