So Far From Home

The Cards have won six straight series. Just as in 2005, it seems the team got a little worse than the previous season, but they just keep on winning. Once again, everyone should be reminded how much we all should appreciate the continual success of the La Russa era - like him or not.

In other news, Chris Carpenter missed a start with an inflamed bursa sac. While that's fun to say, I'm sure it's not fun to have, especially if you have to pitch in a major-league game. Ironically, this continued my streak of players going down soon after yours truly made a purchase of their jersey (see: Warner, Kurt, & McGwire, Mark - hopefully this one won't turn out as badly). So perhaps skipping Carp wasn't the worst thing in the world, especially with Sidney Ponson scheduled to come off the DL to pitch Saturday night against the Padres. El Sid hasn't been a big strikeout guy - 13 K/11 BB in 32 IP - but he's managed to not kill the Cards by keeping his ERA under 3.00 thus far despite some lackluster peripherals. Ironically, including Reyes' sterling outing in Kansas City, the Cardinals "fifth" slot has the lowest ERA (2.39) of the entire starting rotation. Ponson's re-appearance also causes Mark Mulder's start to get bumped back a day, creating a solid matchup on Sunday with the Pads' scheduled starter, ace Jake Peavy.

Note: Incidentally, I'll be heading out to the games in San Diego this weekend. I'll be back with a full review of Petco Park, and perhaps also one of the Big A, where I'll hopefully be going on Saturday night after the Cards play. Cross your fingers for a good series.

The Perfect Player?

Those of you familiar with The Onion ("America's Finest News Source") may have seen this one, but I find it too good not to share:

Mad Sabermetrician Creates The Perfect Baseball Player's Statistics

I'll resist the temptation to just post it in its entirety (it's very short), but I was both amused and a bit pleased to read the last line of the piece:

Neeman's earlier attempts to produce the perfect player's statistics failed, as each of his first eight results was identical to Albert Pujols' 2005 batting line.

Help Wanted

I'm now up to Chaos, and I think I may be better served to start watching old episodes of Kung-Fu. In the mean time, Kurt C is looking for a copy of Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS. If you can find anything, can you drop me a line or leave a comment? I've checked MLB.com, which should have it somewhere or the other, but I don't have much luck navigating that site. Actually I watch Cardinals games via MLB.tv, and after hearing

Tying run at second, two out... Palmeiro... over the head of Jenks... Uribe charges, throws... Out! And the White Sox have won the World Series!

from Joe Buck about a hundred times this year, I'm convinced MLB.com is actively discouraging me from spending money there.

In other developments, I recently received a list-serve email from the San Diego Padres. Here are the highlights:

PRIMARY DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:

Assist with database manipulation and integrity
Assist with internal web coding and building
Assist with research projects
Assist with data entry

SPECIAL INTERNSHIP PROJECTS TO BE COMPLETED:

Help complete internal database/website functionality
Implement data integrity and uniform schemas

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

Currently enrolled student in a college or university or recent graduate
within 2 years majoring in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or
some other form of a Science/Analytical background.

Experience with data manipulation (PGSQL preferred).

Advanced knowledge of PHP5.

Familiarity with a scripting language (Perl, Python, or Ruby
preferred).

Flexible scheduling - may be required to work evenings, weekends and
holidays as needed for position.

For us stat-head amateurs, that's a reminder that modern-day baseball teams have the kind of information we don't have. Perhaps more importantly, they should know which data is meaningful and which is noise. For example, any numbers-guy worth his salt knew that Junior Spivey had a much better track record than Aaron Miles, but Miles presently sports a .425 on-base average in the bigs and Spivey's hitting .175 in Memphis (and may be headed to further surgery). Sample size yadda yadda yadda, but it certainly looks like somebody knew what they were doing. I don't want to give the Cardinals a free pass -- I think So Taguchi was in a crucial pinch hitting role Sunday because of a silly bases loaded split -- but blindly trusting the Cardinals brass isn't a bad forecasting method.

Some more mundane questions:

• When does the Spivey Experiment end? He homered tonight, but both sides must know Junior's odds of playing in St. Louis get dimmer by the day.

• Could Juan Encarnacion please have more than a walk per month? Currently he has fewer walks than Skip Schumaker and Mark Mulder.

• Why do the Cardinals have 8 relievers on the roster? OK, it fills two tables for bridge in the bullpen. So I'll ask why would you ever double-switch when you have 8 freaking relievers on the roster?

• How long will it take the other Cardinals brass to figure out radio? I did some traveling last week and I know missed having KMOX serving up games.

• Can this be right, that the Cardinals' playoff chances went from 49% to 58% during one Saturday in May? Now it was a near-perfect day with the Cardinals winning while everyone else in the NL Central lost, but, geez, it's May.

Randomness

I've been off thinking a little too much. In particular, I've been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, and, well, let's go to a table. Suppose an investor has a mythical portfolio that has an a priori 15% annual "real return" and a 10% "error rate". This investor has a magic spreadsheet hooked up to Bloomberg and he can get an instaneous update on his portfolio. This table describes what he'll see:

PROBABILITY OF MAKING MONEY AT DIFFERENT SCALES

Scale	Probability
1 year	93%
1 quarter	77%
1 month	67%
1 day	54%
1 hour	51.3%
1 minute	50.17%
1 second	50.02%

That's a good portfolio, but if this investor of ours is refreshing his portfolio every couple of seconds, then he's going to ride a roller coaster. Taleb further claims that the stress of negative news isn't evened-out by the (more frequent) moments of positive news. In other words, it's in this investor's best interests to check his portfolio infrequently.

This is all a long-winded way of saying I'm trying not to focus on the ups-and-downs of the baseball season. OK, that's not quite right, since I'm watching or listening to every game (Mulder is Mulder again, Encarnacion's getting a walk per month and John Gall must've done something unspeakably awful). I'm trying not to analyze the ups-and-downs. In spite of the methods used to boost the signal-to-noise ratios in-season (e.g., for pitchers use K/BB instead of W/L or, of course, good ole-fashioned scouting), there's still a lot of noise in the data.

Taleb noted that he'll allow himself to be fooled by randomness, like wearing a lucky tie or some similar superstition. In fact, he claims these kinds of irrational emotions are necessary for survival. In this case, there's something to be said for the "poetry of baseball", as cliched as that sounds. Again though, losing myself in the analysis of randomness can take me down many blind alleys, and I'm getting too old for that. That's leaving me at a loss for words.

* * * * *

One thing I've decided has decent signal is BPro's Postseason Odds Report, since it makes use of a larger data set. Even if PECOTA's too high on the Brewers, it changes the way I'm looking at the pennant race. The Cardinals aren't as strong as their record indicates, in large part because they've played so many games against the dregs of the National League (Washington, Florida, Pittsburgh, Chicago), and that needs to be accounted for. This could be a pretty good fight.

Two idle thoughts:

(1) Did you see in the PD that Mulder's back pain goes back to 2000? While no pitcher's ever perfectly healthy, I suppose this says something about the clean bill of health given to Mulder at the time of the trade.

(2) Dave Duncan on Sidney Ponson's injury: "We have two off days in the next 10 days. Hopefully we can work it out and go with just four pitchers." Instead of being hopeful that they can get by on four starters, isn't this an opportunity for Anthony Reyes?

From Beyond the Diamond

I'm slightly embarrassed to enter this post alongside so much great commentary offered by Rob and MO Boiler and salvo, but Cardinal Nation is more than just what happens to the guys in uniform and the astute observations of slightly obsessive fans.

Here is a great video of a Card fan showing two Cubbie chicks how to dance in a new stadium. I guess the view of the Arch plus a few $9 beers was overwhelming.

And here is a picture of the recent Immigrant Protest. Have we stopped to think what would happen to baseball in all this debate? Cardinal fans are everywhere...

The loneliest number...

Through last night, the Cardinals have failed to produce a multi-run inning in five of their last six games....

Why is this team unable to score more than one run in an inning?

Lack of OBP in front of the thunder? Too many weak sticks sprinkled throughout the lineup? No Rolen? Hitters not working deep into counts? Bad baserunning? Bad luck?

Let's see if we can break through against the struggling Andy Pettitte tonight, with, I'm hoping, a healthy Scott Rolen in the lineup.

Viva 2003

The Cards got swept by the Reds tonight in a game reminiscent of several in the first week of May, 2003. Flashbacks are imminent - as in why Brian Falkenborg (who?) opened the bottom of the 9th on the mound in a tie game. Can you say Dustin Hermanson? I'll admit, I'd been paying so little attention to the Cards lately that I didn't even know Falkenborg had been called up. Izzy's struggles have obviously caused greater issues within the bullpen, but, with Looper pitching better, why put him in so early (bottom 7th) against the bottom of the Reds' lineup? And then leave Falkenborg in to start the 9th with a slew of other right-handers available in the pen? ...Interesting, Tony. With the lineup struggling aside from God and a few others, the Cards can't afford to see the bullpen fail like it did today - especially with the chance to pick up a big win against a divisional opponent on Albert's day off.