It's been pretty hard to ignore JJ Hardy in the last couple of games.  He homered late in the game on Tuesday and went 2-4 last night while also making a couple of difficult plays at SS.  So, I thought, why not put together a trade for him?

Hardy is currently slashing .307/.369/.547, which is good for a .394 wOBA -- second in the big leagues among SS to only the incomparable Jose Reyes, everyone's favorite trade target, who is on pace for 70+ steals and 30+ triples which is nearly Albert Pujols level of ridiculous.  UZR doesn't rate his defense all that good this season (-2.7 runs so far), but in ~5000 innings of play coming into this year Hardy was worth an average of 9.5 runs over 150 games.  In fact, since he entered the big leagues in '05, Hardy has been the best defensive SS in baseball by UZR.  He is currently owed about $3.2M for the rest of 2011 by my back-of-the-napkin calculations, and will be a free agent at the end of the season.  The Orioles are supposedly in talks to extend him, but if they can't I don't think there's any doubt that they will be looking to deal him.  

I think the O's would require at least a couple of B prospects to acquire him.  Interestingly, their farm system is very, very thin at the outfield position (as well as being stocked with good SS prospects including Manny Machado), something that could make the Cardinals a potential match for them in the trade market as the outfield is one place where we have some real depth.  Luke Scott is a free agent after the season, Nolan Reimold has been less than impressive since his initial call up, Felix Pie looks like a complete bust, and they really don't have anyone who can fill that left field spot for them in the high minors.   I think that makes Jon Jay or Allen Craig an trade asset, as well as possibly a minor league outfielder with tools, like Tommy Pham or Adron Chambers.  

But wait!  I'm not done!  The Orioles also have Mike Gonzalez.  Yes, THAT Mike Gonzalez.  Hear me out, though.  Gonzalez is a free agent after the season is is owed around $3.5M for the rest of 2011.  While he's not been great overall, look at his splits against lefties this season: 

56 TBF, 15.00 K/BB, 2.09 xFIP, and opponent average of .222 with a BABIP of .270

He hasn't been lucky, he's been good.  Now, he hasn't gotten a right handed hitter out all season (well, he walks most of them: Out of 70 RHB faced he's walked 12) and ~$3.5M is a lot to pay for a LOOGY, but it gives Baltimore a chance to save some money and gives TLR the LOOGY that he sorely needs in the pen.  I think Gonzalez is a good gamble and one we should take as desperate as we are for a left specialist.  Yes, I'd like Koji Uehara too, but I don't see Baltimore dealing him for peanuts, so Gonzalez is really the next best bet.

My proposed trade?  

* Cardinals get: JJ Hardy, Mike Gonzalez, assuming their contracts for the rest of 2011 ($6.75M)

* Orioles get: Jon Jay, Tommy Pham/Oscar Taveras, and Joe Kelly/Deryk Hooker

I think that's a trade that the O's would have to look strongly at.  They get a major league outfielder in Jay, a toolsy outfield prospect in Pham or Taveras, and an arm with upside, as well as saving almost $7M for the rest of 2011.

The Cardinals get the SS that they sorely need, enabling them to move Ryan Theriot to 2B while keeping him at leadoff, and also give TLR another option for having a power hitter in the 2 hole or the 6 hole in the lineup, as well as getting the LOOGY that could help shore up the biggest hole in the bullpen right now.

I like this deal much more than a proposed Reyes trade, where we'd have to give up a lot, and more than the rumored Heath Bell trade, in which we'd be on the hook for more guaranteed money and be getting back crappier players.

Mysterui brought up how the "Pujols Effect" on hitters batting directly in front of him might be a fallacy, so I dug into Baseball-Reference and mined some data to see if I could come up with some conclusions based strictly on hitter performance.

An objective analysis of the Pujols Effect would also look at pitch selection thrown to those hitters, but I'm not sure you're going to be able to get that data, and even if you are, it's going to have a ton of noise related to it because you'd have to account for each pitcher's repertoire, how often they generally throw each pitch, how often they throw strikes, and then determine whether there's a significant change in how they pitch when Pujols is in the on-deck circle.  This would be something for VEP or someone with a database of pitches from Pitch F/X to try and tackle if they could come up with a query that would search out that type of stuff.  It's way above my head, so you'll just have to settle for my quick and easy method here.

Here are the Cardinals 2nd hitters' sOPS+/tOPS+ since Pujols started hitting 3rd on a regular basis in May of 2003 (sOPS measures the difference between the teams' hitter in that spot and the league average hitter in that spot.  100 would be equal to league average, > 100 would be better than average, etc., just like OPS+ normally distributes, tOPS+ measures how much better a better did in this spot in the order)

Year       tOPS+/sOPS+                  Player Games Hitting Second

2009:         94/92                              Rasmus (74), Ryan (21), Ankiel (15)

2008:       120/132                           Miles (34), Ludwick (30), Duncan (17)

2007:       133/128                           Duncan (45), Ankiel (36), Taguchi (26) 

2006:         99/98                              Duncan (54), Taguchi (32), J-Rod (22)  

2005:         96/103                           Walker (44), Edmonds (34), Nunez (26)

2004:        105/117                         Renteria (53), Walker (34),  Lankford (30)

2003:         94/104                                Drew (46), Edmonds (34)

Again, what were looking at is whether these guys performed better in the 2nd spot than they did elsewhere in the lineup (the first number) and how that spot in the lineup did compared to the league average 2nd spot for all teams combined, including the Cardinals (sOPS+, the second number).  Considering Tony likes to bat power hitters in the 2nd spot and other managers don't, I would expect the sOPS+ to be above 100 most of the time for the Cardinals, and that's pretty evident here I think, so we probably should handicap the sOPS+ just a tad, adding 3-5 points or so as a WAG.  I could look back historically with LaRussa, but that would take a lot of time, and it's Friday, and I'm blowing off a bunch of work I need to get done to do this anyway, so you'll just have to make this assumption with me.

As far as I'm concerned that's a pretty neutral distribution, because the two strong years are carried by guys who happened to have career years that season (Duncan/Ankiel in '07, Ludwick in '08) never to see similar numbers like that again, it just happened to be that they hit in front of Albert.  It's really, really hard to state that those guys wouldn't have hit well elsewhere in the lineup had they been batting there.  The numbers below 100 feature a lot of Jim Edmonds, who hated batting second (regardless of who was batting third) and voiced that opinion numerous times as I recall.  Also, 2006 and 2009 would probably look very similar if it wasn't for Duncan's breakout late in the season.

Conclusion: It's not much of an advantage to be batting in front of Pujols, at least in the macro sense.    

FWIW, the most successful guys seems to have hefty splits (Duncan killed RHP, terrible against LHP; Ludwick destroys RHP, not good against LHP; Taguchi destroys LHP, terrible against RHP; Ankiel destroys RHP in '06, struggles with LHP; etc.)  TLR seems to like to put platoon guys there, whether that says something about the "Effect" I have no idea.  

Well, that Holliday thing is done finally, but not much else is going on.  A quick rundown:

• The team still appears to have about $7M left in the coffers of the $100M projected payroll.  That's not really enough to sign another RH reliever, a 5th starter, and a backup corner infielder/RHH second baseman, but it's enough improve 2 of those 3 if the deals are negotiated accordingly.
• Jose Valverde?  Rumor is that the Cardinals made him an offer, but apparently not one that he can't refuse.  Are we bumping up the price for someone else in the division (Cubs)?  Or is Mo serious about bringing him into the fold?  He's a Type A, so bye-bye 1st round draft pick if we do sign him.  UPDATE: Gone to the Tigers 2Y$14M + $9M Option.  In related news: The Tigers continue to overpay players.
• Left handed bench bats are dropping like flies.  There's really only one LHH OF left on the market (Gabe Gross), with Chad Tracy and Russell Branyan being the corner infielders that are still available.  If the club is serious about signing one, they better get on it quick, although I think it would be ok to go with the young guys in this case rather then spending the whole wad of $7M on someone like Branyan, who won't play full time for the Cardinals.

Continue reading this post »

I know there's already a fanpost with the rumor from Peter Vecsey in it, but this is more for discussion of how the trade would work, if it's worth doing for the price, and how this improves the Laker team this year and going forward after this year.

Without further ado:

Continue reading this post »

I've put together a Cardinal Roster Matrix with payroll obligations for 2010 here.  I've created a couple of different scenarios for what might happen next year and beyond if we sign Matt Holliday.  If we don't sign Holliday (which would make today's trade a really, really bad move), we have an approximate payroll of $65M (I factored in arb raised for Skip and Ludwick) and holes at 4 positions: LF, 3B, SP, SP.  

Scenario #1:  We Sign Holliday for $15M per season and replace 3B, SP, SP from the farm.

Essentially this means our 4th and 5th starters are some mix of Boggs/Garcia/Thompson/Hawksworth/Lynn and our 3B is David Freese or Allen Craig (or, god forbid, Julio Lugo).  You can see that our payroll is less than this season ($83M), but we've replaced Derosa with a replacement level player and replaced Piniero and Welley with replacement level pitchers (Which, in Welley's case might be an improvement).  I see no way that this team wins 85 games (a .500 team is what I would assume), and that's without factoring in any injuries which would totally hose our pitching staff.  Bullpen looks great though.  This leaves us room to sign a mid-level starter to fill the 4th rotation spot, or to get a decent FA 3B, speaking of which:

Scenario #2:  We sign Holliday for $15M per season, Derosa for $8M per season, SP and SP from the farm.

Brings us up to right around the current 2009 payroll of $88M, plus around $3M in raises, but we still have two replacement level starters and no pitching depth in case of injury to any players.  I would expect the Pythag for this team to be worse than this year -- somewhere around 85 wins due to the replacement level pitching at the back end of the rotation.  There's a way to combat that problem though...

Scenario #3: Holliday, $15M; Derosa, $8M; Pineiro (or other starter), $10M; Other SP from the farm (Boggs/Thompson).

Now we're over $100M, we still don't have a lot of depth anywhere, but our rotation is better than it was in the previous two scenarios.  If Carp stays healthy and Lohse and Piniero (or whoever) give us #3 starter stuff, we're looking at around 90 wins I'd say, given that Piniero will be worth at least 3 wins this season.  Do we want to give a guy with a career year a $10M deal?  Do we want to give any pitcher in this offseason $10M a year when we're already spending a good chunk of change on our top 3 starters?  I don't, but we don't have much choice if we want to win ballgames.  The better question is:  Does ownership want to spend $98M on a team that probably isn't good enough to win 90+ games?  I'm not sure I would if I'm taking a $10M loss each of those seasons.

Some things that I haven't factored in here:

1. I have not discussed signing Albert long term, but you can see from the matrix that if you plug in $20-$25M per season starting in 2012, You're talking about a payroll of around $110M, which is more than Dewitt has ever spent (even adjusting for inflation) in any one season since he bought the team.
2. I have not discussed locking up Rasmus' arbitration years either.  He'll be cheap in 2011, but he'll be a Super 2 guy for sure in 2012, and will get very expensive after that if he lives up to his potential.  If he doesn't, we're really screwed as a ballclub.  If he does, better to lock him up now (like they did with WW and Molina) until 2014 for less money that what he'll surely cost in arbitration.  That could be the difference between a $110M team and a $116M team.  Seems worth it to me.
3. Ludwick will earn a big payday (barring injury and falling off a cliff) in 2012, making 2012 a really expensive year if Pujols extension starts that season.  

Any way you slice it, paying Holliday the market rate for even a 3 year contract (which he won't accept probably) gets prohibitively expensive if you want to compete, extend Albert, and have a decent pitching staff.  You're looking at $100-$110M if you want to have a similar roster to the one we have after the Holliday trade for the next 3 seasons ('09,'10,'11).  That's some serious coin for a team that, on paper, would be about a 90 win team (i.e. not as good as the Cubs last season).  Let me know if I've missed anything and I'll add it to the sheet.

Phew, glad to have that Rockets series over with -- maybe this team has learned a little bit about itself and how it really needs to bring it every night, especially on the defensive end.  FWIW, Cleveland sweeps that series and wins Game 4 (no Yao) by 40 on Houston's home floor.  You cannot underestimate how good the Lil' Lebron's are playing right now: 8 Playoff wins, all by double digits, and playing ridiculously good team defense.  They're clearly the favorite right now, especially after they paste Orlando in the first two games of the Eastern Finals.  Mark my words, it's going to happen.

A few key points about the Western Finals before I get to breaking down the matchups:

1. Both of these teams like to run, but I think the Lakers are in trouble if they get into a track meet with Denver on the road.  The elevation will be a factor, and our bigs will get worn out quicker than theirs will, which will spell trouble in the fourth quarter.
2. It's imperative that the Lakers hold home court the first two games.  Denver is not a lockdown team at home (as they exhibited in Game 3 of the semifinals), but letting them steal one and go home with the series tied will have their fans fired up and thinking their team can win this series.
3. Andrew Bynum must play like he did on Sunday for this whole series.  
4. I see Shannon Brown getting a lot of minutes in this series because he's big and physical and is a much better matchup for Billups and Carter than Farmar is.  

Continue reading this post »

A couple of things to note here:

1. This applies only to Mediacom markets that carry FSN Midwest.  If your market doesn't carry that then you're SOL on the Cardinals games on TV.
2. There may be other games blacked out due to other reasons, this is just a list of games that will not be carried due to Mediacom not picking up the surcharge package of games (20 total games affected).
3. All times are Central Standard Time.

The schedule of surcharge games that are blacked out are after the jump.  Sorry for the formatting issues, but the WYWSIWIG editor on SB Nation kinda sucks and I didn't have time to type in the XHTML code for the tables.

Continue reading this post »

Back in January, Erik from FutureRedbirds (now residing at Beyond the Boxscore) took a look at the projected 2009 Cardinals by plugging them into Sky Kalkman's WAR spreadsheet to see how many wins, by WAR, the projected team looked to be worth.

I took the liberty of re-constructing that spreadsheet now that we have a better idea of what the depth chart is going to look like on opening day.  Again, I used CHONE for all projections.  Here are the changes I made:

1. I removed Manning and Ring (although "Replacement" pretty well describes their talents, I think).
2. Added in Dennys Reyes.
3. Reduced the projected PA's for Glaus and added in PA's for Mather and Freese at 3B.
4. Moved Skippy to 2B, removed Kennedy, and bumped up the PA's for Ryan and Barden, adjusting for late inning replacements and platoonage.  Same with Duncan, Mather, and Skip in LF.
5. Penciled in a full season for Chris Carpenter and slightly increased Wainwright's innings while pushing Puppykicker's and Boggs' innings down.
6. I spread Rasmus' PA's equally over CF and RF since I feel like he's going to be playing more corner outfield than originally projected as long as Ank stays healthy.
7. Although league average wOBA for pinch hitters is around .301, I bumped the Cardinals' to .310 because of the depth on the bench and the fact that we're going to have some platoons where solid regulars like Duncan, Mather, and Skip are going to be getting some late inning AB's.  I also bumped down the PH numbers from 350 to 200 because of the platoons and movement around the diamond by so many regular players.

So what's the verdict?  About 86 wins, which is right where Erik had us headed in January.  I think this shows that even if Carpenter pitches a full season, our pitching staff is going to have to be much better than their projections for the Cardinals to have much of a shot at the Cubs.  I anticipate Duncan, Greene, and Freese outperforming their CHONE projections, which would add maybe a win or two on offense.

What does everyone else think?  Are there any corrections you would like to see made?  Any other possible combinations of players you'd like to see added?  All suggestions are welcome and I'll do my best to update the sheet as needed.

I'm a operations director in Des Moines for the local Mediacom system, but I can set up anyone that is looking for service in any Mediacom market.

If you are looking to pick up cable service for Cardinal baseball this season, give me shout in this FanPost with your address, town, and a phone number I can reach you at.  I can set you up with the best offers available to new subscribers and best upgrades that we currently have for existing subs.  

Mediacom carries Fox Sports Midwest in High Definition in nearly every Midwest system, and about 100-120 games were in HD last year.  We do not offer the Extra Innings package (unfortunately).  I can also get you set up with our high speed internet at an affordable cost for at least the next year, so you can subscribe to the mlb.tv package if you want.

If anyone is interested, please let me know.

Up over 400 posts again, so here's a new thread.

A couple of starting points:

• Over at Beyond the Boxscore they have an excellent book review of Brad Snyder's "A Well Paid Slave", about Curt Flood's fight for free agency in the late '60's and early 70's.  (Amazon link here).  I read and cited much of this book when I was working on my dissertation on organized labor in professional sports a few years back; it is an excellent read for anyone interested in baseball history.
• Hardcore and some others found an MLBTR link about Sheets asking for 2Y$18M with a third year option from the Mets.  To me this screams of a pitcher with possible health issues.  He'd be much better off on an incentive laden one year deal with the crappy 2009-2010 free agent class of pitchers.

We're up over 400 posts on the last one so I thought I'd get a new one started.

Some carry over discussions from the last couple of days:

• It looks to me from Mo's comments that if he thinks the team needs another starting pitcher than he would go out and get one.  Hmmmmmm...
• The free agent pitching market just got a little smaller with all the old folks signing yesterday (Hoffman to the Brew Crew, and Smoltz to the Sawx), and one Japanese pitcher also off the market (Uehara to the O's).  The contracts seem fairly reasonable but the only one I would have liked to see with the Cards is Uehara.  Does anyone think this makes Kawakami cheaper?  Or will he still get 3 years at $8M or $9M per season?
• It also looks like Tony is ready to give Colby a shot in CF at some point next year, and thinks that the team should probably move an outfielder to make room for him.  I wonder which outfielder he feels needs to be moved most.

I'd love to get a debate and discussion going about postseason award winners for 2008, and this atrocious article on SI.com should get a little bit of discussion going.

Seriously, how can you give the AL MVP to K-Rod and then NOT give the NL MVP to Lidge?  Saves is such a terrible stat to use to judge things, and Lidge had a much better season than K-Rod in every other category related to pitching.  Not to mention that Lidge didn't blow a single save all year.  I don't think any reliever deserves an MVP award, not even Eck when he had his ridiculous year in the early 90's, but if you're putting K-Rod on top in one league, it's foolish to say that a pitcher who was better in every facet of performance statistics shouldn't also get the award in the other league.

Second, Pujols finishes FIFTH in the voting in the National League behind two guys who played half a season, Lidge, and Ryan Howard -- who the author says got into contention by hitting .355 for September with 11 home runs.  I guess the fact that Albert hit .357 for the season, hit .366/.456/.706 in the second half, and had his best RBI month of the season in September is easy to overlook.  Considering that Sabathia and Ramirez probably wouldn't be contenders based on their total stats from the season, I hardly see how they're qualified as MVP candidates, especially when Manny's own manager has said that he felt Casey Blake was the biggest reason for the club's turnaround on the field and in the clubhouse.

Apparently being the Most Valuable Player disqualifies you from being the best pitcher, since K-Rod and Sabathia lose out in the Cy Young voting to two pitchers who aren't even on his top 10 in the MVP voting.

Huh? 

Ignoring the fact that starters have much higher leverage in terms of valuability to a team, how can you hypocritically state that those two guys are two of the four most valuable players and then not have them win their leagues Cy Young awards?  Sabathia loses because Santana "was in the NL all year" -- but that fact isn't enough to get Santana on the MVP list I guess....

I have no quibbles with his choices for ROY -- maybe the smaller sample of players didn't overwhelm him so much that he had to make a crazy pick here.  Although I do find it interesting that he leaves off Edinson Volquez who was second in the NL in K's as a rookie and looked incredibly dominant in the first half before running out of gas, as rookie pitchers are prone to do.

Piniella is a good choice for manager of the year in the NL and Maddon is the runaway winner in the American League, although not giving mention to Terry Francona is a crime.  Dealing with the Manny saga, Papi, Drew, Beckett, Schilling, and Lowell all missing time, and a suddenly hittable bullpen has to make this one of the better managing jobs in the big leagues.

Executives of the year are ok picks too, but I'd have to give the nod to Tony Reagins of the Angels for swindling the Braves for Tex AND holding onto most of his top prospects in the minors.

Outside of the fact that this guy should have his press credentials revoked for lack of intelligence, what does everyone else think about the postseason awards this year?

According to ESPN's Jayson Stark, the Cards could be looking to trade Kyle Lohse.

Officials of two teams that spoke with the Cardinals report that they've been offering to deal Lohse if they can get back the right package.

So, VEBers, the teams interested are apparently the White Sox, Yankees, and Rockies.  What kind of return do you think the club is looking for from those teams in order to trade Lohse today?