3 Cardinals players who have been horrifically unlucky this year

You see it at least once a game, a hitter squares up a ball and hits it with an exit velocity over 100 MPH, then somebody is either standing right there to catch it or they make a running and/or diving catch and take away a hit. That is what the fans see as someone being "unlucky", but being "lucky " or "unlucky " can be evaluated more in-depth than just getting robbed of a hit.

So what is luck in baseball? Not everyone believes in it and there isn't a specific stat that says this player is lucky or unlucky. Like with all stats describing a player, they don't show everything, but they show something. According to Teamrankings.com and their "MLB luck rankings" they have the Cardinals as the 5th unluckiest team in the MLB this season, and they have the Padres as the unluckiest team. However they have other last-place teams like the Nationals as one of the luckiest teams, so being unlucky isn't the sole reason why a team would have a bad record, sometimes you just have to work with what you have.

When it comes to determining individual players' "luck" how do you do it? Sometimes a hitter will get hits on broken bats, rolled-over ground balls, or pitches that jammed them, then line out to center on a ball that came off the bat at 105 MPH. There are other factors than just the exit velocity, how fast and rangy is the fielder? How far did they have to go to get the ball? What ballpark was it in? How was the weather? Hot? Cold? Windy? There is just an endless amount of factors that you can look at. But when it comes to seeing how lucky/unlucky a hitter is, the stats I like to use are called xwOBA and wOBA.

xwOBA (Expected weighted on-base average) calculates things like exit velocity and launch angle on batted balls, then they give it an expected batting average using those calculations negating defense from the equation. Then wOBA is the actual weighted on-base average for a player, so a way you can determine how unlucky a hitter is is to subtract their xwOBA from their wOBA and the larger the difference between the two numbers can show how unlucky a hitter is.

Using that formula, who does it say are the most unlucky hitters for the Cardinals in the 2023 season? ( The players that qualify to make this list are hitters who have averaged at least 2.1 plate appearances per team game)

3. Willson Contreras .359 wOBA and .374 xwOBA-15 point difference

Willson Contreras has arguably been the hottest hitter in baseball in the second half. After a difficult start to the Willson Contreras era in St.Louis, everything has settled down for him being the primary catcher again and he has found his swing at the plate. Since the month of July, he's hitting .313 with a .968 OPS, 10 home runs, and 31 RBI in 45 games.

Despite this long hot streak, the metrics still have Contreras as an "unlucky hitter" for the whole season. Contreras is hitting .265 this year but has an expected average of .279 and the same goes for his slugging percentage as his expected SLG is 19 points higher than his actual SLG.

What might explain this is how hard Contreras has been hitting the ball for most of this season. He has the hardest exit velocity on a batted ball for the Cardinals this year (117.5 MPH) and the longest home run among qualified hitters (461 feet) and has a 7.7 barrel percentage per plate appearance which is tied for 2nd on the team.

1. Alec Burleson .297 wOBA and .327 xwOBA 30 point difference

Alec Burleson has convincingly been the unluckiest hitter for the Cardinals in 2023. He has not been an everyday player like Contreras and Goldschmidt have, but when he has played he has not been granted the results that he deserves.

Looking at Burleson's expected offensive numbers, his expected batting average is 25 points higher than his actual average, which is tied for 31st in all of baseball. His expected SLG is 43 points higher than his actual which is 37th in the league. And lastly, his aforementioned 30-point difference in xwOBA is 16th in the league. Safe to say Burleson is one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball this season. His 30-point difference in expected and actual OBA is the highest for a Cardinal hitter since Matt Carpenter in 2020 (37-point difference).

Burleson has not been hitting the ball particularly hard this season, only Tommy Edman among qualified hitters has a lower barrel rate, but Burleson puts balls in play at a higher rate than anyone on the team, as his 13% K percentage is the lowest on the team. This may be a flaw in the stat calculating " luck " if they think that Burleson should get more results only because he puts the ball in play at a high rate, but regardless when Burleson has hit the ball hard, he hasn't been able to find holes when he makes quality contact, and these metrics show he's had some of the worst luck among hitters this season.