One of my closest friends is a St. Louis native, and after the tumult of contract misadventures this past off season, he asked me how I thought the Cardinals might fare in 2012. My comment was that they’d win more games in 2012 than they did in 2011 — bank on it. But most of that was wrapped up in the notion that they’d get Adam Wainwright back to form, Lance Berkman would be relatively healthy and better suited defensively at first base and Carlos Beltran would produce somewhere around four wins.

Some prognosticator I am. Thank goodness for Carlos Beltran — right, St. Louis?

After just 33 games, Beltran has already posted 2.2 wins above replacement, and although he has played decent on defense, his WAR total is almost entirely accounted for with his bat. His slash line stands at .298/.406/.653 with 13 home runs and 32 RBI. He is among the league leaders in WAR, and is just 0.1 WAR behind Matt Kemp. And what’s particularly notable about the current WAR leaders is the potential for regression:

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As the Rangers lit up Jered Weaver and the Angels last night to extend their lead over their supposed rivals to eight games, Buster Olney asked a legitimate question on Twitter – when was the last time we saw a team that was as good as the Rangers are across the board? Below are the respective ranks in the WAR components (these are all runs above average) for the Rangers in the American League over the first six weeks of the season:

Batting: +46.3 (1st)
Fielding: +16.3 (1st)
Baserunning: -0.2 (7th)
Starting Pitching: +33.5 (3rd)
Bullpen: +15.2 (2nd)

Baseball has had its fair share of dominant teams before, but to be a top three team nearly across the board is pretty remarkable, even in a sample of just a month and a half. Josh Hamilton‘s getting the attention (and deservedly so), but his teammates are pretty good themselves, and there’s a reason why the Rangers are the two time defending AL Champs, and right now, a pretty clear favorite to win the league title once again.

However, there’s an argument to be made that not only are the Rangers not the best team we’ve seen in a while, they might not even be the team playing the best baseball in 2012. Somehow, the defending World Champion St. Louis Cardinals are flying under the radar despite dominating their league in a very similar fashion.

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In his age 34 season, Cardinals shortstop Rafael Furcal is off to tremendous start. Through Wednesday’s action, Furcal is batting .361/.423/.508 with a .413 wOBA and a 168 wRC+. In 138 plate appearances, he has 44 hits, including ten doubles and two home runs. His walk rate (9.4 percent)  is above his career average (9 percent) and his strikeout rate (10.1 percent) is below his career average (12.6 percent). Only Carlos Beltran has a higher wOBA and wRC+ on the Cardinals, who are 20-11 after the first thirty-one games of the season.

It’s early, of course, so all small sample size caveats apply. But Furcal’s start puts him at the top of the wOBA and wRC+ leader boards among 33 to 36-year old shortstops over the last 10 years. Derek Jeter‘s 2007 and 2009 seasons are close behind, but after that, it’s a pretty sharp drop-off. When you expand the wOBA and wRC+ leader boards to all 33 to 36-year olds who played in the last ten seasons, Furcal finds himself in some pretty good company. Jim Edmonds, Manny Ramirez, Chipper Jones, Magglio Ordonez, Larry Walker, Jim Thome and so on.

What’s fueling Furcal’s early success?
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Yesterday, it took Los Angeles Dodgers manager Clint Hurdle Don Mattingly* approximately 40 seconds — depending on where you start and stop your timer — to argue The Worst Call of the Season. Meanwhile, in St. Louis, it took the umpiring crew about 2 minutes and 50 seconds to gather in the infield, discuss Carlos Beltran‘s hit, reconvene in their underground video review chamber, and then return to announce a home run.

* All white guys look the same to me.

Getting the calls wrong in baseball takes time. Managers — depending on their personality, the game situation, and the offense — take different amounts of time arguing both bad and good calls. The arguing, for the most part, exists because of uncertainty. My lip-reading skills inform me most arguments follow this general pattern:

Manager: “Did you really see X event?”

Umpire: “Most certainly did I see X event.”

Manager: “That statement you just made right there is tantamount to the excrement of bovines.”

Umpire: “You are ejected.”

Recent evidence suggests, however, that despite these conflicts resulting from close calls, instant replays still take more time than good ol’ fashioned shout-spittin’ matches.

Evidence furthermore suggests that in the time it takes to get in a healthy workout, a normal person could empty approximately ten Squeeze Cheese cans directly into his or her porcine gullet.

Which is to say: Quicker is not always better.

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With a two-out, two-run walk-off single off St. Louis closer Jason Motte, the Cubs’ Joe Mather became Monday night’s unlikeliest hero. But all you had to do was ask him — before the traditional shaving cream pie to the face, of course — and he’d tell you (as he told WGN after the game) the man truly responsible for the Cubs’ ninth-inning rally was Bryan LaHair. The 29-year-old Cubs project worked a 12-pitch walk off Motte with one out, fouling off six consecutive offerings on a 3-2 count. Motte would eventually blow the save on his 31st pitch of the night. Only one other time has Motte thrown over 31 pitches in a single-inning appearance — July 16, 2010 against Los Angeles — and he gave up two runs in that outing as well.

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Calculations!

Every year, some players start hot, others start cold. In the past, when a player had a high BABIP to start the season, we said, “Oh, well he’s lucky. His numbers will come down.” But now we can say with greater certainty, using Fielding Independent wOBA (or FI wOBA), what a player’s wOBA would actually regress to, given their performance in other areas.

Let’s look at the top five BABIPs in the league with FI wOBA regressed to career BABIP rates (or CaB-FIw for Career BABIP FI wOBA).

Even if/when Wright’s BABIP comes back to his career .342 BABIP, his peripherals are off the charts. He is on pace for 30 homers, which is nothing miraculous for Wright, but he is also walking and striking out at a 12.5% rate.

Will that kind of patience continue? Eh, probably not to that extreme, but it certainly means Wright is seeing the ball well right now and could be poised for a really good year.

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Opening Day 1.5 featured a one-game series with the defending world champs, the St. Louis Cardinals, and the league’s latest makeover recipient, the Miami Marlins. Righty Kyle Lohse earned the Opening Day honors for the Cardinals on the merit of being not recently or presently injured, and much to the surprise of many, Lohse took a perfect game no hitter into the 7th inning.

His line from the game:

7.1 IP, 1 ER, 3 K, 0 BB, 8 GB, 10 FB, 2 LD

All told, that comes to a 1.23 ERA, 1.49 FIP, 2.94 xFIP, and… a 4.22 SIERA…

Everything but that SIERA number suggests Lohse had a great start. Let’s find out why.
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Read the methodology behind the ratings here. Remember that the grading scale is 20-80, with 50 representing league average.

2012 Organizational Rankings

#30 – Baltimore
#29 – Houston
#28 – Oakland
#27 – Pittsburgh
#26 – San Diego
#25 – Minnesota
#24 – Chicago White Sox
#23 – Seattle
#22 – Kansas City
#21 – Cleveland
#20 – New York Mets
#19 – Los Angeles Dodgers
#18 – Colorado
#17 — Miami
#16 — Diamondbacks
#15 — Cincinnati
#14 — Cubs
#13 — Milwaukee
#12 — San Francisco
#11 — Washington
#10 — Tampa Bay
#9 – Toronto
#8 – Atlanta
#7 – Detroit

St. Louis’s 2011 Ranking: 13th

2012 Outlook – 60 (8th)

One down, 161 to go, right?

I think the assumption around baseball was if Albert Pujols left the Cardinals, he would leave a husk of a team behind him. If his teammates didn’t prove their worth enough throughout their playoff run in 2011, they’ll get ample chance to do so in 2012. They should be up to the challenge, as this roster was especially well suited to replacing a departing first baseman. With Lance Berkman moving in from right field to a more suiting first base and Carlos Beltran filling the hole left by Pujols, the Cardinals’ offense has a chance to repeat as the best in the National League (as measured by both runs scored and wRC+).

Throw in more games from David Freese (just 97 last year), Rafael Furcal (and therefore less Ryan Theriot) and Allen Craig (either off the bench or as an intriguing second base option) and one can make a good argument that the Cardinals can replace Pujols’s sheer star power with depth in the lineup that is unrivaled in the National League. It is a team that is solid defensively across the board as well, particularly with Daniel Descalso at second base instead of Craig.

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I’m currently in Jupiter, Florida, as a guest both of (a) my 91-year-old grandfather and (a) the Miami Marlins of Florida. Today was the third and final day on the backfields here, and what follows represents the third and final installment of mediocre analysis on same. (Read Day 1 and Day 2.)

Today, I watched mostly the Double-A game between the Cardinals and Marlins — or, alternately, the Springfield Cardinals and Jacksonville Suns of the Texas and Southern Leagues, respectively.

On Michael Blazek
Right-hander Michael Blazek, 23, pitched for the Cardinals, and is probably the most polished pitcher of any that I saw this week — if not always in terms of command, then at least in his ability to repeat the same shape and velocity on all his pitches. Blazek doesn’t have what you’d call “pedigree”: he appears neither on our Marc Hulet’s top-15 prospect list for the Cardinals, nor on Baseball America’s top-30 list (from their Handbook), nor on John Sickels’ top-20 list, nor on Kevin Goldstein’s top-20 list. There are probably a number of reasons for why his (i.e. Blazek’s) name is omitted from so many lists. The easiest one to which we can point is velocity: at no point did Blazek hit as high as even 92 mph on the radar gun. And it’s a fact that there’s a real correlation between fastball velocity and run prevention.

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I’m currently in Jupiter, Florida, as a guest both of (a) my 91-year-old grandfather and (a) the Miami Marlins of Florida. Today was Day 1 of 3 of my time here. I’ll be spending time on the backfields, watching some minor-league games and providing mediocre analysis on same.

Today, I watched mostly the High-A game between the Marlins and Cardinals — or, alternately, the Jupiter Hammerheads and Palm Beach Cardinals, of the Sally and Florida State League, respectively.

Regarding Grant Dayton
Left-hander Grant Dayton, 24, pitched for Miami and was generally excellent — although, perhaps, less excellent in consideration of his age. He threw what appeared to be four or five pitches, depending on how all the breaking balls are split up: a fastball at 88-91 mph, a cutter at ca. 85 mph, a slider at around 80 mph, and a change at 82-83 mph. There were a couple of breaking balls in the high 70s, too, so it’s possible that he was throwing a curve. In any case, the shape of the pitch was pretty similar to the slider.

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The depth within the minor league system is still not where it needs to be for the organization to be considered among the best in baseball. However the club has infused some exciting talent into the mix in recent years. The Cardinals minor league system is definitely one to watch in the years ahead as it boasts some high-ceiling talent and a plethora of hard-throwing relief arms.

1. Shelby Miller, RHP
BORN: Oct. 19, 1990
EXPERIENCE: 3 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2009 1st round, Texas HS
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 1st

One of the top arms available in the 2009 draft, the hard-throwing Texan can fire his heat up into the mid-to-high 90s and it has excellent movement. Miller’s fastball is so effective that he has to be encouraged to use his secondary pitches, both of which show flashes of brilliance: a curveball and changeup. Although they have potential, Miller needs to command them better. His plus velocity allows him to safely work in the upper half of the strike zone but it would be nice to see the fly-ball pitcher generate a few more ground-ball outs. After splitting 2011 between high-A and double-A, the right-hander should move up to triple-A where he’ll face a stiff challenge by facing an increased number of strong fastball hitters. Miller has the ceiling of a No. 1 starter and he could be pitching in St. Louis by the end of the ’12 season.

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With disabled list information available going back 10 years, I have decided to examine some league wide and team trends.

League Trends

To begin with, here are the league values for trips, days and average days lost to the DL over the past 10 years.

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Yadier Molina is one of my favorite players in the sport. His combination of elite defensive skills and developing offense gives him a real argument to be considered the best catcher in the sport, and he’s one of the main reasons the Cardinals have been a contending team since he took over as their regular catcher in 2005. And, beyond just his on field value, Molina is remarkably entertaining to watch, as his footwork and arm strength allow him to do things that most catchers can’t even dream of.

However, as much as I love Molina, I figured his contract extension talks with the Cardinals would end with him re-signing for something like $40 million over four years with some sort of vesting option at the end of the deal. Instead, he’s reportedly agreed to a five year contract with St. Louis worth between $70 and $75 million, per Ken Rosenthal, which would be the third richest deal for a catcher in the history of the game – only Joe Mauer ($184 million) and Mike Piazza ($91 million) made more in a single contract. Given the enormous gap between what I thought Molina would sign for and what he actually got from St. Louis, my initial reaction is that this was an overpay by the Cardinals. Even as good as Molina’s defense is – and as limited as our abilities are to accurately value catcher defense right now – they’re still signing up for the age 30-34 seasons of a catcher who has carried a pretty heavy workload up to this point in his career. At $14 million per year, Molina is going to have to remain one of the game’s best catchers in order to justify the salary. What are the odds that he’ll still be an elite player in 2017?

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Our braintrust is hard at work identifying the game’s best pitches for all of your February needs. Now it’s time to uncover some of the worst pitches in the game — with as little snark as possible. Because even the worst pitch in the big leagues is way, way better than most of us can manage. And if a pitcher owns a pitch on this list, they must be doing something else right in order to remain in the big leagues. Either that, or they’re not long for the bigs.

At least identifying poor pitches can be a useful and enjoyable exercise. And you’re supposed to do thirty minutes of that every day, so that’s an extra benefit for us.

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It is a simple question.

What is sabermetrics?

Not the history of it, but what is it, right now? What is, in our nerdiest of lingoes, its derivative? Where is it pointing? What does it do?

Last Tuesday I created no little stir when I listed the 2012 saber teams, delineating them according to their perceived embrace of modern sabermetrics.

Today, I recognize I needed to take a step back and first define sabermetrics, because it became obvious quickly I did not have the same definition at heart as some of the readers and protesters who gathered outside my apartment.

I believe, and this is my belief — as researcher and a linguist — that sabermetrics is not statistics. The term itself has come to — or needs to — describe more than just on-base percentage, weighted runs created plus, fielding independent pitching, and wins above replacement.

Sabermetrics is the advanced study of baseball, not the burying of one’s head in numbers.
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Silly monkey, BRAINS ARE FOR ZOMBIES.

Casey Kotchman is in many ways a man without a home — a player equal parts under-appreciated and over-valued, who irks both old and new schools at the same time. Old school analysts say his defense is amazing, but they cannot quantify it, and in 2011, they claimed his cleared vision meant he finally learned how to aim the ball “where they ain’t,” but he’s still a .268 hitter with little power. The new school says he’s worth about 7.6 runs per season defensively, but worth ~1.1 WAR per 600 PAs — not good — and his BABIP was high 2011, so he should not be able to repeat his success.

Despite his inability to build a consistent following of fans in the baseball outsiders communities, Kotchman seems to have some insider communities very much interested in him, as Tom Tango points out:

Kotchman’s last four teams: Redsox, Mariners, Rays, Indians. Can we say that a team that signs Kotchman is saber-leaning?

Indeed, after spending five and a half seasons on the Angels’ and Braves’ rosters, Kotchman has begun to shuffle around with the Nerdz, most recently signing with the Cleveland Indians. It makes sense too — Kotchman’s lack of power keeps him cheap, and his strong defense keeps him amorphous for the old school teams, while the new schools might have different valuations on Kotchman, they can at least quantify his contributions and better know how he fits.

Then, on Monday, the Houston Astros signed Justin Ruggiano, long-time Tampa Bay Rays outfielder who was never good enough to stick on the Rays’ roster, but who possesses strong defensive chops and above average patience. His lack of power and ~.290 batting average, however, must make him a mystery — or at least an undesirable asset — to the old school teams.

Upon Ruggiano signing with the Astros, a once highly old school team, my reaction was all: “Welp, that’s one more team to compete with” — and then it occurred to me! No only have the Astros entered the realm of, so to speak, saber-minded organizations, but so have the long-backward Chicago Cubs.

Suddenly the league looks very different.

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For more on the Venezuelan Winter League, check out Carson Cistulli’s final SCOUT leaderboards for said league.

With the MLB in the middle of its winter hiatus, we of the baseball-addicted must roll our listful eyes towards the winter leagues. One such league is the wildly popular Venezuelan Winter League. It is hard to say what exact level the Venezuelan league constitutes — but it certainly has a few veterans of both leagues, as well as a few MLB guys (though usually nobody who is already well established in the majors).

This year, Chicago Cubs fans have had the delight of being able to keep tabs on their… exciting… pitcher Carlos Zambrano. Big-Z — perhaps in an effort to ingratiate himself with the new Cubs regime, perhaps in a move to showcase his talents to the league — has now pitched five games for the Caribes de Anzoategui, but according to some recent rumors, Zambrano may be calling it a winter.

And maybe he should.
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How do you replace a superstar like Albert Pujols? You spread the money around.

The Cardinals signed their second post-Pujols contract by hiring Carlos Beltran to patrol right field for two years and $26 million. The iffy-kneed Beltran enjoyed a renaissance last year — should his good health continue, the contract will prove to be a good value. And as part of a spread the wealth program, the World Champs have a chance to tread water despite losing their best player.

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Does anyone want to go to St. Louis? After losing Albert Pujols to the Los Angeles Angels, it was unclear how the reigning champs would respond this off-season. Instead of going after the other marquee free-agents, the Cardinals appear to be shoring up their team through smaller moves. With the uncertainty surrounding Allen Craig — who had knee surgery in November — the Cardinals are looking to add outfielders. The Cardinals have been linked to both Coco Crisp and Carlos Beltran in recent days. Would signing either player be a good decision for the World Series champs?

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Fan Projection Target season is upon us, a time for FanGraphs readers to show those computers what’s what and out-project them using only intuitive genius. In past seasons, relievers have sometimes suffered from a relative lack of ballots, and while I am not sure this is true of all the relievers mentioned below, it might be a good place to start getting into projecting bullpens. How will some notable 2011 rookie relievers fare in 2011?

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