2015 St. Louis Cardinals’ Season Review: Disappointments

1. Lance Lynn

I don’t know what to say about Lynn, I know he has an electric fastball that can be really good at times. He has had moments where he looks un-hittable and then moments where he can’t command his pitches and he is walking 3-4 guys and leaving the ball up for hitters to mash.

Lynn’s overall numbers weren’t that bad this season, as he finished 12-11 with an ERA of 3.03. However, as everyone knows Lynn struggled mightily down the stretch and especially against the two NL Central teams the Cardinals were fighting all season long in the Cubs and Pirates. This, I talked a bit about back in September. 

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From August 1st till the end of the season Lynn was 4-6 with a somewhat respectable ERA of 3.66. However, Lynn struggled with the walks, averaging 4.73 walks per nine innings, that’s almost five walks per nine innings. That is awful and it got Lynn in trouble many times, as hitters were able to have above average success against Lynn when that put the ball in play as hitters had a .333 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) against Lynn during that stretch.

One stat that I used when I talked about the struggles of Michael Wacha earlier in the week, that I probably didn’t explain well enough, is SIERA (Skill Interactive ERA). Skill Interactive ERA, shows us how a pitcher should have performed; it takes into consideration many different measures to give us an estimation of how a pitcher performed on a skill basis. For more information on this statistic, check out this article from Fangraphs.

During that stretch Lynn had a SIERA of 4.92, which is atrocious and scares me about the future of Lance Lynn. Lynn’s total SIERA for the season was 4.00, which isn’t as bad as his second half, but still bad especially for him being the de-facto ace when Wainwright went down. (Stats via Fangraphs)

This really has me concerned about 2016 for Lynn. He really has got to get a better feel for his off-speed deliveries and better command of his fastballs.