SB Nation User Blog: john vb

Yadi's pickoffs

john vb — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:00:41 -0000

According to the P-D (via ESPN.com), Yadi has the 5th most pickoffs since 1987, even though he's only been in the league for 4 years. I wondered, who is ranked ahead of him? I couldn't find pickoff leaderboards on baseball-reference.com, and I guess I'm too lazy to hunt down other sources. Does anybody know where I could find that information, specifically in a freely available web-based source?

shortstop

john vb — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 21:14:55 -0000

Jerry Crasnick at ESPN says:

Shortstop David Eckstein is a serious long shot to return, and Cardinals fans would love Kennedy to leave town right along with him. But the Cardinals owe Kennedy $7.5 million over the next two seasons, so it appears they're stuck with him.
The new hot rumor has the Cardinals pursuing Braves shortstop Edgar Renteria, a local favorite who left St. Louis as a free agent in 2004. Renteria, who's hitting .333, is dispensable with the emergence of young infielder Yunel Escobar in Atlanta. But the Cardinals won't trade Rasmus, who's in line to replace Edmonds as their center fielder in 2009, and they don't appear to have enough young pitching to match up with the Braves.

Renteria is the sentimental pick, and I know we're known for embracing our former players, but think back to '04 when Edgar defected to the Red Sox for supposedly a few million dollars over the course of a 4 year contract. I realize the details of those negotiations can never be fully public, but I still believe he left for close to if not less than $1M/yr, and took a shot at the organization on his way out. I can't find the exact quote, but something about how he felt more "loved" by the Red Sox. That didn't sit well with me, and obviously I've held a grudge. Maybe that makes me the exception amongst Cards fans.

In one year, Eckstein seems to have gone from fan-favorite scrappy World Series MVP to injury-prone wimpy old veteran. Am I missing something? Look at what Eckstein has done. His health has been inconsistent this year, but he's hitting .307 where his previous career high is .294, and he's only 32 years old. His FP and RF are down, but that is likely a result of his back problems. You could make an argument that those very problems are enough to make him too risky, but I'll leave that up to the team doctors to decide. I think if he's healthy, I'd love to see him back on a 2 year deal at around $3-3.5M/yr, maybe with a 3rd year option.

Poll

What should the Cardinals do at SS in '08?

Re-sign Eckstein

16 votes

Trade for Renteria

54 votes

Give the starting job to Brendan Ryan

64 votes

134 votes | Poll has closed

Haren and Wainwright Monthly Splits

john vb — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:41:44 -0000

A couple months ago when Haren was on track for a Cy Young award, a lot of people re-hashed that trade that sent him to Oakland for Mulder and talked about how badly we made out in that deal. I didn't think much of it, mostly because it took 3 years for him to get to this point. Haren was a combined 28-25 in '05 and '06. Besides, you have to give up something to get something in trade, and while some will work out to be a loss, others work out to be a gain, and I think Jocketty's track record shows many more instances of the latter.

Anyway, many have noticed that Wainwright has steadily improved this year, but I haven't seen any mention of Haren's struggles in the 2nd half. I thought I'd show them side by side for comparison. Full stats after the jump.

Haren (Source):

Month GS W L IP ERA H R ER HR BB SO OPS BAbip sOPS+
+-----+--+-+-+----+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+-----+-----+-----+
Apr 6 3 2 39.1 1.60 30 13 7 3 9 24 .573 .223 56
May 6 3 0 43 1.67 23 8 8 2 11 37 .469 .189 26
June 5 3 0 35.1 2.55 29 11 10 5 9 32 .638 .258 68
July 6 4 1 37.1 4.10 42 19 17 2 11 28 .715 .317 89
Aug 5 1 2 30.1 4.15 35 18 14 7 6 36 .806 .329 106
Sept 1 0 1 6 7.50 11 5 5 1 1 4 1.057 .435 163

Wainwright (Source):

Month GS W L IP ERA H R ER HR BB SO OPS BAbip sOPS+
+-----+--+-+-+----+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+-----+-----+-----+
Apr 5 1 2 29.1 6.14 39 21 20 3 16 21 .913 .375 150
May 5 3 2 27 5.00 39 16 15 1 7 17 .824 .384 121
June 6 2 3 39 3.69 34 17 16 5 14 17 .677 .232 79
July 5 4 1 32 3.09 34 11 11 0 9 26 .657 .340 75
Aug 5 2 1 36 2.00 31 8 8 2 10 32 .618 .287 62
Sept 1 1 0 5.2 1.59 6 2 1 0 3 3 .667 .286 70

It's not really fair to include September, since they've each only had one start, but regardless, you can see that while Haren's ERA for the season is nearly a full run below Wainwright's (2.87 vs 3.78), Adam is clearly trending in the right direction. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't wish any bad luck on Haren. I hope he turns it aroud for his own sake. I just wanted to make sure people notice this as much as they noticed his breakout first half. Personally, I think the Wainwright trade (who would've thought at the time that it would be called that?) more than makes up for the Haren/Mulder trade.

Oh, and as for Daric Barton, the guy everybody was afraid would be tearing it up as a DH within a couple years of the trade, he's yet to get a single AB in the majors. Granted, he's put up some solid numbers in AAA as a 22yr old (.284/.389/.441), and may even get a September call-up this year, but I think Cards fans were a little overly optimistic about him.

Improvement

john vb — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 20:31:28 -0000

There was a graphic during the pregame show last night that noted how Wainwright and Zambrano are the only pitchers who have improved their ERAs every month since the beginning of the season. Wainwright secured an improved July with his start last night, so I thought I'd take a look at the rest of his numbers as well. Then I wondered about our boy Rick Ankiel, and whether he was showing any improvement on the plate discipline so many fear he hasn't mastered well enough to hack it in the majors. Hit the jump for all the numbers.

First, Wainer (Source):

Month ERA W L G GS IP H R ER HR BB SO AVG BB/9 WHIP IP/GS
April 6.14 1 2 5 5 29.1 39 21 20 3 16 21 .331 4.91 1.875 5.87
May 5.00 3 2 5 5 27.0 39 16 15 1 7 17 .339 2.33 1.704 5.40
June 3.69 2 3 6 6 39.0 34 17 16 5 14 17 .231 3.23 1.231 6.50
July 3.12 3 1 4 4 26.0 26 9 9 0 8 23 .260 2.77 1.308 6.50

So Adam started out the season turning every batter into Stan Musial, but since May has improved by almost 100 points. As his BAA improved, so did his BB/9, which explains the steady decline in WHIP and ERA. Also notable though, is that he's going deeper into games - averaging almost a full inning more in June/July than he did in April/May.

Next up, #66 (Source):

AB H 2B 3B HR BB IBB HP K SF GDP AVG OBP SLG OPS BB/SO
April 89 23 4 1 7 3 1 3 18 3 0 .258 .296 .562 .858 0.17
May 72 23 3 1 4 5 2 0 17 1 0 .319 .359 .556 .915 0.29
June 99 26 4 0 10 6 2 1 27 1 4 .263 .308 .606 .914 0.22
July 96 25 4 0 8 10 0 1 20 0 5 .260 .336 .552 .889 0.50

Firstly, I notice that Rick's BA has been remarkably consistent at ~.260 other than May, which can be partially explained by his corresponding jump in BABIP (not shown). Meanwhile, despite a gradual increase in walks, his OBP has been erratic. In the end, the original question was about plate discipline, and while .50 isn't a great BB/SO ratio by any means, he is showing some noticable improvement.

Reyes splits by catcher

john vb — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 21:58:44 -0000

I know it's already decided that we probably won't see Reyes again until September, but I was going over Anthony's splits at Baseball-Reference yesterday and found something interesting. He seemed to have a pretty significant catcher split (.238/.329/.377 vs .275/.336/.532). I didn't even realize they had those splits. Baseball-Reference gets better every day! Anyway, I did some more figuring on my own, and here's what I came up with...

G IP AB H 2B 3B HR R ER BB SO DP ERA
Bennett 6 32 122 29 8 0 3 21 20 13 27 0 5.63
Molina 5 28.1 109 30 9 2 5 21 21 10 18 3 6.64

Pit Str Str% P/IP H/9 K/9 AVG OBP SLG
Bennett 546 346 .634 17.06 8.16 8.38 .238 .329 .377
Molina 452 297 .657 15.95 9.53 5.77 .275 .336 .532

Unfortunately I don't really know what to make of all that. With Bennett, he allows fewer hits, gets way more K's, holds slugging down by 155 points, and yet, his ERA only shows a 1.01 improvement. Perhaps whoever is charting Anthony's pitches could do a comparison?

For whatever it's worth, his one start with Stinett (6/22) looks more like a Molina start than a Bennett start

Yadi's hitting streak

john vb — Tue, 22 May 2007 18:26:32 -0000

I got to thinking about Yadi's improbable performance at the plate lately, and considering the lack of offense we've had at catcher of late, I thought it might be interesting to see how his streak compares to other Cardinal catchers.

Turns out, pretty good. Baseball-Reference's game logs only go back to '57, but since then, there have only been 5 hitting streaks by a Cardinal catcher that were longer than Yadi's 13 games. And 4 of them belong to Ted Simmons.

For whatever it's worth, Molina has hit .356 in those 13 games, raising his average from .250 to .294, but his OBP has only gained 13 points, because he's drawn just one walk in the 46 plate appearances that span the streak. His slugging however, has gone up nearly 50 points in the last 4 games alone, thanks to the fact that he's hit a double in each of those games.

Carp to miss next start

john vb — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:24:49 -0000

According to stltoday.com, Carp "experienced tightness" in his elbow, and was examined by Paletta today. No word on the seriousness of the condition, so hopefully it's just precautionary. No need to risk him when we haven't even made it through a full rotation yet.

There's a lot of chatter about it on Cards Talk already, but nobody seems to have any additional info.

Smoking Ban at Busch

john vb — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:35:17 -0000

There was a bit of discussion about this already on a previous main page post, but I'd be interested to see how some of the silent VEBers feel about this.

I myself am a non-smoker, and about as anti-smoking as it gets, but I'm not sure I'm in favor of this plan. I'm not about to start a letter writing campaign, but I don't see what was wrong with having designated smoking areas. They were there last year, and I don't recall being bothered by them.

Also, one point that's been seldom raised, but (I think) we can all agree on, is that they should have made this announcement before tickets went on sale, so smokers would have at least known what they were getting into.

Multiple selections are allowed, so feel free to say you're in favor of the ban, but you think smokers should be able to see/hear the action, or that you don't really care about the ban, but think they should have atleast announced it before tickets went on sale.

Poll

What do you think of the smoking ban at Busch?

Regardless of where people are expected to go to smoke, they should be able to see/hear a live feed of the game

9 votes

I love it, smoking should be banned

19 votes

Last season's policy was already too restrictive

2 votes

The policy in place last season with designated areas was fine

24 votes

They should have atleast announced it before tickets went on sale

2 votes

I don't really care

0 votes

56 votes | Poll has closed

Carp's new deal breakdown

john vb — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:19:42 -0000

In the middle of the P-D's article today about Schmidt, Carp's contract details are listed.

2007 $8.5M
2008 $10.5M
2009 $14M
2010 $14.5M
2011 $15M
2012 $15M (or $1M buyout)

It appears the original report was off just a tad, as the total value is now $63.5M, or $77.5M if the option is exercised.

Poll

What do you think of Carp's extension?

I like it

32 votes

We should have waited a year or two

3 votes

It's a little high/long

6 votes

I hate it

0 votes

41 votes | Poll has closed

"new" stadium pics

john vb — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 17:11:18 -0000

I got a new camera and the software included with it has a feature that stitches together multiple photos to create a panoramic view. I only had a few that were close enough to stitch together, but I'm going to the game tomorrow night, so I'll try to take some better shots and see if I can get some more complete views.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jvonbokel/

There's 3 stitched photos, made from my pics at the exhibition game. I haven't gone through the Home Opener pics yet, so there may be some potential daytime panoramas there too.