Are the Cardinals actually worse than their record indicates?

With the baseball season almost over, it’s not a hot take to say this was not a good year. The Cardinals will miss the playoffs again and at the time I write this, it appears they will finish as a .500 team. That, by definition, is an average team. Or is it?

I mention this because I wanted to see what the stats said about the Cardinals this year. The eye test would lead me to believe they are way above average in the bullpen, having the best closer out there. I would think they hold up well at shortstop. I would also expect pinch-hitting and maybe second base to be below average and since they are a .500 team, all other positions to be close to average. 

Using Baseball-Reference as my source, we can see by position how the Cardinals stack up against just the averages. The ranking is what you would expect when sorting by teams. At the top, you see the Phillies, Yankees, and Braves; at the bottom, we see the Marlins, Rockies, and White Sox. The Cardinals came in at 23rd, minus 5.3 wins below average. WAA, which stands for Wins Above Average, is a statistical measure that defines a player’s worth in terms of his contribution compared to the average major league player. All of a team’s players strongly correlated team performance to WAA, as the sum of WAA will almost always represent its final record. So we know that if you add up all the individual players, this team doesn’t fare very well as a whole. 

If we look at each position, there are a few surprises. 

Starting pitching - The Cardinals are sitting at 23rd with a minus 2.2 WAA. Andre Pallante and Sonny Gray were the only pitchers who started over 15 games with positive numbers. Gibson, Lynn, and Mikolas were all below-average pitchers.

Relief pitching - we are 5th with a plus 2.4 WAA. Helsley, Fernandez, Kittredge, Romero, and King, all had positive numbers. Liberatore, not so much but he was never allowed to settle into a set role. A fun side note is that Brandon Crawford had a WAA of -0.3. That was better than Gallegos, Lynn, O’Brien, Matz, Thompson and Mikolas. 

Catcher - 7th with a plus 1.2 WAA. Contreras and Herrera were both plus players and Page was just under at -0.2.

First Base - This is the first surprise. The Cardinals ranked 17th with a minus 1.0 WAA. Goldschmidt had 616 of the 670 plate appearances from that position and was below average with a minus 0.9WAA. 

Second Base - 23rd with a minus 1.1 WAA. Donovan was just above average with a plus 0.3 and Gorman, Fermin and Saggese are all below average. 

Shortstop - 11th, PLUS 1.9 WAA. Let’s just say the Cardinals have a very good shortstop. 

Third base - We rank 19th and the WAA is 0.0. This is not what we expected from that position. Arenado was a plus 0.2. I know he was the focus of a lot of fans’ frustration. He wasn’t bad. He had a very average year compared to other third basemen in the league. The other six players that got time there were all below average. 

Outfield - All three positions, RF (minus 2.4), CF (minus 1.6), and LF (minus 0.5) were way below average. The outfield as a unit was a minus 4.5. Only the Pirates, Marlins, and White Sox were worse. 

DH - It was not a surprise that this position was a minus 0.4. Since the NL adopted the DH rule, the Cardinals have never treated this position as being worthy of a roster spot. 

Pinch hitter - The Cardinals were 25th with a minus 1.1 WAA. 

Like most stats, we can look at this in a few different ways. It’s amazing that with only relief pitching, catching, and shortstop being above average, the Cardinals somehow were an average team. 

We can also look at these numbers and wonder how the season would have ended if first base was just average, with one more above-average starting pitcher. What if their center fielder was a plus 1.6 instead of a minus 1.6? 

To get a better feel for just how much work needs to be done this off-season, there really should be a different stat. One that instead of comparing the Cardinals to average teams, we compare to playoff teams.  

The three NL division leaders as of today are the Dodgers with a 17.5 WAA, the Phillies at 9.9 WAA, and the Brewers at 7.2 WAA. A minus 5.3 doesn’t seem like this team is built to compete. Even the Wild Card leaders, the Padres (1.6), the Mets (6.1), and the Diamondbacks (13.9) seem out of reach. 

The Cardinals are 10 games away from the first-place team in the division. They are only 6 games ahead of the last-place team. The Brewers have a WAA of plus 7.2 and the Pirates a minus 9.3. 

Last year, this team had a WAA of minus 1.5. How does this year’s team have a minus 5.3 WAA and still win more games? Baseball-Reference has a stat for luck. In 2023 they were zero. Not lucky or unlucky. This year they lead the league in lucky wins with a plus 7 games.

That pretty much sums up the Cardinals season. A very average team with more below-average players than above-average players that got lucky enough to be a 500 team.