Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 24, 2008
Rotation Evaluation, St. Louis Cardinals

The series looking at team pitching rotations using the Marcel the Monkey projections continues with the St. Louis Cardinals. Their starters posted a 5.04 ERA in 2007, fourteenth in the National League.

Note that in figuring ERAs, I'm using Marcel's mIP and mER columns. The ERA listed in the spreadsheet uses the average of mER and bsrER. I wanted to avoid posting 1/2 runs in the table. Pitcher order is taken from the CBSSportsline depth chart.

Adam Wainwright

Adam Wainwright
Photo: Icon SMI

Marcel predictions for the St. Louis Cardinals top five starters for 2008.
StarterInningsERERA
Adam Wainwright149623.74
Braden Looper131674.01
Kyle Lohse163864.75
Todd Wellemeyer78394.50
Brad Thompson103494.28
Totals6243034.37

At the moment, this is a cobbled together rotation. Wainwright gives the team a legitimate number one starter. However, he went from 75 innings in 2006 to 202 innings in 2007, and that puts him at risk for injury. The Cardinals own a lot of injury depth, however, as Pineiro, Clement and Mulder are working their way back for an early season return, and they may even get Chris Carpenter on the mound in the second half of the season.

These injuries are a golden opportunity for pitchers like Lohse, Wellemeyer and Thompson to earn a permanent spot in the rotation. Given the history of Lohse and Wellemeyer, however, Thompson has the best chance of sticking around. Given the general lack of talent in these five and all the injuries, I suspect the rotation that ends the season for St. Louis will look very different from the one that starts the year.

Previous posts in this series:

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Posted by David Pinto at 08:37 AM | Team Evaluation | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I agree that the St. Louis Cardinal rotation is in flux right now. But I still feel that you cannot count them out in the extremely weak NL Central.

Posted by: Sam H. at March 24, 2008 10:53 AM
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