2015 St. Louis Cardinals’ Season Review: Disappointments

Oct 10, 2015; St. Louis, MO, USA; The Budweiser Clydesdales parade around the warning track before game two of the NLDS between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

Hello and welcome, to the second edition of the St. Louis Cardinals’ Season Review, today I am going to talk about some of the disappointments from this season. If you missed yesterday’s post on the surprises, you can find it here.

For some people this may be an easy thing to figure out. For me, it was a bit harder to come up with. This was a great season, we had some players step up big time when others went down with injury and some really great individual performances at many different instances in the season.

I am not saying that there weren’t disappointments this season, I just am saying that it took a little more hard work to come up with five glaring disappointments to the Cardinals’ season. With that said, let’s get into these disappointments.

2. Michael Wacha 

I talked at length about Wacha’s struggles the other day, if you missed that check it out here.

The narrative that has been that Wacha had a rough second half and that he must have been tired and worn out from all of the innings. This narrative, also states that Wacha was perfect in 2013 and that we need to get more of the 2013 Wacha. This really just isn’t true, and it’s sad. Wacha has gotten away with a lack of fastball command for a large part of his career and I discussed this already and won’t bore you to death here by repeating myself.

A little bit more on Wacha that is really indicative of Wacha not being who we have made him out to be, is that his first and second half SIERA are not that different (3.77 and 4.38). Neither are good, but the first half shows you just how much Wacha was getting away with his lack of fastball command.

Our only hope for next season is that Wacha can learn to command his fastball and locate it down in the zone. Otherwise, he is a third-fourth starter at best.

Sep 24, 2015; St. Louis, MO, USA; St. Louis Cardinals center fielder

(19) sits on the dugout steps while watching the in the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Scott Kane-USA TODAY Sports

3. Jon Jay

This is tough, Jay only made it in 79 games this season due to an injury to his wrist (of which he surgery on in the offseason) that he fought throughout the season and spent two lengthy trips on the DL for. I don’t want to join the everybody bash Jon Jay crowd as he really shouldn’t have been playing this season, but his manager put him out there anyways.

Hand/wrist injuries for hitters are hard and always will be (ask David Freese). Unlike lower body injuries, you can’t really keep your timing while your down and the pain from swinging and hitting is probably pretty bad even after it has healed.

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However, Jay was declared healed at a couple different points this season and was awarded the CF starting job (because he’s Jon Jay) and then mysteriously found the DL again when his manager finally realized he wasn’t the same Jon Jay.

Last season, Jay had a really good year with his .379 OBP and .303 average. He has always been a bit of a slap hitter, a BABIP hitter, and a guy with a knack for getting on base. However, this year Jay just wasn’t right. He finished the year with a .210 average and .306 OBP. Not very good at all, yet his manager kept writing his name down in the lineup, as opposed to guys like Tommy Pham and Randal Grichuk.

Jay will be back next season, unless a move is made to send him elsewhere. For the team’s sake, I hope Jay can bring his high OBP and BABIP back with him, otherwise we will see him play more than he needs to “in order for him to get right”. Jay will at best be a bench guy next season and if he continues to play like he did this season, he may find himself playing in Memphis.

Next: Thank You, St. Louis Cardinals

Aug 28, 2015; San Francisco, CA, USA; St. Louis Cardinals left fielder

(21) walks off the field after hitting into a double play in the ninth inning to retire the side during their MLB baseball game with the San Francisco Giants at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports. Giants won 5-4

4. Brandon Moss

Where do I start?

I will finally admit it, this trade was bad, and in many different ways. Moss coming into the trade was hitting an abysmal .217 with 33 extra-base hits (17 doubles, 15 homers, one triple) all while driving in 50. Seemed like an easy low level prospect for a hitter who get hot type of trade, right? No. John Mozeliak decided that he was going to pay the steep price the Indians wanted for Moss and give them Rob Kaminsky who was one of the top prospects in the Cardinals’ system.

At the time, I thought “eh, Kaminsky won’t get a shot for a while anyways, let’s give Moss a shot here, maybe he’ll give us a boost in power”. Moss, in 52 games had a .248 average with just four homers and seven doubles with the Cardinals. Not what you would think you were going to be getting from a “power hitter”.

We heard the talk about how Moss had a hip issue, that he was going to need a full offseason of rest to get through and how Moss was so versatile. Bottom line, Moss did not perform the way he needed to for this team to even became a regular contributor. He was rarely used late in the season, as Holliday and Adams returned from injury and Mark Reynolds had more success than Moss.

Moss, does have another year left before he can hit free agency, so it will be intriguing to see what he can add next season. If Moss can pop 10-15 homers off of the bench next season and hit .250-.260, I’d be happy. Not happy enough that I’ll forget about the fact that we gave up a stud pitching prospect for him but happy that he did something, as opposed to doing nothing.

Oct 10, 2015; St. Louis, MO, USA; St. Louis Cardinals shortstop

(27) walks off the field after game two of the NLDS against the Chicago Cubs at Busch Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports

5. Jhonny Peralta (Second Half)

Ok I am going to tread carefully here. JHonny Peralta had a really good overall year. He finished the season with a line of .275/.334/.411 with 44 extra-base hits (26 doubles, 17 homers, and 1 triple), while driving in 71 runs. On the surface, that’s pretty good from your shortstop. Peralta was definitely the first half MVP, with a slash of .298/.355/.473 with a wRC+ of 127 according to Fangraphs, and 33 of his 44 extra-base hits.

However, Jhonny was much worse in the second half. From July 12th till the end of the season, Peralta hit .251/.315/.344 with just 12 extra-base hits (six doubles, five homers, and one triple), his wRC+ was a lot lower as well at 82. This was a big disappointment — Peralta at times seemed completely out of sync at the plate during the second half and the postseason. Somewhat relative of his struggles, Peralta was constantly put in the 4-5 spot in the lineup despite other hitters doing better and his constant struggles.

Looking at Peralta’s batted ball numbers via fangraphs, doesn’t necessarily point to much other than him being a little later on pitches in the second half resulting in a 5.2% drop in Peralta’s pull percentage, which is what Peralta is when he’s on. Throughout the season, Peralta only had two home runs to the opposite field and none in 2014.

So, for Peralta to see a drop in his ability to pull the ball more often is going to lead to a lack of success for the right handed shortstop as he simply doesn’t go the other way with much regularity. Peralta also didn’t have much backup help this season or last season for that matter as he appeared in 318 of the 324 games the past two seasons. Having Pete Kozma as the backup SS all season lead to this.

If Greg Garcia or Aledmys Diaz can make the club next season and give Peralta some more time off, hopefully he can have a more consistent season next season.

That does it for the disappointments this season. Check back later for the next piece in this series, where I will talk about the players who had top performances for the club.