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.

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.

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.

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.