Why Your Team Will Blow it in the Playoffs: St. Louis Cardinals

Well, it appears that just about all the playoff spots are decided. Per the excellent coolstandings.com, no team among the Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Angels, Phillies, Cardinals, Dodgers, and Rockies have a great shot of making the playoffs - barring a miraculous late season run, or the Rangers gelling together despite injuries and making good on their 36% chance of sneaking into the playoffs.

Now, this lack of drama is no fun at all in September, and it's nigh-unacceptable in the playoffs. So rather than just let things play out like they will, which is to say "predictably," we're going to try to throw a wrench into the hopes and dreams of fans of each of the aforementioned playoff probables. Because none of them are the Braves. AND SO: onward with the hating. Up next: the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with the only double-digit division lead.

Biggest Strength: Their stars.  Albert Pujols is, of course, the best player in the league, and he's been worth 8 wins by himself.  Matt Holliday, since coming over, has been hitting .378/.434/.701 with 12 dongers in 189 PA.  Chris Carpenter is the second-best NL pitcher behind Tim Lincecum, with a league-leading 2.16 ERA and a sparkling 4.30 K/BB ratio.  Adam Wainwright has been a horse, posting a 2.59 ERA over a league-leading 205 IP.  He's got a little less control than Carpenter, but better strikeout stuff, including one of the best curveballs in the game.  And John Smoltz has been great since coming over, with a neat 28.00 K/BB ratio (!) and a 0.91 WHIP.

But Wait a Minute!

How, exactly, is this team planning on scoring runs?  Pujols is otherworldly, Holliday's been mashing, and...well...look out for Jarrett Hoffpauir?  Julio Lugo?  Beyond the 3-4 in this lineup, no one can hit their way out of a wet paper bag.  And come on - there's no way Holliday can keep hitting at this pace.  That .378/.434/.701 line we mentioned earlier?  Compare that to a career .319/.388/.549 clip.  Want some more hatin?  Well, you knew this was coming.  On the road in his career, he's been hitting .283/.353/.456.  So there you see some Coors Field effects.  What we're saying is, as his season goes on, his line is going to regress to the mean level he's been demonstrating throughout his career. 

Of course, his career mean would still make him seem studly in comparison to some of the guys the Cards are running out there.  Ryan Ludwick (.804) is the only guy OPSing over .750, and the next closest is Skip Schumacker's .746.  Do you fear Yadier Molina, Julio Lugo, Mark DeRosa, Colby Rasmus, Brendan Ryan, Rick Ankiel, or Brian Barden?  Probably not, and you're not even a big league pitcher (probably).  They score a measly 4.58 runs per game, 18th in MLB - not exactly a championship caliber offense. 

No, this is going to be a team that relies on its pitching to get its wins.  And with a rotation of Chris Carpenter, Adam Wainwright - a latter-day Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, for our money -, a surprisingly good Joel Pineiro (3.01 FIP, 1.11 WHIP) and a resurgent John Smoltz, they could do just that.  And as for the bullpen, they've had a spectacular year from Ryan Franklin (of all people), who's posted a 1.67 ERA and a 4.265 WXRL.  Trever Miller, Kyle McLellan, and Blake Hawksworth have proven capable as well, and they'll have the useful Kyle Lohse as a long man.  But can such a staff shut down the Dodgers, or even the Yankees should they get that far?  Well, at the very least it should make for a fun series.  

Catching up on Pitching

So we were checking out Rotoworld and there happens to be a bit about Scott Kazmir's imminent trade.  Which, first of all, shocked us, because we had no idea this was actually in the works, let alone going to happen.  We wrote about this a bit earlier in the year; you can check it out here if you're so inclined.  But we'd like to append that post by saying that this is strange timing for the Rays.  According to the ever-so-fun www.coolstandings.com, they have just a 15% chance of making the playoffs, but according to Baseball Prosepctus' Hit List and their third-order winning percentage (which are part and parcel, really, but there you are) they should be much better than they are right now.  And there's enough of the season left to get on a hot streak and steal at least a Wild Card spot.  So the question we ask, then, is why?  Why trade him now?  We know Kazmir's been awful all year, but can't they at least stick him in the bullpen?  It's like what we said when Papelbon and Delcarmen were having issues with the idea of acquiring Billy Wagner; what team can't use an extra flame throwing arm in the bullpen, let alone when that arm is a left one? 

Anyway, we just don't like the idea of a team that's still in contention shipping off potentially valuable parts.  What we do like are the Twins getting involved with literally every person that's ever toed the rubber in their lives that has been put on waivers.  Ron Mahay, Brad Penny, Trevor Hoffman, John Smoltz before he was claimed....each of these has and more have been linked to the Twins in recent days.  And why not?  They're not far back, they have a 16.6% chance of making the playoffs, and their biggest weakness is pitching.  We love the fact that they're at least kicking the tires on every bit of available help they can find, regardless of how much help that player might be (we're looking at you, Mahay).  That's not to say that we're particularly hoping the Twins make the playoffs...we just like that their collective head is in the right place.  

The third piece of news we want to address here is that the Yankees have reportedly removed the "Joba rules"* which means that Joba Chamberlain will now be allowed to pitch every fifth day.  We have a couple of things to say about this...first and foremost being that the Joba rules were a stupid idea in the first place.  Why did they ever have it in their heads that the guy couldn't handle a starter's workload?  There's a difference between managing a young pitcher's innings and jerking him around from role to role; the guy was a starter at Nebraska, and dominated in the bullpen as potentially great starting pitchers should do.  One of those two things carries more weight, and it ain't the latter.

*We'd never heard this term used before, and we dislike it almost as much as the rules themselves.

Look, starting pitchers are more valuable than relievers.  And when you have a guy on your hands who can be a great starting pitcher...you use him.  You don't play games with his regimen, you don't tell him that he's going to be a setup man for a couple months and a starter the rest.  You let him develop a groove, let him get comfortable in the majors.  The Yankees never did that with Joba, and it's to his credit that he's survived the adversity.  

But this is why we have mixed feelings about the lifiting of the 'rules': Joba's been terrible lately.  Whether it's fatigue or just a rough patch or injury, we have no way of knowing, but, really, keeping him off the field has been the better course of action.  And now that he's been bad for a couple of starts, they decide it's a good time to lift the silly rules that were imposed upon him in the first place?  It's just weird timing is all.  And it's not like they need an extra boost to make the playoffs; they have a 6-game lead on the Sawx and a 98+% chance of making the playoffs in one form or another.  Maybe this will prove to be exactly what Joba needs; maybe he'll put it together once he goes out there every fifth day.  Or maybe there really is something wrong with him and the Yankees are upping his workload just in time to ruin him for the playoffs.  It's a big gamble they're making...and we're excited to see how it plays out.  Stretch run baseball...it's a beautiful thing.