(disclaimer: OBP, OPS/OPS+, WHIP, and FIP are about the peak of my sabermetric understanding, so if what I'm about to discuss is an actual metric out there somwhere, then sorry, I'll delete the fanpost)

I was watching the game last night against the Brewers and saw a pitch from Westbrook go WAY outside. Yadi lunged about 4 feet to his right and made an extremely good catch with a runner on third. That got me thinking about a possible "defensive stat" for catchers. I'd appreciate any discussion from the saber-smart folks around VEB. The idea I have is sort of an UZR/fielding bible +/- for catchers.

Scenario: With a runner on base (any base), if there is a pitch that is anything but right around the plate, there is a chance of the runner advancing (i.e. past ball, wild pitch).

Let's say that over the course of a full season a catcher has 100 of these scenarios (It would obviously be a lot more, but let's make the math easy here). 100 times during the season there was a runner on base and a pitch that was either in the dirt, way outside/inside, or high to where the catcher would be unable to stop it from his normal rested crouch position.

My question to the people of VEB is: is there a way (with Pitch FX, or whatever tool) to easily find out how many times this happened and what the results were??

Using the scenario above, let's hypothesize that Yadier Molina had 100 of these instances last year. 92 times he stopped/smothered the ball and the runner did not advance (good). 8 times the pitch got away and the runner advanced (bad). By that logic, he would have had a 92% efficiency, or +84 rating (+92 times he stopped it/-8 times he didn't), or however the stat could be termed.

Anyway, anyone smarter than I care to help me out in understanding this? It would basically be a way to compare catchers around the league purely by their ability to stop/smother an out of control pitch when it actually matters (with a runner on).

Thanks in advance.

If you haven't heard or seen it yet, there is a GREAT video on youtube titled "Hitler hates the Cubs". Below is a link, but if it doesn't work just go to Youtube and search for "Hitler hates the cubs". I've seen this movie clip dubbed over quite a few times, but this is without a doubt the best so far....from a Cards fan's prospective that is! Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsELQmqZwAw 

So the Cardinals are 80 games into the season and everyone seems to be concerned about who the cardinals should go after to help bolster our team and make a playoff run. Who should we "add" to the team to make it better? I have an idea...how about addition but subtraction. Take a look at this line and tell me if you would like this player to play 71 of the 80 games played so far.

games: 71     AB's: 187     AVG: .219   HR: 1   RBI: 19   SB: 3---CS 2

Who is this player....that would be Joe Thurston.

My point here is maybe the Cardinals don't need to make an "Impact trade" or get an "Impact bat". Maybe what they need to do is quit giving playing time to players that hurt them. We don't need to ADD things to be successful, we need to SUBTRACT the negatives. 

Personally, I like Thurston. Seems to be a great guy and hustles in everything he does. But we just DFA'd a guy who put up these kinds of numbers. His name was Adam Kennedy. I'm sorry, but if I'm a manager, having a charming personality would not be the difference between DFA-ing and keeping (and playing) two players who put up similar (crappy) numbers.

Just my thoughts....whaddyathunk??

So I was watching the game last night and started thinking about the luck the Cardinals have had thus far. What I mean by this is missing other teams aces, opposing players being DL'd, etc. My mathematically challenged brain certainly can't figure out how to quantify, over the course of a season, how "lucky" a team gets. Is there anything out there that comes close to a measurement like that? How do you quantify the effect of missing one opposing team's ace over the other? Or having one teams slugger DL'd when you play them over another. I just think it would be interesting for someone a little more experienced to come up wiith some sort of measurement.

A couple examples:

Arizona-Webb is out, we missed Haren's turn in the rotation

Cubs at Wrigley-we miss Harden's turn in the rotation, Milton Bradley is out

Mets at STL-we miss Santana's turn in the rotation

Cubs at STL- (although it didn't matter much in the last game) Bradley is out, Aramis Ramirez is out, D Lee is out with back spasms

Cards at Brave-Brian Mccann is out

I'm sure there are a few more I am forgetting. I'm not saying the cards wouldn't have won these games if these things hadn't happened, but it sure didn't hurt their chances of winning. I'm know there is some sort of metric out there that measures the quality of pitchers that a team faces throughout the year. But, it would be sort of interesting if someone were able to be all inclusive with a team's "luck" throughout the season. I, however, would not be that someone, because math makes my head hurt....therefor it is on the axis of evil.  

A quick apology, this is my first fanpost. Don't really know what I'm doing, but I'd really like to hear what people think of the question

DanUp's recent matrix and Albert Pujols....I'd like to tie these two together for a minute and get some people's thoughts. As I look at the matrix, I notice a MASSIVE amount of salary coming off the books after 2009. I will tie this into Pujols in a minute, but first some math:

11.3 million- Glaus
6.5 million- Greene
2.875 million- Ankiel
4 million- Kennedy
7.5 million Pinata
2.5 million Franklin
---------------
34.675 million coming off the books after 2009

Given our current payroll is at 92.23 million, this subtraction will leave us with a payroll somehwere in the neighborhood of 60 million after the end of the season. Obviously there is a ton of other variables I am leaving out like whether these players will be resigned, whether these spots will be filled with cheap cost-controlled youngsters or pricier free agents, etc. Not to mention jumps in salaries of players like Molina and Wainwright, etc. But I also see where there could be a lot of this salary replaced by youngsters i.e Wallace/freese replacing glauses salary, rasmus replacing Ank's, etc. My point is that there SHOULD be a ton of payroll flexibility after this season. So my question to everyone is (and this is where Pujols ties in): What will the Cards ownership and front office do with this money?? We all know Apu's contract renewal issue is possibly years away, but I think I speak for more than just myself that I'm already concerned about it. He has said recently (and publicly) the main force driving his desire to resign is whether the Cards will have a competitve team to field, not money. But that doesn't mean that we can sign him for 5 million a year as long as we have an awesome team around him. We'll still have to pony up a small king's ransom.

So will ownership:
A). Use this salary to throw Sir Albert a fat contract and try to fill most holes from the farm.

B). Use all of it to sign good free agents for these holes (insert wishlist if you'd like)

C). Use all of it for a combination of both A and B

D). Use a smidgeon of it to fill a hole or two with free agents, use the farm for the rest and blame the economy for reducing payroll to 70-80 million

Again, sorry if I did this wrong or this isn't the right place to post this. Just wondering what people's thoughts are.