Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
May 20, 2007
Winners and Losers

The Tigers sweep the St. Louis Cardinals, winning today by a score of 6-3. A little over seven months removed from the World Series, the champions are languishing near last place, while the runners up are competing for a division title. Sometimes winning causes a team to stand pat. The Cardinals, who were not a great team during the 2006 regular season, didn't make many moves to improve over the off-season. The Tigers, finishing second in both the division and the playoffs, had the incentive to tinker with the lineup, and added the valuable Gary Sheffield. The World Series victory masked the weaknesses that needed to be addressed on the Cardinals team, and now they're paying for it with a poor record.


Posted by David Pinto at 03:59 PM | Series | TrackBack (0)
Comments

The Cardinals are actually a worse team than their record indicates. Through May 20, the Cardinals are 16-25 having scored 143 and allowed 205. Given the 1.81 exponent-method for calculated Pythagorean W%, the Cardinals should have a 13-28 record (.317). The Cardinals are an awful baseball team, there is no silver-lining and no saving grace, if anything things are going to get worse and considering the contract situations they have with Pujols, Edmonds, Carpenter, et al - it won't get better for SEVERAL years.

Posted by: Santos Sorrow at May 20, 2007 05:57 PM

This could be an unusual decade. Since the 1940's, the Cards have been in at least 3 world series's in every other decae...1940's, 1960's, 1980's...and they're due this decade. All they need is 1 more appearance before 2010.

Posted by: Devon Young at May 20, 2007 07:58 PM

re: the cardinals

(1) addressing devon young's point of three appearances in the world series per decade by the cards, it should be noted that the Cards of 1964, notwithstanding the late David Halberstam's awful book on the subject of the 1964 pennant race, only made it in because of the Phillies collapse in the last 12 games of the season. In terms of win shares Dick Allen, not Ken Boyer, should have been the MVP, and had Gene Mauch not pitched Bunning and Short on short rest, Mauch would have avoided the ten game losing streak. That was a talented staff he had and others could have won games for him. Mauch has always overmanaged and always burned out his players too soon which is why his players don't do well down the stretch drive or in the playoffs, as with the 82 and 86 Angels. tragic but true.

(2) as for this years cards, the fact that the 06 cards won does not mask the fact that chris carpenter is overrated, or that scott rolen and tony larussa are, in my opinion, horses asses, and that the two of them were in an awful feud last year down the playoff stretch, to the point of LaRussa benching Rolen.

(3) LaRussa has an alcohol/drinking problem, and refuses to face it in preseason; and during the year, one of his young, fine pitchers goes out and dies in a drunked car crash from liquor served in the clubhouse. This does not suggest a culture of leadership from the top showing the right example. Branch Rickey may have been many things, but he at least was a teetotaler who didn't like hard drinking ballplayers.

(4) the 06' title was the last gasp of a dying over the hill squad that needs to be completely re-done over. Rolen is 32 or 33, Edmonds is nearing retirement, and the only guy they can build around really is Pujols. Eckstein and Kennedy are in their 30s, and the pitching staff is all veterans as well. As with all veterans over 28, the prospects for catastrophic decline increase as an athlete approaches 35 years of age, and with an entire team of athletes over 30, the odds of the team having a catastrophic decline increase markedly. clearly that's what we're seeing right now.

(5) some parallels would be the phillies of 1982 and 1984; the yankees this year; the giants the last couple of years; and so forth. it's hard to expect veteran teams to continue to perform at their prior levels when each veteran has a 33% chance of collapse in performance level due to age.

--art k philly

Posted by: art kyriazis at May 21, 2007 11:07 AM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?