June 11, 2008
Pujolsing a Calf
While we were waiting for Albert Pujols's elbow to snap, his calf gave out instead:
The Cardinals' first baseman crumpled one step out of the batter's box during the seventh inning after aggravating a left calf strain that limited him to pinch-hit duty during last Thursday's split doubleheader in Washington. This time Pujols screamed out in pain and had to be helped from the field.
Albert's runs created stands at 56 right now, about 1/6 of the St. Louis offense. Right now, St. Louis has a three-game cushion in the wild card race, so they'll need to bank on that and hope the injury doesn't sideline the slugger too long.
Posted by David Pinto at
10:51 AM
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St. Louis really has no business being 12 games over .500 with that +34 run diff. But this is the team that once won a World Series in a +19 run diff season. La Russa wizardry? Dumb luck? You decide.
Don't get me wrong, the Cardinals are a lot better than I'd thought they'd be. But I can't see them running away with the wild card race or challenging the Cubs for the division.
The Cardinals are faring a lot better than I had thought they would as well.
In looking at their run differential (now +39) it's illuminating th see where it comes from: my impression is that most good teams pile up a lot of blowouts en route to amassing a large run differential, and that often is a characteristic good teams share: the ability to blow out other (especially bad) teams.
The Cardinals are not doing that, which makes me wonder how sustainable their success is. They've won only four "blowouts" all year (winning by 6+ runs) and they have a negative run differential (-10) in such games; I'd expect pretty much every "good" team would have a positive run differential in such games.
Conversely, they have a winning record in 1-, 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-run games, from which their entire positive run differential stems. No idea what this means, but it suggests to me that they may not be a "good" team...
According to B-R, we've won 10 blowouts and lost 8 so far, so we aren't THAT bad of a team. I think they define a blowout as winning by 5 or more, though.
Anyway, using win expectancy based on pythagorean wins is pretty useless this early in the season, but since you brought up run differential our xW-L is 36-30, so if we were playing "to expectations" we'd still be in the lead for the wild card, and if Izzy hadn't exploded we'd probably be more like 15-16 games (potentially 18, if he had converted all his save ops) over .500 and tied or in the lead for first.
Ding, Ding, Ding
The Cardinals are a bad team masquerading as a good team. They are no different from the awful Orioles who lead the AL East for two months in 2004. Everyone knew they were awful, the run differential wasn't there, they had an obscene record in 1-run games, etc.
I doubt the Cubs have a team within 8 games of them in September.
If teams were living up to their Pythagorean projections, Atlanta would be leading the wild card race. That ridiculous 3-17 record in one-run games is just killing them. They're languishing 6 1/2 games back in both the division and the wild card.
But if there is any team in the NL to keep an eye on, it's the Braves. They've managed to stay around .500 with every break in the book (and some not in the book) going against them in the close games. They're not buried yet, and sooner or later they should catch a little good luck.
casey- you mean, a break as in... oh, i don't know... something like a career .310 hitter going on a streak in which he bats .428 on balls in play for 2.5 months?
;)
So yeah, after tonight, the STL pyth xW-L record should be 38-29 -- and the braves should lose one, since they rolled over for the cubs. So now STL is up by at least one in the "xW-L wild card race".
And 5.5 in the "real world" wild card race, since florida is going to collapse Real Soon Now...