Did anyone else know that the Twins’ offense, featuring Nick Punto, Brendan Harris, Matt Tolbert, and Carlos Gomez for almost 1600 PAs, was better than ours – and it wasn’t even really close. The Cards’ offense, featuring clearly the best hitter in the game, was the worst of the playoff teams. Only the Giants saw fewer pitches per plate appearance than did the Cardinals. That’s right – we were the 29th most patient team (or 2nd most impatient team) in the major leagues in 2009. Our most patient hitter – Albert Pujols – averaged 3.84 P/PA, barely above the league average of 3.82 P/PA. Actually, everyone’s favorite whipping boy – Chris Duncan – averaged 3.91 P/PA in just 304 PA.
...Is this a problem of the players or the team’s approach to hitting? I can’t really say but, to me, there’s little doubt of a connection between the team’s impatience and the team’s struggles at the plate. We can blame Hal McRae if we want but, w/o a little more evidence, that’s a little tough for me to swallow. In order to properly evaluate McRae, it seems to me that we’d have to see how hitters perform for McRae and how they perform elsewhere and see if there’s a trend. Are hitters less patient as a result of McRae’s tutelage? Again, we’d have to compare the “with McRae” to the “w/o McRae.” Lugo, DeRosa, and Holliday all provide some info but the sample sizes are awfully small. Plus, we’re talking about players who, at one point in the transition, changed leagues. It’s not as cut and dried as we may think it is.
Still, there’s a problem w/ the team’s offense. We can look to fix it at 3B and I’d expect Rasmus to improve in year 2. But Ryan’s not going anywhere, nor should he b/c of his defense. Yadi’s hardly the problem and, while it wouldn’t surprise me if only one of Holliday and Ludwick return, they’re not the biggest culprits either. Certainly extricating Ankiel from the lineup will help some and maybe replacing McRae is the solution. I know that something’s gotta change, however b/c we’re going to be hard-pressed to pitch as well next year as we did this year.
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. Tripon Posted: October 17, 2009 at 04:49 PM (#3355098)Wouldn't we expect that to be the case because AL teams have a DH and NL teams have a pitcher batting?
It's not clear to me that patience is a big factor. Using OBP-BA as a proxy, the 2009 NL was a .72 while the Cards were at .69, not that big a deal. In 2008, the NL was at .71 and the Cards at .69. Nothing's really changed there. If you look at their starters and main bench players, Ryan's walk rate is the only one that makes you cringe a bit.
Their "problem" (and the Cards were 7th in scoring, it's not like they were the Giants) looks mostly BA related. That dropped from 281 to 263. And that's with 4.5 guys hitting 292 or better. But DeRosa, Rasmus, Ankiel, Thurston, Duncan, Greene, Greene, Barden and almost all the dreck with fewer than 100 PA had BAs of 251 or lower. That was about 2500 PA of probably 240 or worse BA. (And yes, Duncan was patient and walked a lot ... he also hit 227 leading to a below-average 329 OBP to go with a 358 SLG.)
The 2009 Cards had exactly the same OBP-BA and ISO as the 2008 Cards ... everything was the 18 point drop in BA. Well, there was some decline in RISP too, especially ISO (looks like they were walking Pujols a lot more).
I do not know why this is said like it should be a surprise.
I don't remember anyone ever saying Chris Duncan didn't see enough pitches. He just has not been a good hitter for two years now, and he contributes nothing else so he has to be a good hitter to be worth anything.
He sees pitches, but is not a good hitter.
Some people hit for high averages, but are not very good hitters.
Some hit for power but are not very good hitters.
And some people see plenty of pitches but are simply not very good hitters.
Why am I supposed to be surprised by Duncan's P/PA again?
But it's not like the organization set about to acquire players who are impatient. Ankiel, Schumacker, and Ludwick were surprises; none of them were locks to even be major league players, much less good ones. As it happens, Skip and Ryan are mediocre at taking walks, while Ankiel seems to just have so idea of where the strike zone might be. The organization didn't do that to them, because it didn't put any massive resources into their development as hitters. Ryan and Molina are glove men who just happen to be able to hit for high averages along with no power; they count as plusses whether or not they take walks because their gloves are hot at shortstop and catcher. Scott Rolen, who does take walks, got into some sort of trouble with management, just as he did in Philly, and had to be traded. The Cards are lucky to have gotten someone as good as Troy Glaus for a player that every GM knew they had to trade. No one was thinking about Glaus' walk percentages when they were able to get him. De Rosa was who they could get in the emergency caused by Glaus' injury problems. The team was in no position to get picky about walks. And even I, who can get walk-happy as an analyst, am not about to obsess over that skill if I get offered Matt Holliday.
That leaves Colby Rasmus. Two years ago, in my preseason essay here, and this last preseason as well, I wrote that the team was telling Colby to work on taking walks and to think of himself as a leadoff type, rather than swinging for the fences at everything. I got a lot of complaints about writing that, both years. Well, this year we got to see why. The one actual hot prospect on the roster that the Cards did develop themselves, and they did obsess over walks. What more can you ask? How about the other prospect that they put some time into developing? That would be Chris Duncan, who does take his walks. He's just lost everything else (which was mostly power; he was never going to hit for real averages) to injuries. So, two out of two where the organization did focus on walks.
What really happened to the Cards was this: Glaus and Duncan got hurt and were useless. Both may well be finished. Ankiel and Ludwick had sophomore slumps. I know they're awfully old to be sophomores, but that's what they are, in terms of major league position play (Rick's years as a pitcher are pretty irrelevant to his hitting). Kahlil Greene fell apart mentally. Teams just started intentionally walking Pujols every time men were on base. Against that were the ability of Schumacker and the team to convert him to a successful second baseman, which is really really rare. Yadier Molina continued to develop as a hitter; I had no idea he could hit .290. Ryan came out of nowhere to also hit about .300. The team decided that Brett Wallace was not going to be able to play anywhere other than first base, and were able to put a package around him to get Holliday, because first base is not available right now. Rasmus had a rookie season that looks like a normal rookie season to me. That's a lot of weirdness for one lineup, and I tend to think that everyone involved deserves credit for the number of runs that they did end up scoring. They figure, assuming they can sign Matt, to score more next year. The lineup should be a lot more stable, and Ludwick and Ankiel should recover some. They found a shortstop. They won't have to spend the first half of the season trying everyone out everywhere just to find out who can actually play.
And still, if you look at their division title, there are two factors that really stand out, neither of which has to do with their run scoring.
1) Tony got good years out of three veteran pitchers (Piniero). He always wins when he gets that. I've been preaching this for years, and it's still true.
2) The Cubs came down with a whole lot of injuries.
That's really the story of the St. Louis season. The postseason failure to score should be treated as the late-season slump that it was, not as any systemic failure of the current lineup to be able to score in the long run.
- Brock Hanke
Holliday had a hot streak after starting slowly. This is also not surprising given that his track record of good hitting. That at some point he should slow down is also not a shock.
Due to the NL Central's general weakness a team can win the division by playing .480 and then being hot for six weeks. That has been done several times this decade and the Cards were no different.
Note that said streaks typically coincide with July and playing 80 percent against divisional opponents.
Same thing with the AL Central lately.
If you take Ludwick's 2008 and 2009, you get a drop from OPS+ 150 to OPS+ 104. I don't know about you, but I'm calling that a slump. I don't see how you can look at the two seasons and say that you'd expect both of them from any one source without accounting for the slump. The seasons aren't similar enough without it. If you look too quickly at 2007, you might conclude that he counts as a rookie that year. But although he played 120 games, he had so few PAs that it's obvious that he was a bench warmer. My theory of sophomore slump, which is part of a larger theory that I call iambic development, is that the league's pitchers don't really zero in on analyzing how to get a man out until he's played his first full season, regardless of how old he is when that happens. They figure out his biggest weakness, and it takes him his sophomore season to counter adjust. That's what I saw in the last 2 years of Ludwick. It's what I also see in the last two years of Ankiel, who is also very old for a sophomore.
If you look at Ludwick's minor league record, the main expectation you would get - and the main reason the Cards were able to acquire him in the first place - would have been that he would have trouble playing 100 games, due to injuries. The main surprise about Ludwick to me is that he's played two full seasons in a row. I expected a slump this year, and I got one.
Holliday had a hot streak as soon as he got out of Oakland's ballpark. That happens. The entire team had a late-season offensive slump, and it carried over into the postseason. They lost three straight then to the Dodgers, a team that they had beaten 5 out of 7 in the regular season, during the hot streak. The last I checked, the Dodgers and Cardinals are not in the same division. Beating the team at that rate that won the most games in your entire league doesn't much indicate that your division is just hopeless and that its winner has no business being in the postseason.
I agree that the NL Central was a weak division this year, but I think that had a lot to do with the Cubs' DL escapades, since they and the Cards were the two strongest teams in the division. In general, over the last few years, the division has had the Pirates every year, and Houston and Milwaukee don't seem to be well administered. They have good years and weak years because their rosters aren't that great. So you do have a point there. But I'm not willing to agree that because the Pirates are bad, the team that wins their division has to be so awful that it shouldn't be there at all.
But none of this has anything to do with the real driver of the Cardinals' division win, which was the veteran pitching: Carpenter, Wainwright and Piniero. They were in contention - struggling, but still in there - when they acquired De Rosa and Holliday. They were able to do this, with an offense whose sole power source was Albert Pujols, because of the pitching. When they acquired a new hot power source and started scoring at least a few runs, the pitching allowed them to go nuts. When Matt cooled off some and Albert had a miserable September power outage (predicted by the local writers based on, of all things, the second-half homer records of players who enter the Home Run Derby), they couldn't score enough runs for even their pitching to make up, which is also what happened in the postseason.
Brock, you obviously watch a whole lot more of the Cardinals than I do, but is Albert's lower walk rate relative to his power partially the result that when Albert swings at a pitch, he's more likely to hit it hard and fair than others with similar power. Jim Thome swings and misses at an awful lot of pitches, which gives him increased opportunities to get to Ball 4. Albert seems to me to be a bit more of a Tony Gwynn, whose lower walk rates had less to do with inpatience and more the product of being really skilled at hitting a baseball.
In other words, I"m not sure that he should walk more.
Let me try this again since you are mostly missing the point.
Take 2008.
Take 2009.
The average of the two is about what one should expect from Ludwick in a solid year. And anyone who thinks a guy of Ludwick's age is going to transform into a 150ish OPS type hitter is a rather optimistic fan and not one I would expect hanging out at BBTF.
I never wrote that the winner of the NL Central should not be allowed in the playoffs. My POINT was that the winner of the NL Central would have a somewhat inflated overall record thanks to the likes of the Pirates, Reds, etc. And to suggest otherwise is, well, silly. These teams are invariably among the dregs of the NL. That is a fact. Beating them is expected but not to be glorified. It is no different than the Dodgers of the 50's beating the snot out of the second division opponents and then going kaplooey in the World Series and folks wondering what happened.
The Cardinals won because they had the best manager, the best player in the NL and not one but TWO of the best pitchers in the entire league. The latter half of the roster was borderline awful. But typical for teams in the NL Central. Sorry Brock, your squad had some top line talent. But after about six guys your Cards fit in all too well with the rest of the rabble.
I agree with this, even I don't think of Ludwick as a 150 ops+ hitter, but a 125-135 is where I think he is at when healthy.
Cardsfanboy - I also agree with post 15. Ludwick's problem was injuries. When he showed up healthy in 2008, no one was ready to pitch to him because there had never been a reason to think about that. Then, over the offseason, the pitchers did, and the result was 2009. I fully expect that Ryan, if he can stay healthy, will over time fall in right where you suggest. My "iambic" analysis is mostly designed for normal rookie ages, when the player has a few years to go before hitting his peak. Ludwick and Ankiel don't have that, but they should not be as weak as they were this year, nor as strong as in 2008. - Brock
Wait. Are you honestly trying to criticize the offensive ability of Albert Pujols?
Even if we grant that Pujols doesn't get as many non-intentional walks as he should, which isn't even right to begin with, but even if we say that Pujols could walk more..... Does. It. Matter!?
How many more runs do you expect Pujols to put on the board? He does as much or more at the plate, especially this year, as you could ever expect any hitter to do. Are you actually trying to suggest Pujols needs to walk more? What would that gain?
If that is what you are saying it has got to be the silliest example of "walking for walks sake" I have ever heard of. A hitter drawing walks is nice because it helps you put runs on the board. Pujols already puts more runs on the board than almost anyone I have ever seen. Do you really wish he would walk more just for shtts and giggles?
with one major qualifier, there was one month of this season that was clearly due to him coming back from injury too soon, May/June. The August slump is something that happens, and I'm fine with saying that wasn't injury related, just streakiness from a streaky hitter, but May/June was clearly him being injured.
Even if we grant that Pujols doesn't get as many non-intentional walks as he should, which isn't even right to begin with, but even if we say that Pujols could walk more..... Does. It. Matter!?
I don't think he was criticizing, just stating that Pujols isn't a walk first type of hitter, which this season was pretty true, he was pressing sometimes because of how often he was pitched around and would sometimes swing at pitches that may not have been the best pitch for him to swing at.
The article is based upon a premise that the team doesn't work the count the way good teams should probably try too, at least in comparison to the other playoff teams. The Cardinals stated philosophy earlier in the season was to be agressive on the first pitch, believing that it's often the best pitch you may see in an at bat. (they were touting the swinging first pitch batting average for the league and individual players earlier in the season, which I think shows a serious lack of undestanding causation) It was basically a spin off from their pitching philosophy where the goal is to get a strike on the first pitch.
And he still wound up posting a 188 OPS+. I get the line of thinking but I can't really accept that any kind of pressing you saw from Pujols was any kind of an issue beyond someone simply having a bad at-bat which everyone will have from time to time. I'm just not sure what Pujols was supposed to improve to. A guy posts a 188 OPS+ this year after a 190 OPS+ last year and I don't think you question his approach. It seems to work for him.
The article is based upon a premise that the team doesn't work the count the way good teams should probably try too, at least in comparison to the other playoff teams. The Cardinals stated philosophy earlier in the season was to be agressive on the first pitch, believing that it's often the best pitch you may see in an at bat
Sure, and both of those theories have their merits and drawbacks I just don't think you can expand a point about an offense needing to see more pitches to Pujols. It doesn't apply, you leave him out of it. We are looking at one of the best hitters of all time. There isn't really much room for improvement there.
Why? Well, I got to see several years of Stan and all of Pujols so far, and the fact is that they just don't miss many pitches, nor miss them by much, especially compared to other power hitters. That is, their uppercuts don't cause as many misses as happens to other guys. So they don't walk as much as the first group, because they hit the ball fair a lot before ball 4 comes around - or strike 3. But they also don't strike out much. I can't criticize that, because it isn't a failing. It's just a different skill set. One non-Cardinal who looked to me like he had great bat accuracy was Pedro Guerrero. Same thing. I note that when analyzing these guys because it's good info. It's not that Albert Pujols is impatient, his bat is just accurate. When you're analyzing him, you have to take that into account.
Does that make sense? I wasn't meaning in any way to criticize Albert, or Stan, or Pedro. But they don't take as many walks as the guys who really milk it. That's fact. They also don't strike out as much. That, too, is fact. Since the general topic was Cardinal batter walks, the info was relevant. That's all. It's just data, not rankings. If you want rankings, I consider Albert Pujols to be the most consistent truly great hitter I've ever seen. And his bat accuracy is probably part of that. Musial, too, was known for consistency, although you have to break his career into two phases, dividing at 1948, when he had the homer surge. But within both periods, he was consistent. - Brock
Then we're in agreement. I interpreted "he just doesn't take as many walks as that power should lead to," was suggesting that Pujols' lower walk rate was sort of a failing, not a byproduct of his skill set.
Please check out the league splits. The Dodgers were well known for beating the bejeezus out of the lower level teams in the NL and being a .500 club against the second, third and fourth place teams. That is the basis of my comparison. The winner of the NL Central typically fattens up on the bad teams in the division because they are REALLY BAD squads.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main