Dave Duncan: the Shiznit?

By the Iron_Throne

Every season when the postseason winds to a close, there are always managers fired, coaches hired, and the baseball pundits roast Larry Bowa or praise Dusty Baker for the quality of their work. But does any of us actually believe that a single manager can make the difference between an 80-82 record or winning a division? So many of the decisions in roster construction or bullpen usage are “by the book” that the number of decisions a manager makes can’t add up to that many wins over the course of a season. But the pitching coach seems to be different from the hitting coach, or the eight thousand bench coaches and basepath coaches each team carries. Leo Mazzone in Atlanta, Don Gullet in Cincinnati, and our own Dave Duncan are all credited with reclaiming lost arms from the garbage and making them into quality arms.

Now I’m hardly unbiased about Dunc. I have my very own Dave Duncan official jersey I wore to the NLDS game 4 and two games of the NLCS. I suppose with Tony I can take him or leave him, but the combination of Duncan and Walt Jocketty since 1996 has been the largest component of making the Cardinals the perennial contenders that have dominated the Central since 2000. One key to their success has been getting excellent value from their starting pitchers. The Cards have been able to save money on the rotation to pay for an extra All-Star hitter or two. How have the Cardinals brass been able to do this? Is it luck? Walt’s keen eye? Or is it Dunc’s miraculous skill in not only reviving lost arms but holding them together with spit and bailing wire?

I started this article with the idea of putting some semi-quantitative data together to justify my love of Dunc (which is ridiculous; love should be unconditional, not subject to tests. I’ll always love you Dunc! Call me! I'll never foget that night on the beach in Cabo!). Of course it turns out that you really can’t use the same metrics to measure both relievers and starters, and relief pitchers are far too variable year to year because of their small innings pitched. So I decided to use the metric SNLVAR from the baseballprospectus website to look at Duncan's starters. It stands for Support Neutral Value Above Replacement (Lineup adjusted). Essentially it is defense, ballpark, and opposing batter neutral. It works like a counting statistic, so more innings collected gives a higher number, which for starting pitchers is fine.

To see if Duncan could fix broken pitchers, I took the three years a starter pitched before he came under Dunc’s tutelage, weighted more heavily for the most recent seasons, and the seasons he pitched for Duncan, weighted more towards the first season under Dunc (I weighted the seasons 135|531 where there were three seasons, and 5.5 | 3.5 for two seasons, and no weight where there was one season either before or under Dunc). I did the same for pitchers who left Dunc for “greener” pastures, weighting the last season under Duncan and the first season away from him the heaviest. I only considered the seasons working for the Cardinals, since most of the pitchers have some sort of story behind them, and I only know those in the Cardinal uniform.

What comes out of this is a list of 15 starting pitchers since 1996 who were starters either before or after the toiled for Duncan (Andy Benes is counted once for each stint):

Duncan's Babies
Benes, An.	1996
Morgan, M.	1996
Osborne, D.	1996
Stottlemyre, T.	1996
Bottenfield, K.	1998
Merker, K.	1998
Oliver, D.	1998
Benes, An. (2)	2000
Hentgen, P.	2000
Kile, D.	2000
Hermanson, D.	2001
Williams, W.	2001
Finley, C.	2002
Tomko, B.	2003
Carpenter, C.	2004
Suppan, J.	2004

It’s actually easiest to just divide these sixteen cases into three categories: Dunc’s failures, successes, and no effect.

Failures:

Brett Tomko represents Duncan’s greatest failure as a pitching coach for the Cardinals, and that in itself is not too bad. He didn’t start much in 2001 or 2000, but he was average in 2002 for the Padres, and an average starter for the Giants last year, but a disaster for the Cardinals in 2003. His SNLVAR for these three years: 4.1 | 2.3 | 3.9. (An average starter will post about a 3.8 SNLVAR in 200 innings). There isn’t really anything I can think of to mitigate this; Tomko stunk for Dunc and was average everywhere else he played.

Mike Morgan is also probably not on Dunc’s Christmas Card list, though it’s tough to remember the last time he was actually decent other than 1998 for the Twins, but it was 1995, when he started 17 games for the Cards and posted an ERA of 3.88. But for Dunc in his first year for Walt and the MICDS boys, he started 18 games and had an ERA of 5.24. His weighted SNLVAR before Duncan was 1.21, and after was 1.77, but he gave a 0.60 performance in 1996. Morgan rarely pitched a full season at this point, always finding a way to miss about half the season. Age and injuries most likely played more of a roll in his performance than his work with pitching coaches.

The final pitcher (seriously, there are only three!) was Andy Benes in his second go with the Cardinals. After a snafu with getting a contract into the league office in the off-season before 1998, he spent two seasons with the Diamondbacks. When he came back after his collective bargaining-induced exile, he posted an adequate season of 3.7 SNLVAR after seasons of 3.5 and 3.4 for the Snakes. However, he fell off a cliff in 2001, going -0.6 in 107 innings. He resurrected himself down the stretch briefly in 2002 to earn a 3.2 SNLVAR in only 94 innings. However, that middle season drags down his weighted average in his second stint, and is counted as a failure by this system. However, I don’t think anyone expects a pitching coach to lay his hands on an arthritic knee and effect a cure. In fact, I think that some credit must be given for that fabulous comeback in 2002, though whether to Duncan, Benes, or someone else, I don’t know.

Successes

The very first success for Duncan under the Arch was that very same Andy Benes four years earlier in 1996. He had been below average and on the decline in San Diego before he came to us posting SNLVARs of 3.9, 3.3, and 1 on his way out. He posted a great season and was the best starter on the division winning team with a SNLVAR of 4.6, which he followed up with a good 1997 of 4.1. We’ve already seen that after he left he declined to 3.5 and 3.4, leaving these two seasons under Dave Duncan is by far his best.

His next triumph was the canonical Kent Bottenfield who posted a fabulous 4.4 SNLVAR in his first stint as a full time starter. He then of course was the magic beans that bought us Jim Edmonds, and away from Duncan’s sheltering brows, he went from bad to awful for the Angels and Astros going 1.8 and -0.9 before disappearing from the scene. I always thought that Walt should have tried this type of move more often, turning junk into trade value (though Edmonds turning into a Hall of Famer is probably just a lucky break). Duncan could another Chavez Ravine, lowering ERAs and making pitchers look more attractive than they really are in a trade. Suppan and Marquis would fit into this mode well this year.

Darren Oliver is often forgotten, but his 1999 season clocks in at a freakish 5.3, which he never even came close to before or after without Duncan.

Darryl Kile is one of the most well known of Duncan’s successes, a Cy Young contender in Houston before his disastrous journey into the clouds. He was even better for Duncan than he was for the Astros, posting 6.2 and 7.6 before his 2002 was cut short by his untimely death. It’s easy to say that just leaving altitude was the solution to his problems, but there weren’t a lot of teams that were jumping at the chance to get him, and remember that Mike Hampton never bounced back, even under the supposedly great Leo Mazzone.

Woody Williams was an out of nowhere trade after the deadline, that really brought Duncan’s skills to my notice. Unfairly maligned as a mediocre pitcher in San Diego before the trade, he posted SNLVAR s of 3.4, 5.4, and 4.7 the years before he was traded, and a prorated 3.2 before he was traded. Everyone remembers how he pitched down the stretch in 2001, which prorated over the full season would have been worth a SNLVAR of 8.8, more than enough to win a Cy Young in a full season. He followed this up with a SNLVAR of 3.8 in half a season and 5.5 in 2003. He went from an above average pitcher that was driven from SD for reasons that are still unclear to me to a staff ace that was occasionally hampered by injuries.

The final success story is last year’s Christ Carpenter, who came off an injury to be the ace of the 2004 pennant winning staff. Touted both last spring training and the year before as an ace in waiting, he always seemed overrated to me. He had one good season with the Jays in 2001 when he posted a SNLVAR of 4.9 before succumbing to injury. Of course last year he finally showed his promise under Duncan and earned a 5.2 in abbreviated action.

The remaining five pitchers either played as expected, or didn’t play enough to get a good read on their skills. Donovan Osborne in 1996 had one healthy season under Duncan bracketed by a whole bunch of injured years. Todd Stottlemyer had a great year in 1996 with a 4.4 SNLVAR surrounded by many years of below average play (two of which were with the Cardinals). Kent Merker was just continuing his decline from his glory day(s) on his way through town in 1998. Chuck Finley was good after his acquisition in 2002, but not much better than his prorated numbers for the whole season or his years before. And Jeff Suppan showed a little improvement with a 3.8 after 3.6, 2.2 and 3.8 SNLVAR years.

Overall, there are very few true failures under Dave Duncan (though it must be said terrible pitchers don’t get a lot of starts and wouldn’t show up in this study). Even his ambiguous pitchers for the most part did well or at least gave the Cardinals one good season. But it is the number or success stories, where a pitcher came to the Cardinals as junk at best and became a star that stands Duncan above his peers. I thought coming into this that Duncan would be the guy you meet in the casino in Vegas. “I’m an awesome gambler,” he says, “I’ve won more than I’ve lost!” And you’re like, “well, I’d expect almost half of the guys here to say that.…” But Duncan has hit the jackpot an alful lot, and has rarely missed.

the Iron_Throne

Cardinals Pitchers in Fantasy Baseball

By the Iron_Throne

Two weeks ago, I covered Cardinals hitters and their draft positions in fantasy baseball. I found that the Cards hitters are mostly solid picks with little upside for where they will be drafted. However, in pitching, the Cards are a treasure seeker's goldmine. Roundly criticized for not being able to pitch last postseason, most of the starters will be going for less than they’re worth. Even though the Cardinals staff was the best in the NL, the value isn’t concentrated in easily draftable parts. While it’s super fantastic that the middle relief and bullpen was so great, outside of a closer and the top setup men, you rarely have any of those guys on your roster. What the Cards have is good value in their starters spread out over about six pitchers. But by drafting for value and not star power, you can fill out your fantasy staff.

Pitcher predictions will be in the form W/K/S/ERA/WHIP.

SP Mark Mulder is the lone exception to the starters being unknown. His face was in a lot of papers this off season, and will get a bump from being a “number one.” Facing pitchers two or three times a game should boost his Ks. Pitchers are always a more uncertain bet than hitters, but injured pitchers usually say stay away. He’ll most likely be a solid pick when he goes at the middle of the fourth round in your league, but you can get someone of equal value there who didn’t have a terrible second half or lose a year to a hip injury. The extra wins he’ll get in front of this lineup should almost make it worth it, but let someone else take the risk. Remember, if one of your top players goes down, you’ll be replacing him with someone who starts the season on the FA list. Leave risk for the mid rounds or other people. If he’s healthy he’ll give you 190 innings at 17/140/0/3.35/1.19.

SP Chris Carpenter will likely be forgotten by most people outside of Saint Louis, or discounted because of his season-ending injury along with his history. However, he was nearly healthy enough to pitch in the World Series, so he should be fine to start the season. A better health risk than Mulder in my opinion, he’ll repay your pick in W alone, and his K should justify his innings pitched. The well above average ERA and WHIP he should post will just be gravy. He’ll probably be a bargain when you take him in the ninth, but he’ll be under the radar enough that there’s no reason to take him earlier. He’ll go at least 200 innings, and be as good as Mulder at 18/160/0/3.45/1.20.

SP Jason Marquis is a medium risk, medium reward pitcher that at least will use your innings and not hurt your team, which is rarer for a SP than you might think. Don’t pay for him based on last year’s ERA, he was most likely having a career year. Expect him to add a little less than half a run to his ERA, but keep an eye on him if he falls to far. His WHIP was a concern last year, but will regress a bit, even with a shaky middle infield. With the least name recognition on the staff, he may fall farther than others on the team, but has a some upside and good win potential. He may be there in the eleventh, when a pick is merited, but don’t overreach. Another workhorse, look for 200 innings of 15/135/0/4.00/1.35.

SP Jeff Suppan will go for more than he’s worth, as the only thing of value he’ll bring is his lineup. With a better name than Marquis, he’ll get picked by someone before you get there, but his solid numbers last year are likely a fluke at 16/110/0/4.16/1.37 When last we saw the real Jeff Suppan, he was a league average pitcher, and now he’s two years older. With not much upside to speak of and few strikeouts, he’ll be a good placeholder while you look for hot rookies or whoever is starting against the Mariners that day. Take him in the fifteenth if you’re afraid of risks, but that pick would be better spent gambling on a rookie or someone who was injured last year. A pedestrian 210 innings of 15/115/0/4.40/1.35.

SP Matt Morris will also far farther than he should, and most who pick him up will immediately place him on the DL while his shoulder heals. He still struck out 5.9 batters per nine, and his 1.29 WHIP was better than his 4.72 ERA last year. His recovery timetable will be well publicized, slated now for early June, and his poor season will overcome his name recognition. He’ll go anywhere from the fifteenth round to undrafted, and if your league has two DL spots per team, he’s a solid eighteenth/nineteenth round pick. If he misses two months, he may struggle to even repay this investment, especially if he’s on a short leash when he gets back. But how often do you get good value in the nineteenth round? Mine usually are by the wayside before April is over. A midseason start means 110 innings, 9/90/0/3.90/1.25.

SP Rick Ankiel is the true gem of the staff. Even the sharpest managers are going to let him go, and when you pick him with your last pick you’ll hear uncontrollable laughter or sulfurous curses depending on how good your league is. Better than most young pitchers who have to fight to win a job out of middle relief, he’ll be handed a chance to show his stuff right out of the gate, even though he may be skipped a bit at first. Essentially risk free, you can leave him on the bench until he proves himself if you want, and if he flames out it won’t cost you anything but a roster spot. With a ceiling as high as Santana or Johnson, this is where being a Cardinals fan pays off. W he’ll get from the uniform, and he’s always had the Ks. You’ll get him and he could easily push you into contention. Of course he could also flame out and never be heard from again. But unlike Griffey he won’t cost you a dime. If you forget about him on draft day, he’ll still be there the next day once you realize you drafted the wrong Dan Kolb. I’m picking him to keep a rotation spot for the whole season, and put up 18/180/0/3.45/1.25 in 190 innings. Can’t beat that.

RP Jason Isringhausen has been one of the more overrated closers in fantasy the last couple of years, always finding a way to end up short on S for excellent teams. Last year was his first solid year picking up 47 wins while the Cards cruised to 105. Suffering the curse of the high scoring team, he’ll always have fewer S than a Gagne. He won’t get enough K to make a difference, and his ERA isn’t small enough to have a noticeable effect, so you’re only drafting his S. The Cards figure to be a great team again this year, and I haven’t heard anything about lingering injuries, so figure him for 3/75/40/3.50/1.20 in 65 games.

Middle relievers Julian Tavarez and Ray King are two great pitchers that have fantasy only if you have more lineup spots than inning pitched. If you can fit them in, they will give you good K for the innings they use, and higher W rates than even the best starters. Tavarez is coming along well after his disastrous NLCS, and should be the top setup man for Izzy and should step into his shoes should another injury befall him. King would also get some S from an Izzy injury and put up better rate stats than Tavarez. I generally don’t play in leagues that allow much room to fit in any but the topmost setup men, and neither King nor Tavarez have the 10+ K/9 needed. No other relief pitcher figures to have much fantasy impact this season, as the likes of Carmen Cali and Cal Eldred and the rest of the middle relievers won’t have the stats to make a dent, and no young pitchers like Wainwright look to be needed for the rotation this season.

So once again the Cards are a mixed bag on draft day, with name recognition causing inflation for everyone except for Rick Ankiel. The Cards look to be solid picks across the board with very little risk for the investment, and the bonus wins will keep roster fillers like Marquis and Suppan from burning you. If you spent your picks to take every one of the Cardinals you’d have a staff that would keep you in contention while leaving a lot of high picks to take your hitters.

the Iron_Throne

Does anybody speak Korean?

I'm looking for any good Korean-American Cardinals fan, or any Korean-Korean Cardinals fan to help translate. Baseball Think Factory pointed out some of the funniest baseball cartoons I've ever seen (and I can't even read them). There are several dealing with the Cards, and you can get some of the jokes just by looking at the pictures.

The World Series.

Something about the NLDS against the Dodgers.

Something about the NLCS.

Rick Ankiel.

And something totally incomprehensible about Ben Sheets and the Cards.

Cardinals Hitters in Fantasy Baseball

By the Iron_Throne

So I know it’s way too early to be planning for fantasy baseball, but it’s a little slow these days waiting for pitchers and catchers, so I thought I’d talk over where your favorite Cardinals fit. It’s always hard to be objective thinking about your favorite players, so the conventional wisdom is to just take a pass on them. I know I’ve gotten burned in the past, taking Edgar Renteria at the top of the third round in a 12 team ML universe just last year, or Matt Morris in the fifth. However, the flip side of this allows you to pick up players that may be able to contribute that other managers may not have heard of, or have forgotten. Andy Benes in 2003 when he came back was a tremendous boost down the stretch, and Albert Pujols was of course the best free agent pickup ever when I got him after seeing him thrash Randy Johnson in only his second game. So caution, and a bit of pessimism can temper the heart and cool the head, and let you get on with putting a championship team together. Since the Cardinals are coming off of a World Series appearance and have a reputation as a strong lineup, look for inflation to bump up your favorite hitter at least half a round or more.

In these predictions, I’m going mostly on the basis of a 5x5 twelve team ML universe league in a serpentine draft setup. I’ll do the hitters today, and the pitchers when I get back from Vegas. The predictions are in the form AVE/R/RBI/HR/SB.

C Mike Matheny is gone, but his legacy lives on. Yadier Molina doesn’t have much of a track record, but some of the projections I’ve seen for him would make the Optimists Association of America (OAOA) scoff. Not a threat to be valuable in any category, his youth and health can only hurt you, as being in your lineup a lot could be worse than an empty slot. Do not draft under any circumstances. Playing five days a week, .250/40/45/4/2.

1B Albert Pujols. The cream of the crop. No one no matter the lineup, no matter the league, no matter the home park he is going to put up the raw numbers. A four category player due to be taken in the top two or three picks in any league. The plantar fasciitis that didn’t slow him last year is still there, so he may miss a few more games than the most durable players. He’s shown very little variation in performance, and is still very young no matter his real age, so he’s a close to a lock as there is in fantasy baseball. His relatively low walk rate for someone of his power gives more weight to his already considerable average, and hitting behind Larry Walker for the whole season should be better than being behind Edgar Renteria. The biggest strike against him is that you can pick a first baseman up six rounds later to give you 80% of his value. But with no superstar close to his total value at one of the harder to fill positions such as shortstop or second base, and no sure thing at pitcher, you pick the best single player and turn your eyes to the second round. Playing 145 games, .335/115/130/49/3.

2B With Alomar signed to Tampa, Grudzielanek looks to have the second base job locked up. Tony LaRussa however, rarely hands a job to a player of Grudz’s talent (or contract) without some kind of competition. Look for the Cardinals to take a flyer on at least one other middle infielder, most likely a gritty veteran. Grudz’s skills have been all over the place in the past, and he’s leaving Wrigley where he’s hit well in the past. He figures to hit low in the order, with only Molina behind him, and to lose at least a start a week to Miscellaneous Middle Infielder to Be Named. Not really worth a look except as a low teen NL only or a very late round pick in MI leagues. Playing in about 125 games, .265/70/60/6/8.

3B Scott Rolen is the cream of the third base crop, but there are several third basemen who can give you a reasonable approximation of Scotty. Reputation as a complete player can inflate the cost of a fantasy player, but fantasy managers get no value from his glove. I don’t believe that last year represented a leap forward for Scott, so don’t look for him to compete for the RBI title again. Look more for the numbers he put up in 2003 and before with the Cardinals. He’s a solid mid third round to early fourth round pick in ML but a good late first round pick in NL only as the NL third basemen are a thin bunch. Playing in 155 games, he’ll go .290/100/110/28/7.

SS David Eckstein looks to be a mundane but safe pick at shortstop. He’ll play a lot of games, hit a lot of balls, and very few of them will go all that far. Not really a stolen base threat anymore, he figures to run enough in the first two or three months to be on a 20-25 SB pace. But something about LaRussa says that stealing before the All-Star break is OK, but verboten after. His slightly over league average OBP at the top of a good lineup figures to get him some R, but you should never pay for R, everybody gets them but nobody really excels at it like the do in the other categories. You probably won’t be able to draft Eckstein, as someone will take him before the thirteenth round where he deserves to go. However, he has an everyday job, which is far more valuable in NL only leagues, and should go at better than half that. Getting the start every day, look for 158 games, and .265/105/30/2/12.

OF Reggie Sanders is one of those players that the savvy figure to try and take a late flyer on based on his every-other-year stats. My gut tells me that the every-other-year guys stop their pattern eventually, so look out. He’ll split his job with John Mabry and whatever else Tony has on his bench, so five starts a week is the most you can hope for barring an injury or a huge year. Not really a threat to hit thirty HR with the split playing time, his low OBP and the guys behind him will make him a bit of a liability in R, to go with an AVE that won’t help your team. Don’t get blinded by the HR, the small losses you’ll take in the other categories will hurt more than he can help. That being said, a late round flyer can pay off like it did in 2003, but someone else will most likely overdraft him based on lineup and history. A modern day Ron Gant, he’ll get about 125 games, and go .250/60/75/22/15.

OF Jim Edmonds is always been a favorite of mine, since he’s mostly been undervalued during his time with the Cards due to a perceived injury problem. He’s no more prone to catastrophic injury than any other player, and his counting stats easily justify his draft position even if he doesn’t play 150+ games. If you don’t play with CF, then his defense will only drive up his cost and lower his playing time, as he always seems to miss a game here or there from running into walls or diving for balls. You can’t expect 40+ HR from him every year, so pencil in more like 35. As a Cardinal fan, Jim is more valuable to you than to other managers, as the Post usually tells you when he’s sitting out, so you can shuffle in a backup if you’re in a daily league. He worth a mid sixth round pick to most people, and a mid fifth if you read the Post Dispatch every morning. His playing time can be a bit bi-modal, but I’m betting on 145 games and .290/90/100/35/4.

OF Larry Walker is a risky pick for more reasons than injury or leaving Colorado. Most of his value these days is tied up in OBP, and unless your league plays that, you’ll only see it in the halo effect it has on his R. The bottom of the Cardinals order looks dismal, so his RBI outlook is not good, and his power decline has been masked by Coors field. Don’t draft him looking for 30 HR or a .330 AVE and you won’t be disappointed. His risk level is high, but so is his ceiling. He didn’t play a full season last year, so he’ll get lost in some rankings. He could go as high as the sixth round in some leagues, or fall into the thirteenth. A tenth round pick should be a good balance of risk and reward, but don’t leave yourself without a backup plan. I’m betting on some nagging injuries to bring his games played down a bit to around 130, so .300/95/85/23/10.

Bench players: There are no sleepers on the bench like rookies looking for playing time or journeymen who might bust out. John Mabry revived his career last season, and his .296/.363/.504 would from last year would look great as a full timer, but he’s been let go a lot of times in the past and won’t be able to get the full time job or a repeat performance. Cedeno is little more than a reserve with no chance of getting the job even with a major injury to a starter. Taguchi figures to get some games even without a serious injury to Edmonds, but even a full time job won’t make him valuable enough to keep on your roster. Einar Diaz could get serious reps behind the plate if Molina struggles, but doesn’t figure to hit any better (or really any worse given his track record). I’m betting the Hector Luna will start the season in AAA to get more seasoning, and will only break camp with the team if either of the two starters have poor springs.

So far, the Cards hitters have been poor prospects for drafting. The Cards hitters are all well known, and suffer from World Series inflation, and even the best picks like Rolen and Edmonds can only repay your investment. Only Pujols looks to be a solid pick regardless of inflation, only because he can’t be drafted higher than first. The Cards don’t have an rookies or young players that figure to bust out, so for the most part what you see is what you get. However, in pitching, the Cards are a treasure seekers goldmine. Roundly criticized for not being able to pitch last postseason, most of the starters will be going for less than they’re worth.

the Iron_Throne

Cardinal Dynasties

By the Iron_Throne

We’ve already touched on this, but who were the best Cardinals in history? One of the oldest and most storied franchises in baseball, the Cardinals have had more than their share of success. From the Gashouse Gang of the thirties to this year’s pennant winning team, the Birds on the Bat have enthralled their fans (we’ll leave out anything from before about 1926, since the Cardinals may have been a major league team, but rarely played like it). But how do you measure greatness? By pennants and rings? With our eyes? How about by Hall of Famers? We’re all supposed to be statheads here to some degree or another, so there must be a statistical method that can give us some pointers.

Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein in their book, Baseball Dynasties developed a system for ranking the best baseball dynasties of all time. They did this by taking the number of standard deviations above or below the mean a team was in runs scored and runs allowed, and added them together to get a “Standard Deviation Score (SD)” for that team. They then ranked team dynasties; that is they gave two year, three year, four year, and five year SD scores to teams to rank them in an all time list. This method has the advantage of comparing a team to its league. With differences over history in rules, the players allowed to play, training regimens, and the size of the league, direct comparisons between two eras can’t be made. This method puts no weight on pennants or rings won, simply because in 1934 there were sixteen teams, and in 2004 there are thirty. All things being equal, it’s about twice as hard to win a pennant or the World Series now than it was then.

With all that said, we can get down to brass tacks. As I said previously, the Cardinals have won in discreet bunches. There are very few teams that have had only one good year. In fact, the only good Cardinals team that was distinct from any other was the 88 win 1996 team under Tony LaRussa. Starting from the beginning, the Cardinals as a team weren’t good at the start of modern baseball. Their first winning teams were the late twenties-mid thirties teams that culminated in the Gashouse Gang of ’34 and ’35. And starting in 1942, the Cardinals had one of the best decades in baseball history, winning during the war period, and just dominating afterwards. This was followed a generation later by the Bob Gibson/Lou Brock Cardinals of the sixties, the team a lot of our fathers grew up with. In the eighties came the team whose shadow still looms long over the landscape: the Running Redbirds. With three world series teams and one ring, they set the bar for the current Cards to exceed. And we all know the Cardinals of today; everyone reading this probably has a Pujols T-shirt, or sleeps under their Jason Isringhausen bed sheets and wears their Jim Edmonds Baseball Pants—Now with GrassStainz^TM!

I posted a poll earlier this week to see what teams our loyal readers considered the best Cards teams of all time. The results came back rather surprising; I was expecting the Running Redbirds to do very well, at least not come in last. I’m not surprised that the current model Cardinals didn’t do well; it’s always hard to appreciate what you have in front of you. With the Musial and Gibson teams running neck and neck, we ask, what do the numbers say?

Well, they say that you never can trust your childhood memories. Below is a chart showing just how dominant the 40’s Cards were. These are the SD scores for the teams. The SD scores are made from the number of standard deviations above the mean a team is in its runs scored plus the number of standard deviations below the mean in runs allowed. One standard deviation above the mean in runs scored means that a team would score more than 68% of the teams, and two standard deviations means that they would score more runs than 95% of the teams. It breaks down that a team with an SD score over 3 is an all-time great team, over two is a very good team, and about 1.8 or so is usually the best team in the league.

year	hitting pitching SD score
1949	0.714	1.634	2.348
1948	0.748	0.815	1.562
1947	0.824	1.191	2.015
1946	1.527	1.209	2.736
1945	0.734	1.144	1.878
1944	1.401	1.652	3.053
1943	0.888	1.544	2.432
1942	0.891	0.931	1.822

These Cardinals were just phenomenal: three good teams, three very good teams, and a 1944 team that was one of the best ever. And before anyone makes the argument that they should be discounted because of the war, I’d like to see the line in the draft law where Cards were exempt. And besides, when the players came back in 1946, the Cards were better. Now compare this to the Gibson teams:

year	hitting pitching SD score
1968	0.387	1.447	1.835
1967	1.124	1.059	2.184
1966   -1.349	0.996  -0.353
1965	0.614  -0.263	0.351
1964	0.806  -0.004	0.802
1963	1.480  -0.168	1.312

One very good team in ’67, one good team in ’68, two average teams in the middle, and two teams that were lucky to win their leagues. There really isn’t much of a contest here, the 40’s teams were better longer, at their peak, and in nearly every year, before and after the end of the War. This doesn’t make the 60’s teams bad, it’s just that Musial's Cards were just that good.

The Running Redbirds polled very poorly, and this is most likely due to that fact that they had three good years with three poor years in between.

year	hitting pitching SD score
1987	1.165	0.773	1.937
1986   -1.418	1.012  -0.406
1985	1.686	1.366	3.052
1984   -0.116	0.233	0.117
1983	0.314  -1.285  -0.971
1982	0.404	1.353	1.758

What shouldn’t be overlooked is that the ’85 team was extremely good, one of the all time great teams by this metric. They could hit, they could run, all of it. But the down years really cost them as a dynasty; you have to be good continually if you want to take the crown as Best Cardinals Dynasty.

The biggest disservice, though, is done to the current team. They have only one pennant to their credit, two heart breaking LCS losses, and 2001, where they lost to an inferior team that just happened to have their value packed into the top of their rotation. It’s either this lack of shiny rings or a grass-is-always-greener mindset that keeps us from seeing the real team:

year	hitting pitching SD score
2004	1.322	1.130	2.452
2003	1.552  -0.555	0.998
2002	1.299	0.903	2.202
2001	0.749	1.091	1.841
2000	0.993	0.601	1.594

Of course this last year, the team was very good, but not at the level of all time great like the ’85 or ’43 teams. The 2002 team that lost to the Giants was also a very good team, and the two that came before it were serviceable as well. Only the disappointing 2003 team hurts the current dynasty, even though it had the best hitting of the five, and in fact only behind the ’85 team in scoring runs for all of the teams under discussion; but substandard pitching keeps them from being an all time great team.

And finally, there were the early century teams, spread over ten years:

year	hitting pitching SD score
1935	1.207	1.031	2.238
1934	1.481	0.738	2.220
1933	1.254	0.056	1.310
1932   -0.348  -0.148  -0.497
1931	1.244	1.156	2.400
1930	1.023	0.710	1.734
1929	0.045	0.212	0.257
1928	1.102	0.721	1.823
1927	1.238	0.549	1.787
1926	1.099	0.286	1.385

These teams were good for the longest consecutive period of time, but had two years in which they were average to poor. I place them behind the 40’s teams, and ahead of the shorter and more erratic 60’s and 80’s teams. The question remains how they stack up to our modern team. Their run was twice as long as the current team has to this point, and even though they didn’t have to contend with free agency, longevity is important. The modern team’s best was better than the 1931 team, though the second tier ’34-35 teams were better than the 2002 team. Over the five years of the modern team, they have a cumulative 9.087 SD score, compared with five year sums of 8.001 for the ’26 to ’30 teams and 7.671 for the ’31 to ’35 teams (the two highest 5 year scores). It’s a bit of a toss up between these two teams, with the current Cards being better at their peak, and the earlier teams good over a longer period of time. The current team, however, has a chance to improve on its record while the ’36 Cards slipped in the rankings and weren’t seen again until 1942.

I’ll admit that the original purpose of this article was to prove that the modern teams were every bit as good as those that came before, but I have a new appreciation for the history of the team. I hadn’t realized just how good the teams were in the forties, or how spoiled the citizens of Saint Louis must have been from 1926 to 1949. I didn’t have an understanding just how good that 1985 team that I barely remember was, or how good the ’67-’68 teams were. I just hope we can all realize how lucky we are to have this franchise, and that the current team stacks up very well in the context of history.

the Iron_Throne

Cardinals Dynasties

Cardinal Dynasties

By the Iron_Throne

What were the Cardinals teams in history? I'm putting together a piece on the best Cardinals teams using Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein's methods from their book Baseball Dynasties. Before I post it, I'd like to hear from everybody on what they think were the best Cardinals teams in history, both in peak/one year value, and as a dynasty, i.e. over several connected years.

The Cardinals as a franchise have won in fairly discreet bunches. In fact, the only Cardinals team that came in first disconnected from other winning teams was the 1996 team, which is more a testament to the three division system than to a great team. But I'd like to hear from everyone on who they think the best teams are: the Information Age Cardinals (2000-2004) lead by Albert Pujols and Matt Morris, the Running Redbirds (1982, '85, and '87) of Whitey Herzog and Ozzie Smith, the Silver Age Cardinals (1963, '64, '67, and '68) of Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, the Golden Age Cardinals (1942-1949) of Stan Musial and Mort Cooper, or the Lively Ball Cardinals (1926, '28, '31, '34, '35) of Jim Bottomley and the Dean brothers.