Are the Redbirds Good Enough to Win the Central?

The DL has given us back our players. Carpenter has given us Cy Young stuff. Nearly midway through the season Pujols has put himself on a pace to hit 57 HRs, 153 RBIs, and 20 SBs. And they’ve taken back first place and are 2nd in the NL. It’s a team with more excitement around it than the ’06 World Series team, but how good are these Redbirds?

After going a MLB-leading 16-7 in April, The Redbirds have gone 13-14 in May and 11-13 thus far in June. With all six teams in the NL Central being within 6 games, it’s the biggest and the tightest division. As we look at Baseball Prospectus’ preseason breakdown, we see some very predictions that may point toward Redbird Struggles down the stretch.

Baseball Prospectus has projected the Cardinals to win the division, and unlike our commentators at ESPN and the likes, these projections are based solely on stats. If you’re unfamiliar with Sabermetrics, they are historically quite accurate. As we will see, the Cardinals are right on track for their projected record of 88-74 (87.5-74.4). Their other stats are also right on pace:

Batting Avg: .257 (projected .259)

OBP: .326 (projected .332)

SLUG: .416 (projected .427)

Sounds great, right? The only problem is that they have a team in this division that is definitely underperforming to a larger extent…and it ain’t the Brewers:

Cubs Stats (projection)

AVG: .247 (.269)

OBP: .321 (.343)

SLUG: .400 (.430)

And they are on pace to be 12 games back of their projected 2009 Record.

They are also on pace to get 223 fewer runs than expected.

Interestingly the Cardinals, although on pace for the same record and basic batting stats, are on pace fo 134 fewer runs than projected. Then how are they still on pace for that nice record? Their pitching is way overperforming, on pace to allow 147 fewer runs than their statistics suggest they would. Although this sounds like good news, the fact is that our pitching staff will be hard-pressed to keep their ERA around 3.90 (4th in NL, 5th in Majors). The staff is full of contact pitchers, as they’re 25th in Ks and have the 2nd fewest BBs in the majors.

So the key will not be to rely on this pitching staff down the stretch, because history has a tendency to repeat itself. The Cardinals will have to do two obvious things: Get on base before Pujols, get protection behind Pujols.

To get on base, the Cardinals have a great formula. The first time around the lineup we have Skip, a .300 hitter, leading off and Rasmus, LaRussa’s prototypical 2-Hole (Someone with pop, and has only grounded into one double play this season, and someone who can move quickly around the bags). The subsequent times around the lineup Pujols gets the cleanup spot, as the #9 hitter acts as the leadoff batter for the rest of the game. This has been held by Brendan Ryan, whose .308 is 2nd on the team. Plus, he’s a good fundamental player that can move pitchers into scoring position for Skip.

Protection behind Pujols is much more critical. Pujols reaches base a gawdy 45% of the time. Out of the 115 times he’s been on base without a HR, he’s crossed the plate 31 times (26.9%). To compare, the 3-Hole on the worst team in the league, Ryan Zimmerman, has reached base 108 times and scored 36 times (33%). Hanley Ramirez scores 41.8% of the time. To get this number up to this degree, the obvious answers are your 4-5 guys. That’s where it gets sticky. Ludwick, Ankiel, Duncan, Molina all come to mind, but the first three haven’t been able to drive Pujols in consistently, and Molina simply doesn’t have enough power.

Matt Holliday just so happens to be available. Even though he hasn’t had a great year, with runners on he’s hitting .318/.444/.555, which is leagues better than what we’ve mustered up so far this season. It’s even better than Ludwick during his stellar 2008, when he was .302/.377/.554.

If no moves are made, this will be a tough second half as the Redbirds seem to be playing where they are projected as the Cubs will not continue to perform at the dismal level that they currently do.