When researching the Cardinals starting pitching staff over at Whiteyball, I found that the starters only had a 48% Quality Start Percentage in 2008.  The following table shows our top 5 pitchers and a few durability stats:

The 48% number was brought down by 19 starts pitched by below replacement level players who decreased the overall number greatly.

My questions to the VEB community are as follows:

1.  Will the Cardinals improve on their quality start percentage in 2009?  (Remember, they have Carpenter, but may even have less pitching depth due to injury concerns)

2.  Of the 4 main starters from 2008, that are still on the team, who is most likely to improve?

3.  Who is most likely to regress?

Click here for background on the Cardinals 2008 quality starts, along with a comparison to 2005.

I know that this diary title is not going to be popular.  I actually like statistics and on the surface Miles looks like a total waste of a roster space.  The overwhelming majority of Cardinal fans on this site see no use to Aaron Miles on this roster, and I was one of them.  Until...

I got to wondering "why"?  What do the Cardinals see in him that we don't.  Is it more than the scrappy scrapinator B.S.?  Do the numbers hide a value that we aren't seeing?

Let's take two sets of numbers from the past two years:

Player 1:  233 AB  .373 OBP
Player 2:  321 AB  .352 OBP

Now from purely an OBP standpoint, we'd rather have player 1 leading off than player 2.  

Player 1 is Aaron Miles vs. left handed pitching the last 2 years.  Player 2?  David Eckstein vs. left handers the past two years.  Amazingly, Miles outslugged him as well.  

Now, who else is playing second base for the Cardinals?  Adam Kennedy.  I have to believe Kennedy comes back to around his career norms.  In '05/ '06, he had an OBP vs righties of .356 (along with .759 and .741 OPS, which isn't bad for a 2bman).  A platoon with a .360 OBP out of our leadoff hitters would not be bad.

What are the other costs?  Having Miles on the roster doesn't mean Ryan won't be on the team (he should be starting at short or at least Izturis's platoon).  So that leaves us with Jiminez (horrible OPS against left handers) and VEB favorite Jarrett Hoffpauir.  Hoffpauir is obviously the most attractive option.

Hoffpauir IS right handed so you'd think his splits would be better versus lefties (I don't have the information to back it up).  He's also had some pretty good minor league numbers.  Saying that, he is currently hitting .236 with a .622 OPS (.255 SLG) in winter ball (55 AB small sample size caveat) and at the very least isn't a sure thing.

In my opinion he needs a little more time in the minor leagues and can always be called up mid-season (we WILL have injuries in 2008).  There is something to be said about not moving a player to quickly and he probably wouldn't get regular at bats with Adam Kennedy still hanging around (I would rather see him get AB's in the minors than rotting on the bench).

Sometimes confidence is a big part of growth and the fact that he will get more at bats in the minors is an obvious good thing.  At the very least, he gives us a backup in case Kennedy gets injured or is ineffective.  If you are one of the believers in his skill set (which I am), we also don't start his arbitration clock during a transition year.

There may actually be a method to the madness...

Recently, I sorted through some data to find Mulder's Quality Start vs. Non-Quality Start Splits.  I came to the conclusion that Mulder is mediocre with Quality Starts but has a dominant ERA when he has them, therefore, there may be some credence to the fact that he's either dominant or horrible.  I ventured to guess that maybe his mechanics get out of whack easily or his confidence fluctuates easily (when he's confident, look out; when he's not, it's not going to be pretty).  I also utilized Mulder's less than stellar Quality Start stats over his career to mean that he may be consistent after all and that we should expect more of the same from Mulder for 2006 (instead of regression).  MdRedbirdFreak was interested to know the rest of the rotation, giving us some sort of reference to draw upon.  

Quality Start    .......IP    ERA    W-L-ND    Whip    ...K/9    K/BB    HR/9    QS    NQS
Mulder.......    136.33    1.32    13 - 2 - 3     0.970    4.69    2.29    0.46    18    14
Carpenter...    209.67    1.76    21 - 2 - 4    0.900    8.20    5.02    0.60    27    6
Marquis.....    132.67    1.97    10 - 5 - 3    1.000    4.48    2.13    0.81    18    14
Suppan.....    127.67    2.04    12 - 4 - 3    1.140    5.15    2.20    0.42    19    13
Morris.......    114.67    2.12    10 - 2 - 5    0.950    6.23    4.00    0.39    17    14

Non Quality Start    ...IP    ERA    W-L-ND    Whip    ...K/9    K/BB    HR/9    QS    NQS
Carpenter.........    32.00    9.84    0  - 3 - 3    2.060    6.19    1.69    1.13    27    6
Mulder.............    68.67    8.26    3  - 6 - 5    2.180    5.24    1.02    1.58    18    14
Marquis............    72.33    8.09    3  - 9 - 2    1.960    4.11    0.87    1.99    18    14
Morris..............    78.00    7.04    4  - 8 - 2    1.760    4.27    2.18    1.96    17    14
Suppan............    66.67    6.47    4  - 6 - 3    1.860    5.53    1.37    2.43    19    13

Armchair analysis after the jump...

Continue reading this post »