SB Nation User Blog: DanUpBaby

The Greatest Cardinals of Each Time: Perfectos and Pre-Rickey, 1899-1919

DanUpBaby — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:46:55 -0000

Part one: The American Association Browns, 1882-1891.

Part two: Von der Ahe in the National League, 1892-1898.

By 1898 the Browns, kings of the American Association, were NL bottom-feeders, and when a bereft Von der Ahe sold out to Frank and Stanley Robison there wasn't enough capital left in the name to avoid a change to the delightfully named fifth-place St. Louis Perfectos, the Frankenstein-ish result of an offseason heart transplant.

What's forgotten in the fin de siècle lament of the Cleveland Spiders, one of baseball's saddest stories, is that the reason they were so bad is that the team who they had their Face/Off moment with was as historically terrible as any non-Spiders team can be. The 1898 Browns went gave time to ten position players who hit worse, on the year, than their number one starter, the largely forgettable Jack Quinn. They had a few Real Players—Lave Cross, veteran third baseman and the only player of historical import of the lot; Jake Stenzel, a swift centerfielder who'd hit .374 in 1895 but would retire prior to the 1900 season; Jack Clements, a slugging catcher who'd began his career as a nineteen year-old in the Union Association. But in general the real players were old, and the young players were never seen again.

And at 39-111 they were somehow a major improvement on the 1897 team, which went 29-102. Von der Ahe was out of money, and it showed. For the poor Spiders it was like trading brains with a model skeleton. But even transferring Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, Bobby Wallace, Nig Cuppy, Cupid Childs, and Jack Powell to the newly christened Perfectos wasn't enough to turn those awful turn-of-the-century teams into pennant contenders. By 1900, the fans and ownership perhaps having gotten the message, Perfectos was traded out for something less ostentatious—we have finally reached the St. Louis Cardinals.

When the upstart American League started its own St. Louis franchise, the new Browns, the ex-Perfectos were hit with some poetic justice—future Hall of Famers Wallace and Burkett, among others, were lured away, and the team fell into the second division for a nearly uninterrupted twenty years of futility, one that wouldn't end until the team changed hands again and a young manager named Branch Rickey exercised his influence over the front office.

Here lie these transitional Cardinals' best hitters and pitchers:

Rk	Player	OPS+	PA	From	To	G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	SB	BA	OBP	SLG
1	Rogers Hornsby	150	2243	1915	1919	555	2003	273	620	77	52	27	266	175	59	.310	.370	.440
2	Ed Konetchy	130	4152	1907	1913	982	3585	501	1013	158	94	36	476	403	151	.283	.362	.409
3	Homer Smoot	121	2653	1902	1906	620	2415	297	706	94	44	14	252	136	84	.292	.338	.385
4	Steve Evans	113	2673	1909	1913	680	2287	291	612	100	42	16	303	246	53	.268	.361	.369
5	Patsy Donovan	112	2131	1900	1903	487	1946	303	612	61	13	1	208	118	132	.314	.360	.361
6	Miller Huggins	110	3427	1910	1916	803	2740	507	740	83	18	5	164	572	174	.270	.402	.319
7	Rube Ellis	101	2267	1909	1912	555	1985	279	517	66	30	13	199	216	56	.260	.336	.344
8	Mike Mowrey	100	2172	1909	1913	538	1847	251	492	85	25	4	218	229	77	.266	.353	.346
9	Dots Miller	97	2796	1914	1919	697	2521	286	647	91	40	10	275	163	81	.257	.308	.336
10	Rebel Oakes	88	2298	1910	1913	568	2053	236	560	60	22	5	209	153	91	.273	.329	.331

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/22/2009.

Rk	Player	ERA+	IP	From	To	Age	GS	CG	SHO	GF	W	L	H	R	ER	BB	SO	ERA	HR	WP
1	Slim Sallee	111	1905.1	1908	1916	23-31	215	123	17	83	106	107	1831	778	565	467	652	2.67	44	10
2	Bill Doak	105	1512.0	1913	1919	22-28	196	96	20	27	87	89	1342	586	442	466	629	2.63	29	23
3	Lee Meadows	90	1056.0	1915	1919	20-24	134	58	7	39	52	67	1022	463	352	383	401	3.00	17	28
4	Bob Harmon	84	1284.1	1909	1913	21-25	152	84	6	39	68	81	1247	659	539	594	418	3.78	27	31

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 12/22/2009.

(I don't normally run the hitters that far past a 100 OPS+, but I can't think of better baseball names than "Dots Miller" and "Rebel Oakes." It might not be the best time for Cardinals baseball, but it is certainly the only era in which most of its tenured veterans sound like refugees from a Thomas Pynchon novel.)

It is reassuring, isn't it, to see Rogers Hornsby appear at the top of a list, for once. 1920 was the first year of his decade-long dominance of the National League, though; this is apprentice Hornsby, attempting to play shortstop and only really good, instead of transcendent. For career value, your Greatest Cardinal of This Time is "Big Ed" Konetchy (weight: 195 pounds), who, according to Baseball-Reference's wiki, "has the most triples of any major leaguer not in the Hall of Fame."

I suppose somebody has to. But Konetchy was an excellent hitter, a fine baserunner, and a brilliant defender in an era that prized defense at first base more than any other. In 1914 he was traded to Pittsburgh for, among other players, Chief Wilson, who will forever hold the single season record for triples (36, against 19 doubles and 11 home runs), and in 1915 he was one of the high profile stars who moved to the upstart Federal League, the last of the third leagues to reach Major status.

Honorable mention goes to Slim Sallee, who lost one game for the Reds in the 1919 World Series; Miller Huggins, who in 1918 left his post in St. Louis to manage the Yankees, which was a fine career move; and Jesse Burkett, who played just three years for the Cardinals before bolting to the Browns but hit .376/.440/.509 as the top NL hitter in 1901, when Nap Lajoie was stealing the headlines as a .426 hitter in the American League.

It's lost to history, which is fine with me, but by the time the Cardinals won their first modern World Series in 1926 it was considered an absolute shock; reading contemporary St. Louis and New York papers for my article in last year's Maple Street Annual I quickly discovered that the Cardinals, young, inexperienced, unserious, reaching the World Series was about as novel for them as the 2008 Rays were for us. These teams, bumbling, Pirate-like in their consistent mediocrity, are the reason.

Closers as synonym for Relievers

DanUpBaby — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:57:35 -0000

More photos » by Al Behrman - AP

^^ is a closer.

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The Matt Holliday Question—I like thinking of it that way, as though its ramifications for Singapore are about to be discussed in an unsigned piece in The Economist—has kept us from freaking out about the bullpen. In some ways this is a good thing; there's nothing less satisfying that worrying about The Bullpen Question, which is never answered to our satisfaction on a year-to-year basis. But with Holliday in Flux, we've got no choice. As a prompt, this headline from Ken Rosenthal: "Too many closers, not enough jobs":

For some closers, the free-agent game of musical chairs is not likely to end well...

Two more closers -- Pirates righty Matt Capps and Nationals righty Mike MacDougal -- became free agents when their respective teams declined to offer them salary arbitration.

The availability of the Padres' Heath Bell in trade only adds to the squeeze. Bell is more affordable than some of the closers on the open market...

Four teams already have found closers. The Braves signed left-hander Billy Wagner. The Orioles signed left-hander Mike Gonzalez. The Rays traded for righty Rafael Soriano and the Astros signed righty Brandon Lyon...

This article is why the term "closer" is worthless. I'm done trying to convince people any other way—no more decrying the overrated concept of "closing experience", of "the closer's mentality", of anything else that can be measured statistically. Mike MacDougal, Heath Bell, Billy Wagner, and Mike Gonzalez are all described here, by a well-regarded baseball reporter, as closers. If that is the case—then this term is completely without meaning.

Does labeling this set of relievers "closer" tell you anything more about them than labeling them relievers would? Just one thing: they have all pitched in the ninth inning for at least one season. This information is completely worthless.

That aside—this is not an extremely promising crop of relief pitchers. Jose Valverde is the best free agent, but as a Type A free agent who was offered arbitration he'd cost the Cardinals a draft pick. The Cardinals haven't been linked to Matt Capps's list of finalists, and that he's in such demand following a really ugly season—Jason Motte with fewer strikeouts and walks?—is condemnation enough of the remaining prospects. (Though, seriously, where are they on Kiko Calero? Where is everybody on Kiko Calero?)

For these prospects are, in grand La Russa/Duncan fashion, interesting-but. My favorite, and probably Duncan's favorite, is Mike MacDougal, but my interest is purely as a spectator; his fastball is awesome, his nickname is awesome, and he gets a ton of groundballs and doesn't give up any home runs, which would be awesome if he were still striking batters out. (Bizarre, possibly related Fangraphs fact: he almost totally stopped throwing his once-vaunted slider last year, going with the fastball more often than Jason Motte.) MacDougal's not likely to be a good reliever, and my taste in bad relievers aside he's of interest mostly as a Dave Duncan lottery ticket. But he's also a closer, so there's that.

What this means for the Cardinals is that barring a trade their improved bullpen will have to come from within. Is anybody here willing to nominate someone other than Motte as the bullpen savior in 2010? Relievers are so difficult to predict that I've almost stopped doing it; it's the last baseball territory in which my emotions are basically sovereign over my common sense, and it would definitely be my weakness if I were a GM. Francisco Samuel? Certainly this is the year he puts it all together, perhaps under the steady tutelage of a veteran closer like Mike MacDougal. Casey Mulligan? He's apparently got no stuff whatsoever, but he's dominated four levels in two years, so why not? Gary Daley? Well, he got to AAA, and he didn't walk 25 batters per nine innings this year.

I thought about ending this entry with a poll, but there are just too many choices, even though in the end my tastes run, conventionally, toward Mitchell Boggs, whose fastball looked nearly as good as Mike MacDougal's in the bullpen, and Eduardo Sanchez, the only blue-chip reliever left in the high minors. It's just that in the bullpen it's harder than any other corner of the roster to discount the possibility that someone who I was not counting on at all in March is carrying the team in July.

Sunday Notes

DanUpBaby — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:18:04 -0000

I'm still out of town, but the Cardinals wait for no man. Some faux bullet points:

Joe Thurston is gone; long live Joe Thurston. I don't think I was more wrong about any one player in 2009 than I was about Joe Thurston, who seemed perfectly positioned to earn too much credit and an undue share of fan appreciation as the speedy, slap-happy utility infielder who got off to a hot start. Glaus's absence and Freese and Barden's ugly starts meant he'd lost his chance at being Skip Schumaker's capable second base foil and had to play, instead--almost from the very beginning--as an overexposed, iron-handed third baseman.

But even that might have worked out for him if he hadn't been, and I don't think I'm exaggerating, here, the worst fast baserunner I've ever seen. How bad was he? In limited time, and despite his four regular season triples, he made one out more than Yadier Molina managed on the basepaths. By all accounts an intelligent, hard-working player, he has somehow been worth -12 bases in his brief Major League career, and even that seems like a conservative account of the trouble he had finding and staying on top of the bases.

Thurston's agent says he wanted to remain a Cardinal, but had to "strike when the iron was hot"; but I don't think it was ever a question. Now he's got a new chance to be a fanbase's favorite Scrappy Hustler, and I, for one, promise not to tell any Braves fans about his surprising limitations. I can only hope that a Braves coach takes him aside, just after position players report, and says: If you stand on those bases, they aren't allowed to tag you out.

As for real third basemen, Scott Rolen will be a Red through 2012. This is an interesting deal on both sides; the Reds open up a little payroll in the short term, reducing his 2010 tab from $11 million to $6, but get $6.5 million years for 2011 and 2012. Rolen will be 37 by the end of the deal, which is a little risky, but even with his power sapped and his shoulder in pieces he's been a valuable commodity.

Honestly, I'm not sure what's in it for him, unless he really likes Cincinnati; coming off his best offensive season since 2006, he already had an $11 million payday due him this year and could have been a free agent in what will presumably be a better market for players. His signing bonus--$5 million, deferred over the life of the contract without interest--means that he's basically signed a two year deal worth $11 million, starting in 2011.

Rolen recently made a surprise appearance near the top of Rob Neyer's list of top 100 players of the decade, fittingly right next to fellow MV3 alum Jim Edmonds. There's a Jack Morris-y aspect to the whole thing, because of course it helps that Rolen began his peak almost exactly at the dawn of the decade, but hopefully Rolen's long, intermittently superb coda won't detract from his brilliant run from 2000-2004, a Hall of Fame peak if there ever was one.

Finally, I think it's safe to say that the Cubs lost their trade of organizational headcases with Seattle, and lost it handily; dumping Bradley is one thing, and there is something to be said for trading a guy who the Cubs seem absolutely determined not to play for $6 million of salary relief, which can be used on--well, somebody. But Carlos Silva isn't just a bad pitcher; he's also the guy who whined in public about Ichiro!, the only baseball player whose last name has legally been Microsoft Word search+replaced into an exclamation point and the only bright spot on that last nightmarish Bill Bavasi team, filled to the brim with such luminaries as... Carlos Silva.

Lounging around on a sinking ship, whining at the people who are bailing out water--that is, you'll recall, more or less exactly what got Milton Bradley shipped out of Chicago. And Silva has battled weight problems throughout his career, so he might be even more of a hindrance to their metaphorical seaworthiness.

Cards have long been Penny's dream team

DanUpBaby — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:22:40 -0000

Cards have long been Penny's dream team

Travel day for the upbabies—I offer you, as a leaping-off point, this quote, which is absolutely not about Matt Holliday:

"Obviously, I'd like to pitch this year and turn it into something longer, and if I can do that with the Cardinals, then who knows, maybe I can stay with the Cardinals."

Vague contract-extension talk fever—catch it!

Holliday's Mystery Suitor: Baltimore

DanUpBaby — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:48:02 -0000

Nothing says Lukewarm Stove season like a rebuilding team making bids on the biggest remaining free agent contract of the offseason. I don't want to start doubting Scott Boras now, because he's given me no reason to in the past, but if the Orioles are being floated as the other team this late in the game—well, the Yankees and Mets are presumably way under the radar on this one.

I actually wouldn't hate this move from Baltimore's standpoint. They've got a pretty good system, with some young pitching set to renovate what was a hilariously bad rotation—they collectively managed 58 quality starts, six fewer than the next team and 41 fewer than league leading Atlanta—and signing Garrett Atkins and trading for Kevin Millwood are low-risk moves that will be an easy upgrade from Melvin Mora and the back of that rotation's awful work. The Orioles, like the Pirates in the NL Central, simply can't afford to be terrible any more; their attendance has fallen into a huge hole and they're in a division that squashes the hopes and dreams of plucky fans as a matter of course. Their moves in this offseason have pushed them toward being respectable in the short term without hindering their chances of being good in the long term.

But while spending a ton of money on a free agent would be the perfect capper to an offseason designed to inspire fanbase confidence, this is not the right offseason, and Matt Holliday is not the right free agent. The Orioles already have too many cheap, effective outfielders—Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Nolan Reimold, perpetual tradebait Luke Scott, and former Cubs super-prospect and erstwhile hometown discount inducer Felix Pie are all competing for at-bats—and all of their most pressing needs, and the easiest places to pick up runs against a troupe of very real replacement players, are on the pitching side. O's management seems to have understood that to this point, replacing their worst players with some potentially average players and Mike Gonzalez. Holliday would be a step back from that plan.

Of course, the Orioles not making their rumored move does not mean the Cardinals do sign him, as wonderful a system as that would be. All that implausibility still leaves Matt Holliday wanting more than $128 million, and the Cardinals (reasonably) not wanting quite that much Matt Holliday.

The payroll is not a gift card; the money DeWitt is planning to spend right now does not expire, and if he spends it all in the next thirty days he will not receive an even larger inheritance. But the Cardinals' other options are looking increasingly unappetizing. From a blurb about how the Cardinals are not interested in Chien-Ming Wang, but might be:

The Cardinals have said if they fail to re-sign Holliday they could turn to signing a veteran starting pitcher for the fifth spot in the rotation. Their preference would be to do so on a one-year deal.

Try not to be too excited about that sentence, or this one, because according to VEB's hit-tracker you're probably reading it at work: if the Cardinals do not manage to sign a popular, slugging outfielder to the largest contract in the history of the franchise, thereby setting its course for the next decade, they could sign a veteran starting pitcher like Chien-Ming Wang to a one-year deal. For all we know, this conditional has been around for the last several years—the Cardinals didn't sign Matt Holliday in any of them, and as a result picked up Kyle Lohse, Kip Wells, Brett Tomko, and Matt Clement.

I don't envy Mozeliak and DeWitt here; this is simply awful timing for the Cardinals' last serious free-payroll run at the free agent market before they need to worry about Pujols. Jason Bay, whose contractual demands—he might want five years—are relatively piddling, is the only other Big Name player on the market, and the defensive collapse brought on by his knee problems in 2007 makes him a much riskier upgrade. If Holliday falls through, that's it; for all their good intentions, the Cardinals will have little choice but to have a typical Cardinals offseason.

If that means an outfield cobbled together from spare parts, here's my current pick—a Jack Cust/Allen Craig platoon with a variation on the old Killer Bees tag team trick. La Russa has them both wear masks, and between innings Brendan Ryan is used to create a distraction; if pro wrestling has taught me anything, and it has, the umpire won't know that Craig has secretly taken left field while his back was turned.

Non-Holliday front: Future Redbirds has begun counting down their top twenty Cardinals prospects. Notable, given our discussion of Sickels's list: Bryan Anderson rates thirteenth.

Excerpt: Evaluating Baseball's Managers on Tony La Russa

DanUpBaby — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:34:06 -0000

What's a guy have to do to get on this cover?

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A week and a half ago we did a mini-review of what Chris Jaffe's forthcoming Evaluating Baseball's Managers had to say about Cardinals managers. Now, the long-promised excerpt: a look at our very own Tony La Russa's managerial career.

Excerpt housework: the tendencies database Jaffe refers to is defined and discussed at this link; the book covers the years 1876-2008. In the interest of full disclosure, I have received no compensation or freebies on the occasion of publishing this excerpt, although I do have a copy of these exact words in .doc format.

Blog housework: Some reasoned thoughts about the Matt Holliday discussion when I'm feeling reasoned about it, or as news breaks. To be brief: I would love to have Matt Holliday, who represents the best-case scenario for the 2010 Cardinals, but if eight years—eight years! He will be 37! I will be 30! Rylee Rasmus will be eight!—and $128 million doesn't do it for him I can't imagine he'll find any welcoming market except New York.

I can't think of many players who are Ten Year guys—more than seven seems like a commitment the Cardinals should be making exclusively to players with Musial-derived nicknames.

Evaluating Baseball's Managers — Tony La Russa

by Chris Jaffe

Tony La Russa

W/L Record: 2,461-2,146 (.534)

Birnbaum Database: +1,012 runs

Individual Hitters: +240 runs

Individual Pitchers: +455 runs

Pythagenpat Difference: +138 runs

Team Offense: +297 runs

Team Defense: -118 runs

Team Characteristics: LaRussa likes the decision-making parts of the game - pinch hitters, bringing in relievers, bunting, stealing bases. However, he avoids intentional walks. His teams are pretty well rounded as they either score above average in nearly all the categories in the Birnbaum Database, or at least fare only slightly worse than a typical team.

Appropriately for someone who finished law school and passed the bar exam, LaRussa has a reputation as one of baseball's smartest managers. The Tendencies Database can test that. For example, look at one part of the job - filling out the lineup card. Thanks to Retrosheet, information on batting orders exists for all teams in the last half-century. Based on that, one can see how LaRussa fares versus other skippers.

There are three main parts of any lineup. The top two slots of the order are supposed to get on base. After them, the team's best hitters are supposed to drive them in while batting in the heart of the order, generally slots three to six. Finally, the worst hitters usually end up at the bottom of the order, where they will collect fewer plate appearances. Baseball-Reference.com makes studying these Retrosheet-generated splits much easier by providing combined offensive data for these three groups for all teams.

On base percentage is the best metric to measure top of the order hitters because their main job is to get on base. Specifically, for reasons mentioned in last chapter's Sparky Anderson commentary, take the cumulative OBP of the two top slots and divide it by the team's overall OBP. For the remaining two sections, the stat of choice is tOPS+, a Baseball-Reference invention that compares the OPS for a given split compared to the team's overall OPS. If a team with an 800 OPS had an OPS of 1200 from the heart of its order, they would have a tOPS+ of 150 because the split was 50% better than the squad as a whole. For the middle of the order, a higher tOPS+ indicates the manager did a good job filling out his lineup card. A lower tOPS+ for the bottom of the order is desired because that means he made sure his worst hitters were in the appropriate slots. Put all three of these splits through the Tendencies Database, add the results together, and determine who is best at creating batting orders.

However, a snag affects this plan. Everyone puts their best hitters in the heart of the order. That is not the case in the top or bottom of the order as some managers put speedsters who cannot steal first in the leadoff slot or walk machines at the bottom of the order, but every manager treats the middle the same. Ranking tOPS+ for the 3-6 hitters simply determines which clubs had the most impressive offensive core. There is little reason to give someone credit for realizing Barry Bonds should not bat eighth.

That split tells us little about managers, but the others can be quite illuminating. Add them together and see who has done the best job with a pencil and empty lineup card. This is not a perfect system, but it works tolerably well.

**Best job creating a batting order**
Bill Virdon	1.455
Tony La Russa	1.511
Sparky Anderson	1.610
Red Schoendienst	1.612
Earl Weaver	1.663
John McNamara	1.663

Virdon bests LaRussa, but they both have a comfortable lead on anyone else.

Also, LaRussa has a pet strategy with his batting orders that further shows he knows what he is doing: batting the pitcher eighth. While this confounds baseball tradition, a study in The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball, Andy Dolphin, Mitchel Lichtman, and Tom Tango revealed that placing the pitcher eighth in the batting order creates runs for a team. Those researchers have some problems with LaRussa's lineups (they think the fourth- or fifth-best hitter belongs in the #3 hole, where LaRussa puts Mark McGwire and Albert Pujols) but they agree with his signature batting order maneuver.

Do not let his genius reputation fool you, though. At heart, Tony LaRussa is a redass. Normally people associate the term "redass" with a manager like Larry Bowa, who knows only one gear - full steam ahead, which can wear a team down. LaRussa performs an internal balancing act between his heart and head. In other words he continually fights an internal battle between the burning desire to push for victory in every game with the recognition of long-term interests. Essentially, he embodies a redass version of the serenity prayer - he has the desire to push for it every game, the willpower to hold back as needed, and the intelligence to know when to push and when to hold back. One story about LaRussa demonstrated the stress this inner war placed on him. In mid-2007, LaRussa told reporters he was not about to retire because there were still games "when you've got a five-run lead, when it's tense and I can't swallow. I've got a headache, and I'm afraid I'm going to throw up. You only feel this stuff because you're anxious about the outcome." That is what happens when a person continually reins himself in.

LaRussa wants his players to feel the same drive. If one lacks that passion, even if it is a star like Scott Rolen or J. D. Drew, LaRussa cannot abide him. He sent both packing, and has had as many feuds with players as any prominent manager in recent times. In dealing with a particular player these feuds may be shortsighted, but they send a message to the rest of the team. If Scott Rolen is not safe, everyone else knows they need to play relentlessly. This ensures LaRussa's teams give their maximum effort.

In this regard, a parallel exists between Tony LaRussa and Joe McCarthy. The former Yankees skipper also strongly emphasized proper conduct while possessing a deep desire to win. Even as a rookie skipper, McCarty dumped all-time great Pete Alexander for his approach to the game. Furthermore, McCarthy, like LaRussa, also experienced head-vs.-heart conflict. McCarthy handled it by drinking his way into alcoholism. More recently, authorities arrested LaRussa in early 2007 for driving while intoxicated. It is difficult to cope with the internal pressure for decades.

Nonetheless, both managers consistently had their teams play as well as possible. In 30 years, LaRussa ran only one last place team, while overseeing eleven first place squads. In fact, in full seasons his teams have had the best record in the league more times than they had losing records (seven to six). Such an achievement requires talented players, but it also demands a manager who handles them appropriately. LaRussa has done a good job finding the best roles for his players, making sure everyone knows their job, and performs their best.

The most striking example of LaRussa's ability to get the most out of his players occurred in Oakland, where he assembled the greatest bullpen in baseball history from 1988-90. In that three-year period, Oakland's relievers posted a combined ERA of 2.60. In contrast, the best single season ERA by any other AL relief unit in that span was 2.82 by the 1988 Brewers. The chart compares Oakland's bullpens to the rest of the AL in defense-independent stats walks, strikeouts, and home runs allowed from 1988-90. Oakland's domination is obvious.

Bullpens	BB/9	K/9	HR/9
Oakland	3.04	6.51	0.52
The Rest	3.67	6.10	0.75

This relief corps's performance was especially remarkable because its core members were poorly regarded prior to arriving in Oakland. The club had three bullpen mainstays in those years: Dennis Eckersley, Rick Honeycutt, and Gene Nelson. Both Eckersley and Honeycutt appeared to be washed up starters before LaRussa moved them to the bullpen. Honeycutt was so poorly thought of that Oakland acquired him for a player to be named later. Nelson previously played for LaRussa in Chicago, and had done adequately, but no more than that. The Sox shipped him along with another player to Oakland for a forgettable middle infielder. The A's augmented this bunch with more of the league's unwanted. Oakland swiped Joe Klink, who had a great year for them in 1990, from Minnesota for a minor league player-to-be-named-later. Mike Norris, a starter for Billy Martin in the early 1980s A's, was an internal reclamation project who also prospered in 1990. LaRussa converted Eric Plunk from a flop starter into a solid reliever.

With these castoffs, LaRussa constructed a bullpen that was not only spectacularly effective, but extremely influential. He used more specialized roles for his relief pitcher than had been common, subsequently affecting how other teams construct and utilize their bullpens. This opens up several thorny questions. Some contend that LaRussa's impact on contemporary bullpen usage is a mark against him. Specialization may have done more harm than good because it causes contemporary relief aces, nominally the best arms in the bullpen, to be used far less than the firemen of yore. However, one should not automatically assume that LaRussa was as influential in this area as conventional wisdom makes him out to be. As noted earlier in this chapter, Bobby Cox also helped create hyper-specialized relievers.

To examine the issue further, first one needs to tackle the issue of LaRussa's influence before assigning credit or blame. When the record is examined, the 1988-90 A's bullpen appears to have been a way-station between how relievers were used and how they have since been handled. Relief aces were already throwing fewer innings as managers like Cox reduced innings per appearance. For instance, whereas four closers threw over 100 innings in 1985 and five more did so in 1986, none tossed that many in 1987 - only three broke 90 innings. Still, the A's amplified this trend. Nothing breeds imitation like success and Oakland's glory run provided the most successful bullpen in baseball history. Innings per relief outing dropped by 20% in the AL from 1987-93. That was the sharpest reduction in league history, and it came when LaRussa's bullpen was at its height. Still, reliever roles were not as starkly defined then as they later became. Eckersley entered the game in the eighth inning twenty times a year from 1988 to 1990, far more than a present day closer would. LaRussa pointed the way forward and others went even further along.

Since LaRussa had an impact, that leads to the next question: was his influence benign or malignant? As critics of the 21st century bullpen usage rightly note, current relief aces throw considerably fewer innings than their pre-Eckersley ancestors. Instead of throwing 100 innings or more, contemporary closers are likely to toss around 60. It seems counterintuitive that an approach that limits the usage of the bullpen's most important player would be beneficial.

While true, the old-fashioned system featured a noticeable downside. If a team brought in its fireman to throw a few innings, he could not pitch for the next day or two. The current approach increases managerial flexibility, allowing closers to be available to close more games. Also, by minimizing the quantity of innings, managers can maximize quality of innings thrown from the most important bullpen arm. In a study in his book Winners, Dayn Perry argued modern closers are actually better leveraged than their predecessors. This flies in the face of a main criticism of current bullpen usage. People remember how Goose Gossage or Mike Marshall came into the seventh inning of tie games with the bases loaded and help the team out while moderns hold three-run leads in the ninth. Both scenarios existed, but neither described a typical outing for relief aces before or after Eckersley. Many seventh inning appearances from the 1970s did not come in highly dangerous scenarios and current closers hold plenty of one-run leads.

Ultimately, however, a moderate uptick in improved leveraging does not necessarily account for a considerable drop in innings. Though it has its advantages, the Oakland bullpen lessens the relief ace's importance.

However, paradoxical as it might sound, the new model bullpen does a better overall job utilizing the entire relief corps. The old version made sense provided a club had one trustworthy reliever, but normally a gigantic difference in quality between the two top arms in a bullpen does not exist. Thus if a manager spreads out the most important innings between them, and does it in a way that allows them to be called on more frequently, that helps his team's overall performance in close and late situations. Reserving roles by inning might be arbitrary and reductionist, but it has the advantage of ensuring that pitchers know their particular roles. If ever a team should have adopted this reliever strategy, it was LaRussa's Athletics. Since they featured numerous relievers pitching great, spreading out the key innings amongst them was sensible. LaRussa's handling of the Oakland relief corps was both cause and effect of their incredible quality.

Though that great bullpen was the most obvious example of LaRussa adeptly handling his talent, it was not the only one. A more recent example came with the 2008 Cardinals. St. Louis experienced a terrific stretch in the mid-2000s built around a core of Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, and Chris Carpenter. By 2008, only Pujols remained (well, St. Louis still had Carpenter but he was too badly injured to be of any value). The team especially lacked dependable starting pitchers. They featured mediocre journeyman Kyle Lohse, and reclamation project Joel Pineiro backed up by two converted relievers - Braden Looper and Todd Wellemeyer. Their most reliable hurler was Adam Wainwright, a 26-year-old with only 32 major league starts in his career. That was a prayer, not a stable starting rotation. LaRussa made it work, and the Cards ended the year with an unexpectedly strong 86-76 record despite playing in the NL's toughest division.

LaRussa has made a career of getting more than one would expect from his starters. He had numerous quality staffs despite rarely having elite starting pitchers. Chris Carpenter had a great stretch, but it was brief before injuries felled him. Besides, though Carpenter had been promising, he had never established himself before joining St. Louis. Tom Seaver is the only established great pitcher LaRussa has ever had, but he was at the end of his career when he came to LaRussa's White Sox. LaRussa is more likely to get good production from veteran pitchers who never wowed anyone before. The prototypical LaRussa success story was Dave Stewart. A struggling reliever before LaRussa got a hold of him, Stewart posted four consecutive twenty-win seasons for the A's. LaRussa also oversaw revivals from Darryl Kile, Woody Williams, Kent Bottenfield, Mike Moore, Floyd Bannister, Garrett Stephenson, Todd Stottlemyre, Jason Marquis, Jeff Suppan, and Bob Welch.

However, LaRussa has not had much success with young pitchers. The White Sox featured a flock of young arms emerge under him, almost all of who had disappointing careers. While drug addiction took their toll on Cy Young winner LaMarr Hoyt, and Britt Burns's career foundered due to a degenerative hip, Richard Dotson, who went 22-7 in 1983 at age 24, blew out his arm. Ross Baumgarten earned some Rookie of the Year votes in 1979, but won only seven more games in his career. Super-prospect Todd Van Poppel was a disaster in Oakland. Bud Smith came up with the Cards in 2001 and despite throwing a no-hitter, was out of baseball by his 23rd birthday. Matt Morris was runner-up in the Rookie of the Year voting in 1997, and survived an arm injury to win 22 games in 2001, but then faded out. Rick Ankiel suffered an epic mental meltdown in the 2000 playoffs, and his pitching career never recovered.

Tony LaRussa is not only baseball's best manager since Joe McCarthy, but he is on the verge of doing something unthinkable - passing John McGraw on the all-time wins list. LaRussa merely needs to survive four more seasons, averaging 76 wins per campaign. His teams won 78 or more games in each of the last nine years.

B Prospects, Plan Bs, DWIs

DanUpBaby — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:05:35 -0000

John Sickels released his Cardinals Top Twenty over the weekend, giving us an SBN-approved list of prospects to salivate over. I can't deprive him the pageview, but suffice it to say that the Cardinals' remaining minor league strength, a large pool of Sickels's ubiquitous "Grade C" guys, is not the most exciting thing to talk about. Go over there and read it, because then I'm going to niggle with it in bullet point format.

It's awful to see Pete Kozma rated 16th, but I can't exactly argue with the thought process that landed him there. I can almost see the thought process behind promoting Kozma, and position players in general, aggressively through high-A. Palm Beach is a hitter's nightmare, and the Springfield Cardinals play in the Texas League; it's a much closer step than it typically is, and probably should be, and had it worked out it would have been a nice confidence boost for a guy who's been not-Rick-Porcello from day one.

That said, I don't get why they kept him there while he endured an unbelievably terrible season. Kozma, who Sickels reminds us was drafted as a "makeup" guy, didn't hit; he wasn't sure-handed afield. At least when Tyler Greene, who managed to climb past Kozma in what is presumably his last year as a prospect, flailed around the minor leagues he stole bases like crazy (113 SB, 15 CS) and hit a few home runs to show that the tools were intact. Kozma wasn't a tools guy; he was drafted on the presumption that he would adjust well to adversity, to whatever role was required of him. I expect a bounceback season of some kind, but the question with Kozma has always been how high that last bounce will be.

The exciting news is that Sickels is higher on Robert Stock than any other source to this point—number four on the Cardinals' list, ahead of Daryl Jones, for the usual reasons: if his bat holds up, he's the total catching prospect package, and if it doesn't he's a hard-throwing pitcher who can kind of hit. Two, two, two prospects in one! I was as excited to watch Stock pick apart the Appalachian League as anybody else, but since Niko Vasquez I've learned to resist the temptation to throw out small samples of at-bats when the season-wide total is so small. Stock may have struggled in just 24 at-bats in the Midwest League, but when that's the difference between a .936 OPS and an .857 OPS for a guy whose bat has as much uncertainty as it does upside it advises some caution in using his short-season debut to forecast future greatness.
While we're on the subject of catchers, Steven Hill was perhaps the biggest surprise of the whole top twenty for me-his .282/.333/.470 line in the Texas League as a 24 year-old earned him the spot just ahead of Pete Kozma on the list. What I'm about to say makes me very uncomfortable. I was an early Bryan Anderson skeptic, and I don't think it's beating my own drum to say that I had him out of my mental top five before other people did. But Steven Hill is a year and a half older than Anderson, and has his own fatal bat flaws; Anderson may have less power than his pitcher, on nights when he's catching Adam Wainwright, but Hill's high-strikeouts/high-average/low-walks routine is a recipe for Major League disaster, and he's apparently even worse behind the plate. I hate to say it, but we might have officially begun to underrate Bryan Anderson.
He's still got no chance of ever starting here, ever, and I'll ban anybody what says different, but I like the decision to list Mark Hamilton at the back of the list. He did it in two hitters' leagues, but an OBP-heavy .927 OPS in the high minors is no mean feat. (And he, too, is six months younger than Steve Hill.) If the Cardinals have any interest in keeping the guy it might have made sense to give him more than a single start in left field, where he could platoon with Allen Craig on a team with less of its future wrapped up in competing right this instant.

It's true, though: the Cardinals have a wealth of guys who are, in the vaguest way possible, interesting. Relievers who might be useful if they learn that strikes and balls aren't called at random? There's Francisco Samuel, owner of a legitimate high-90s fastball and a walk rate that just missed touching one batter an inning, and Tyler Norrick, whose strikeouts-to-hits ratio against lefties—which as fake stats go is both inanely compartmentalized and entertaining—was 2.5:1, and that's just the wild-fireballers nearest the major leagues. Potential fourth outfielders? Jon Jay, Tyler Henley. Offensive-minded catchers with terrible defensive reputations? Hey, we've got three a-those.

You get the idea—these are misfit toys, but eventually the Cardinals will find off-label uses for some of them.

This is extremely interesting timing, given the imminent and uncertain timing of Boras/Holliday's decision on the Cardinals' official offer—over at Play a Hard 9 there's an interesting graph of possible Plan Bs should things not go the Cardinals way. What I doubt in the graph is not that the thought of Miguel Tejada playing third gives Future Redbirds godfather Erik nightmares but that the Cardinals will stick mainly to Allen Craig in left should Holliday leave for greener pastures.

Craig might have a good year, but the symbolic value among the DeWallet set won't be lost on ownership or management; nobody at third base, short of Scott Rolen with a bionic shoulder, is going to make fans forget that the Protect Albert spot is being filled by a rookie making $400,000 a year. And it's simply too easy to use Craig without starting him; as the small end of a platoon he could get his feet wet without having to be the Guy Who Isn't Matt Holliday. U.S.S. Mariner has it "third-hand" that Seattle and Baltimore are talking about Luke Scott, erstwhile Astros slugger. A guy like that would make a lot of sense, should the Cardinals find themselves with a Lego-sized vacuum.

That said, my dark horse candidate for surprise left fielder come this April is, more and more, Johnny Damon. He wasn't offered arbitration, so he won't cost the Cardinals one of what looks like a bounty of draft picks, he fills a hole, Guy In Front of Pujols, that's been assumed vacant nearly as long as Guy Behind Pujols, and he's a guy with a broad base of pretty good skills. I don't know how fond I am of blowing the easiest spot on the team to upgrade on a 36 year-old left fielder coming off a huge season fraught with reasonable park effects concerns, but I can see it happening.

And finally, speaking of Miguel Tejada playing third base, there is Joe Strauss's pre-tweeted breaking news, that David Freese was arrested on DWI charges. We don't know the whole story yet, and I'd hate to pass complete moral judgment on it without that, but suffice it to say that this is a really stupid thing to do.

In the end they're athletes, and should be in the news, for the most part, based on what they do on the baseball field*; at the same time, it's not unfair to hold a baseball player—or a golfer, I guess, to turn subtext into text—to the same standards for generalized disappointment you do any other human being you happen to come across. This is bad; I hope either that there is some mitigating circumstance, though I can't imagine one, or that he is prepared to deal with it in the future, before the consequences get worse, far worse, than a really disappointing Twitter-tease. I don't think, and have never thought, that I as a sportswriter, or we as baseball fans, can say much more about something like this than that.

That said, we don't yet know how this is going to play out on the baseball field; as a ballplayer, Freese, cheap, useful, is an important cog in any free agent machinations.

Non-Tendered is the Night

DanUpBaby — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 09:46:20 -0000

More photos » by Julie Jacobson - AP

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NON-TENDERED IS THE NIGHT

A VIVA EL BIRDOS PLAY IN ONE ACT

CHARACTERS

ANTHONY REYES, ex-Cardinal, ex-Indian

CHARON, or at least a man with a boat

SOME FELLOW TRAVELERS, washed up on the shores of this same strange place

???, a mysterious liaison between the worlds hither and beyond

DAVE DUNCAN, a prospective hauntee

SCENE

At some point the place Anthony Reyes stands may indeed have been the afterlife—certainly it has all the trappings. The lighting, punctuated by the sensible desk-lamps that stand atop each of thousands of desks, arranged on a grid, occasionally reaches eerie; someone, every so often, moans and wails. These were once the moans and wails of the damned.

But it is non-tender season, and until it is time for the afterlife to renegotiate its contract with Major League Baseball a loophole has allowed it to become crowded with souls in limbo on the night after baseball's non-tender deadline. One such soul is ANTHONY REYES—he stands at one end of an unattractive little stream, playing with the bill of his cap, watching the office workers of the damned as they deal efficiently with a flood of new paperwork. Finally a boat reaches his side—a man, who is very obviously working overtime, waves him hastily on.

CHARON: Mr.—Mr. Reyes, then?

REYES: Yes, that's me.

CHARON: I apologize for the delay, I had Jack Cust in here and he fell off the side. I'm kidding, but he almost did. But that's my joke.

REYES: Where am I?

CHARON: Right now it's an open question, but you're in the process of being in hell. Don't worry about the connotations, we're doing contract work. You weren't tendered a contract. What's the last thing you remember?

REYES: Well, we'd just beaten the Tigers, and I'm explaining to this reporter that don't really iron my cap, and... I don't know, the rest of it's a blur.

CHARON: Well, you didn't yadda-yadda the best part.

REYES: What?

CHARON: It's from Seinfeld, it's a joke—look, I'm sorry—it's a TV show—I'm sorry. I'm just a little nervous having to make small-talk. It's not what I normally do. In between 2006 and 2009 you've been sent to the minors ten or fifteen times, traded to the Indians for a guy who was later handed off to the Padres in exchange for their vague interest, had six pretty good starts in 2008, and undergone a serious elbow surgery.

REYES: I thought I felt a little sore.

CHARON: I have another joke, where I'm like, "I ferry you across, but not your fastball," because it's funny and then it's spooky, you know? But I thought maybe that would be too close to home. Anyway, we're here, thank goodness. I've got Garrett Atkins on the other side. You think the Cardinals'll go after him? He can't play defense, but he hit for that year or so.

REYES: You're saying they let the guy they traded me for go in the Rule 5 draft?

CHARON: That's what it says on your chart.

REYES: Yeah, I hope they do.

REYES is deposited in the main office floor of hell, where he is seated by the secretary of hell in the waiting room of hell. SOME FELLOW TRAVELERS, each with a numbered ticket in hand, are sitting in his row.

REYES: Oh, wow, you're Jack Cust, aren't you?

CUST: Is he still telling that joke? Yeah, I am.

REYES: Why are you here?

CUST: Well, I can hit a fastball as well as anybody you've ever seen, and I'll hit it 400 feet to any part of the field. But they don't throw me any fastballs. And I can't play defense. If you were a team with a hole in left field, and you had a young right-handed hitter to platoon with me, and a fleet-footed fifth outfielder—no, probably not. To be honest. But I'll DH somewhere. Anyway, I'm here so that they can tell me which Greek philosophical allegory best represents the whole fastball hitter/no fastballs thing. I can see you're here representing an NL team, so I'll stop talking now.

CUST stumbles out of frame. Across from REYES are several pitchers, most with one or both arms in slings, as precautionary measure. REYES feels a particular and immediate bond with CHIEN-MING WANG, a late twentysomething non-tender with serious arm problems.

REYES: I think we have a lot in common, you and I. We both had some great moments and some bad ones. We were both dumped pretty unceremoniously by a team that had spent a while waiting for our big breakout. I'll tell you, if I had your sinker and you had my change-up we might not be in this mess right now, you know?

WANG: 我不會說英語，但我喜歡你的滑稽的帽子。

REYES: Oh.

CUST: Excuse me—I'm sorry to interrupt, but I speak a little Mandarin... Wang agrees with you, for the most part. He's worried about his shoulder, but he thinks either of you would make a fine pick-up for a team with low expectations and a full but marginally unsettled rotation. There's also Scott Olsen, he notes, but he's rumored to be a headcase, and injured besides; he's lost even more velocity than you did last year. And he likes your cap; do you iron it?

REYES: No, it's simple, really, I cut—

CUST: Sorry, that's my number coming up. It was nice talking to you. (他絕對是整燙.) You should talk to those guys over there—it looks like they've already received their allegorical judgment. [Down the hall behind CUST walk a reliever in black and a reliever in white. They are holding a pair of new-looking scripts.]

MACDOUGAL: "I am the Spirit of Nibbling—and the, and not enough contact! I am alpha!"

CAPPS: "I am the Spirit of Going After Hitters—and too much contact! I am omega!"

MACDOUGAL and CAPPS: "If we were one pitcher, getting groundballs and going after hitters, we would be your ideal pitcher. Now we are... Now we are..." [CAPPS, his head down, runs into REYES.]

CAPPS: I'm sorry, we're running our lines. See, Mike is an extreme groundball hitter with a serious control problem, and I'm an extreme flyball hitter with a serious home run problem, and I guess we're here to haunt Dave Duncan, because there's a non-zero chance he has to deal with one of us.

REYES: Dave Duncan? He's behind that door?

Suddenly the last three years snap into focus for ANTHONY REYES. La Russa and DAVE DUNCAN's unimpressive record with young pitchers sharpens in his mind. A sinker, a horrible sinker, plays across the memory of his arm's tortured muscles. He bursts through the door to find DUNCAN's face projected onto white drywall, and —

Hey man, I knew you'd find us eventually. In hell! I got a winter job here.

REYES: Oh, no! The Ghost of Chris Lambert!

DUNCAN: Oh, for god's sake, is this a party line? Reyes, did this clown bring you here?

LAMBERT: This ghost clown! Liaison between hither and beyond! Licensed astral-projector operator!

REYES: You, Dave Duncan. You're the reason I'm here, aren't you? I remember it all now. I destroyed the minor leagues, I did pretty well in the major leagues, but that wasn't enough, was it? I had a K:BB ratio over seven one year! In the PCL!

DUNCAN: That seems like you're oversimplifying things a bit. After all, your velocity was pretty consistent both years, wasn't it? And you're—well, your arm hasn't exactly held up in the meantime. Look, Reyes, I like you—

LAMBERT: Man, you were just telling me about how stupid that stupid ironed cap looked—

DUNCAN: Look, Reyes. I like you more than I like this guy. And I'm biased, obviously. But as wrong a turn as we might have done you, this whole thing might have been a confluence of you struggling to adapt to the majors at the same time your elbow slowly came unglued. See what happens this year, or next year. There's still plenty of time to be Al Leiter, or somebody.

REYES: I guess you might be right. But Luis Perdomo? Was that the best Mozeliak could do? I'm a fun guy to watch! I have an interesting wind-up, cool socks, an awesome hat. All I want now is a make-good contract. Give me a Matt Clement deal and see what happens, you know?

DUNCAN: Lambert, can you get Mozeliak on this thing?

LAMBERT: Oh... look, I don't really know that guy that well, can you call him? Tell him it's a long distance call—a really long distance call. From hell!

REYES: Okay, you know what? It's not worth it. I'm going somewhere else.

LAMBERT: From hell!

Scott Boras's Showtime Rotisserie and Outfielder

DanUpBaby — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 11:34:37 -0000

More photos » by Lenny Ignelzi - AP

Los Angles Dodgers' Manny Ramirez, center, walks with agent Scott Boras, right, and Boras' staff member Charlie May, through the upper decks of Petco Park to enter the facility avoiding fans and media prior to the Dodgers' baseball game against the San Diego Padres on Friday, July 3, 2009, in San Diego.

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Boras once again did a bit of lobbying when he met with reporters on Wednesday. He reiterated his stance that the Cardinals are entirely able to sign Holliday and accomplish a new deal with superstar Albert Pujols.

"I always say, these are owners' decisions," he said. "I just say that I think the fans need to know these are choices."

The more I hear about Scott Boras, and more particularly from Scott Boras, the less able I am to conjure, for blogging purposes, plausible reasons that he is a good salesman. I have heard this particular line of reasoning this bluntly one other time, in recent memory: at a state fair exhibition floor, from a second-rate carnival barker selling an as-seen-near-TVs sushi-rolling contraption.

He'd just started his sales-pitch, and our small group, alone, stopped to listen; my girlfriend speaks Japanese and is fond of both Japanese culture and bad infomercials, and the confluence of circumstances seemed too much to resist. But his pitch is not geared for four people who know each other—he's obviously familiar with the complete Ron Popeil oeuvre, and his laugh lines, as he shows off his kitchen gadget, are meant for large studio audiences. He begins, addressing us directly, by assuming that we don't know the difference between sushi and sashimi. The correct pronunciation, whispered into my ear, follows, and given how Boras-ly he responds to this usurpation of his authority I can only imagine that this is how all Scott Boras conversations really start.

Having been told, implicitly, that we know more about his product than he does, he gets outwardly hostile. It is, for a while, as though he is attempting to justify his purchase to us. If there were more people I honestly think he would have told me that I couldn't be cool unless I was rolling my sushi with the push of a button—that supplies were going fast, and I, who could win the admiration of his friends and enemies and the girl on his arm with this simple device, should not, must not miss out. But with just the four of us there he said, his Popeil-voice breaking into a kind of heckler-in-reverse yell, that we looked like we could afford this thing, didn't we?

Presumably he was not aware that he was speaking to two liberal arts majors.

But Scott Boras knows who the Cardinals are, and he knows that the Cardinals understand as much about his product as he does. I'm not sure what saying "you sure look like you can afford him!" to the press does, except earn him a small but devoted following among the comments sections of America's newspapers.

That Matt Holliday will eventually be an "owner's decision" is self-evident. Bill DeWallet (it's a pun) could spend money he does not want to spend on the Cardinals on Matt Holliday; it's within his means. And I could have taken $20 that was, to be honest, earmarked for corn dogs and lemon shake-ups and purchased a simple product that would make the entire sushi process easier.

Having watched some of the better blogs rage against the continued employment of, say, Bill Bavasi for so long, I can only say that I'm glad the Cardinals have had reasonably competent management for the entirety of my blogging tenure. This particular Boras trick seems so transparent and desperate that I can only assume, in the grand tradition of trading with Billy Beane, that he is doing it on purpose, as part of an elaborate series of feints. But at least Mozeliak's unlikely to fall for the initial pump-fake.

The Rule 5 draft is this morning, but I'm not sure what that means for the Cardinals; one of the various hard-throwing relief question marks is an option, one that makes it very hard for me not to think about Anthony Reyes, but the Cardinals have the other two usual Rule 5 suspects—toolsy middle infield project and backup catcher—occupied.

I love looking at the Rule 5 draft after the fact, and I hope the Cardinals make a move, if for no other reason than to give us something to talk about in February, but except in Brian Barton/Chris Shelton cases I can't think of any other yearly baseball tradition that more stubbornly resists pre-gaming.

Brad Penny Signs with Cardinals, Generates Headline Puns

DanUpBaby — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:57:55 -0000

More photos » by Eric Risberg - ASSOCIATED PRESS

San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Brad Penny has an enormous wrist in the first inning of a baseball game in San Francisco, Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

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The Brad Penny deal is (as of this writing, one year, $7.5 million with various performance bonuses)... fine. Typical, I'd say, both for the market and for the Cardinals, who have once more opened up a Hot Stove season by making the exact move that the inventors of the DeWallet name expected. I can only imagine it was an ugly day for Post-Dispatch comment moderators.

Penny throws a sinker, which is usually code—it says "this guy doesn't strike out as many people as you think he does." But it surprises me every time that Penny's career strikeout rate is 6.3, and his walk rate 2.9. Those numbers just don't seem right for a guy who's 6'4" and, ha, ha, 200 pounds, who has 33 Google results for his name and the phrase Country Hardball. That's, I don't know, a good Sidney Ponson? A better Jason Marquis? I can't tie the guy who reared back in the first inning of that all-star game and threw fastballs past Ichiro to the guy whose strikeout rate last year was lower than Doug Davis's.

Penny has always been more exciting than his peripherals, and according to Fangraphs his stuff hasn't yet taken a hit; his fastball still averages 94 miles per hour, and he still throws it 71% of the time, more often than any starter older than 25. Then, of course, there is the lens through which we must view all Cardinals pitching transactions at this point: It's a Dave Duncan move, and that fastball is a sinker.

I like Penny, though; he's been about average four years out of the last five, and he does it not with junk but with top-prospect-emeritus stuff. Now, for a game of Pitcher A/Pitcher B: Pitcher A and Pitcher B were both born in 1978; both of them are right-handed; both of them have done this for the last five years:

G	GS	W	L	ERA	IP	H	ER	HR	BB	SO	ERA+	HR/9	BB/9	K/9
155	136	44	51	4.52	815.2	904	410	93	230	501	97	1.0	2.5	5.5
145	142	56	40	4.25	840.1	893	397	80	261	565	103	0.9	2.8	6.1

Pitcher A, of course, is Kyle Lohse; Pitcher B, the man of the hour. Not that I needed to make you feel worse about that contract. Penny has a fragile reputation, and every twinge and ache from a pitcher with great stuff seems a thousand times worse than anything that happens to a finesse guy, but he's made 29, 33, 33, 17, and 30 starts since joining the Dodgers. (The Duncan Magic will need to be worked on his innings pitched per start, which is under six and has been for his entire career. He doesn't strike anybody out, and he doesn't walk a lot of batters, but somehow, maybe while none of us is looking, he is throwing a ton of pitches.)

The exciting thing, for devoted Holliday-watchers, is that the Cardinals are paying a premium for Penny's 2010 so that they don't have to pay for his 2011. There's plenty of money for Matt Holliday this year; it's the six years after that that are looking stickier by the day. Penny's not an innings eater, but he's a start eater, and the rotation needed to be fixed no matter what happens with Matt Holliday.

Signing Brad Penny for one year is buying time—it gives Lance Lynn and the pitchers behind him one more year to enable the Cardinals to pinch pennies at the back of the rotation. It's the least intrusive way to acknowledge that the Cardinals don't have enough in-house options to fill the rotation this year.