With the recent signing of Cesar Izturis, David Eckstein’s days in a Cardinal uniform are done. I’ll actually kind of miss Scrappy McHustle, but given his demands I could understand why they would pass on him. They bought low on Eck, and he paid of rich dividends as a Cardinal, with his signature moment coming on his double in game 4, which may be more remembered for Granderson’s slip. I thought it would be fun to look at a couple of Eck’s highlight moments while he was a Cardinal uniform.

6/28/06 Seat cushion night! The Cardinals were on one of their nasty 8 game losing streaks, only to have Eck end it. Really, it was Jhonny Peralta’s throwing error. It was still a fun night, and Eckstein was in the thick of hit. +.370 WPA.

8/7/05. Eckstein’s walk off grand slam against Chris Reitsma. With the bases loaded and John Rodriguez on deck, Eck nudged one over the left field wall to give the Cardinals a 5-3 win. +.672 WPA.

This just in from Pinto’s PMR reports-

Chris Duncan, worse then Manny Ramirez. He made -17 outs then expected. Only Pat Burrell was worse. He may have made some highlight reel catches this summer that tainted my perception of his fielding ability, but when numbers came in, the verdict is he’s still a 1st baseman trying to play outfield.

I’ll try and continue my “Around the Horn” series, with Pujols up next.

Wow, the Mozeliak era isn’t off to a roaring start. According to the P-D, the Cardinals are interested in stepping on at least free agent landmine or two. Carlos Silva? Kyle Lohse? They already have the generic versions in Brad Thompson and Anthony Reyes.

Carlos Silva basically has become what he had hoped Thompson would be. He’s a sinker/slider guy who makes his hay by throwing strikes and making his defense work. He rarely walks anyone, and at least in the minors, neither did Thompson. Silva is going to probably get a 4 year, $40 million dollar contract while Thompson is under the team control the same amount of time. He can get out of whack at times mechanically, and can “kick a puppy” or two when he’s not doing well. I’m not saying he is as good as Silva, he probably can’t give you 200 innings, and he doesn’t have the same control. But I’d sooner gamble on Thompson, or some AAAA free agent then tie myself up in giving megabucks to Silva.

Lohse isn’t much different from Reyes. He misses his fair share of bats, but isn’t all that overpowering. He walks a few too many batters. For all the criticism Reyes gets for not getting along with his manager and coaches, Lohse took a bat to Ron Gardenhire’s office door in a fit of rage. Doesn’t strike me as the La Russa type.

If the Cards just had a little patience with their starter kit verisons of these two pitchers, it would save them some regret down the road and there’s a good shot they’d get the same type of returns in performance, or at least pretty close to it.

My hope is for a 1 year deal for Jon Lieber.

So Molina didn’t win the Most Popular Catcher Award Gold Glove. I think we all know by now the Gold Gloves by now are a sham, anyway. The Fielding Bible awards, now that’s a real contest. Here are some important numbers the managers chose to ignore:

Caught stealing %- Molina 50%, Martin 28%.
Stolen base attempts per game- Molina .48, Martin .82
Wild pitch + passed balls per game- Molina .320, Martin .320

Maybe the managers need to check their own scouting reports. Not only did Yadier catch half of those who attempted to run on him, they attempted less steals against him then any regular catcher in the league! Why would they do that if they didn’t think he was the most superior defensive catcher out there? The theory out there is that Martin won because he’s was the best hitter, but why did Molina lose last year to Ausmus, the proud owner of a .210 GPA? It’s a conspiracy, I say! A travashamockery!

You could argue Pujols was also robbed.

Revised Zone Rating-. Pujols. 843, Lee .724
Plays made out of zone- Pujols 51, Lee 24.
John Dewan’s +/- Pujols +37, 1st overall of all MLB 1B and all fielders.

I could’ve lived with Helton, but Lee? These awards are basically meaningless.

Per the BND blog View from the Cheap Seats, Jim Edmonds is saying he’s feeling better then he has in a long while.

Edmonds said he feels as healthy as he has in several years. He claimed that his off season surgeries last year caused him not to be able to work out between seasons and said he came into camp in bad shape for him. Not only was he still recovering from toe and shoulder surgery. But the fact that he was not in game shape when the season started made him prone to nagging injuries that drug down his 2007 campaign.

The upshot is, Edmonds basically promised he was going to be back to 2003 or 2004 form next year and promised that he can still be an “elite outfielder.”

2003, 2004 levels? From a 38 year old? Really Jimmy? All I can say is I certainly hope so. I’ll believe it when I see it. He is in his walk year, so he has every incentive to get into the best playing shape as possible. I’d be thrilled  to just have a 2005 Edmonds.

As promised, I’m back. I missed talking about the big club. I’ve also grown a little wiser during my little hiatus. Trying to post on a daily basis just ain’t happening. For now, I can’t promise a ton, I’m just going to do this at my leisure. When the season starts, I plan on covering it a series at a time, or just the games that really stick out to me. We’ll see how it goes. Don Zero has also signed on to help when the time comes.

Right now, I’d like to kick off a little series and look around the horn. Jumping right in, let’s talk about the Cardinals catchers of 2007.

Yadier Molina has always has always been an enigma. I’m really dig JC Bradbury’s PrOPS research. In a nutshell, it’s a formula for predicting what a player’s OPS is likely to be in the future based on his batted balls, strikeouts, home runs and walks. It’s a formula that has always liked Yadi to go from being a poor hitting catcher to around an average one. Over the past three seasons, it’s been frustrating to see the difference between Yadi’s OPS and his PrOPS.

2004- OPS .684 PrOPS .729
2005- OPS .654 PrOPS .752
2006- OPS .595 PrOPS .725
2007- OPS .708 PrOPS .749

Year in and year out Yadier has always been one of the top under-performers in PrOPS, at least until this season. Yadier finally saw his luck turnaround. What happened?

His batted ball types stayed pretty consistent every season.

They just started falling for hits at a normal rate. One other good thing happened. Yadier developed some patience.

He finally had a league average walk rate. It’s been noted that Albert Pujols had some advice for Molina, which is to wait for his pitch and it looks like Yadier has taken that advice to heart.

Despite his progress, Molina finished the season with a -0.25 WPA and was -10.88 batting runs above average (BRAA). Gary Bennett was a -0.73 WPA and -12.08 BRAA, making this a yet again a big hole in the Cardinal lineup. Kelly Stinnett was a -1.16 in just 26 games. In other words, the threesome cost the team four games. WPA isn’t taking into account Yadier’s defense, just a guess I’d figure it would be worth around a win or so, so make that three games.

Looking at Yadi’s WARP, which takes more of the whole scope of what a player contributes, Yadi was good for 5 wins above replacement. We know his arm is for real, and it’s been a long time coming for his offense. With any luck, he may even start hitting a few homers, but I’m not expecting him to. Mozeliak now needs to find a decent backup, and then the catcher spot could be a plus in 2008 for the first time in…eons. A wise move could be to sign Ramon Castro as the backup. He’s shown himself to be a capable hitter by backup catcher standards.

Addendum: I thought it would be fun to look back at the player’s biggest moments of the season. Yadier’s biggest was delivering a walk off RBI in the bottom of the 10th against the Phillies for a +.390. Cardinals win, 2-1.

Sorry all for the silence for all four of you readers out there. I got pretty busy with my other blog and my work hours got changed to a much earlier schedule, making it unable to do the amount of updating I wanted to do. A lot of course has happened since then. I still want to do some posting here and I’m looking forward to the covering the hot stove as it begins to heat up. Stay tuned.

WPA star of the game: Joel Pineiro: .469
Biggest Cardinal drag: Albert Pujols: -.077
Most decisive hit of the game: With two outs and two on in the fourth, Yadier Molina singled in the first run of the game, ultimately the game-winner: .132
Most decisive Cardinal pitch of the game: To begin his seventh and last inning of work, Joel Pineiro got a groundout from Morgan Ensberg: .045
Cardinal batters: .011
Cardinal pitchers: .489

Going 3-for-3 with a game-winning RBI, and advancing runners with each hit, Yadier Molina handily wins the offensive WPA award for the night, with .219. With a mere .038 WPA, Rick Ankiel comes in at a distant second place. But try explaining that Molina outperformed Ankiel to anyone at Busch that night or to ESPN. After Joel Pineiro valiantly defended his one-run lead through the middle of the seventh, the Cards lineup finally got to Chris Young. Chris Duncan led off by drawing a walk (.029), then advanced to third on a hit and run with Yadier Molina (.074). So Taguchi walked next (.018), and Duncan scored on a wild pitch (-.006…this WPA number would also take a little explaining). With that, Chris Young handed the ball to Doug Brocali, who induced two groundouts before leaving a pitch waist-high and on the outside part of the plate to an old, washed-up pitcher, in this first major-league game in years. Rick Ankiel promtly put that ball in the right field bleachers. Win Probability Added: .095. Hope, joy, and genuine fulfillment: inestimable.

Cardinals WPA leader: Yadier Molina: .140
Goat for a night: Ryan Franklin: -.357
Cardinal hit of the game: With runners at the corners and one out, Yadier Molina singled in Juan Encarnacion to tie the game at 2: .154
Most decisive Cardinal pitch of the game: With two on and one out in the bottom of the ninth, Ryan Franklin yeilded a walk-off single to Ryan Zimmerman: -.288
Cardinals WPA at the plate: -.331
Cardinals WPA on the mound: -.169

Before Ryan Franklin became the unlikely goat of the game, the Cardinals other pitchers each put in a noteworthy night. Kip Wells almost single-handedly kept the Cards in the lead for over a third of the frames. After loading the bases in the first inning, he struck out Ryan Church looking: .071. Then, in the second, he singled in Yadier Molina to give the Cards a one-run lead: .109. After that, Wells faced the minimum number of batters for three innings, until giving up a single to the pitcher (Tim Redding) in the fifth, throwing a wild pitch to advance him, and yielding a double to let him tie the game: -.153. In the sixth, he gave up a double and a walk, but got out of the jam by inducing a double play from Ryan Church: .175. In the seventh of a tie game, though, Wells allowed two walks and a single before Russ Springer relieved him and gave up Ronnie Belliard’s go-ahead sacrifice fly to right: -.051. Kip Wells’ WPA for the night: -.005. Russ Springers’: .082.

With the eighth inning of a new tie game all to himself, Randy Flores held his own, despite walking the lead-off man and allowing a runner to reach third. His inning made him the Cardinals’ top pitcher for the night in terms of WPA: .110. With the exception of Yadier Molina, only Adam Kennedy out-WPAed Randy Flores, with a contribution of .114—that is, among Cardinals. Tim Redding: .226; Ryan Zimmerman: .333.

Hero: Yadier Molina .186.
Goat: Brad Thompson -.357.
Biggest at bat: Albert Pujols tied the game 4-4 in the 7th with a HR to lead of the inning. .189.
Biggest pitch: Brad Thompson allowing the game winning hit in the 11th to Jose Castillo. -.390.
Total contribution by the hitters: -.424.
Total contribution by the pitchers: -.076.

The bottom line in this game is that the Cardinals had plenty of opportunities to get the job done and failed. Scott Spiezio had two golden chances, in the 8th with a runner on 3rd and one out he stuck out looking. (-.138). Then in the the 10th with runners on 1st and 2nd he struck out looking again to end the inning, -.117, which set the Speez off.

The Cardinals had a 81.5% win expectancy when Anthony Reyes started the 5th inning and due to Reyes’s meltdown in the 5th had a 50% when the came up to bat in the 6th.

Frustrating loss, had the Cardinals known after they took 3 of 4 from the Brewers only to lose the next series to the Pirates, you would have to think they would’ve had more of a sellers mindset at the deadline.