"Wild (St Louis) Cards" Getting Some Respect

When the St Louis Cardinals secured that second Wild Card spot in the National League, most baseball "experts" gave them little chance to last more than one game into the postseason.  After all, they had to battle the Atlanta Braves on their home turf with their sensational young ace on the mound - Kris Medlen - who seemed to be more invincible than Whitey Ford or Carl Hubbell.  Of course, those two Hall of Fame hurlers managed to start a major league record 22 games in a row in which their team secured victory.

Medlen broke that record after his final start of the regular season; it was a foregone conclusion the Braves would win for the twenty-fourth consecutive time with Medlen starting that critical Wild Card game for them.  Of course, that didn't happen.  The bad news for the Braves:  Their postseason journey ended abruptly.  The good news:  Postseason games don't affect Medlen's official MLB record, which still stands at 23 straight Atlanta wins when he started the game; small consolation, I know; but that's life.

Critics of the new Wild Card format opine that the teams should play at least a three-game set to determine which one truly deserves to advance into the postseason.  Some of the most vocal critics were players for the Atlanta Braves - most notably, the retiring Chipper Jones.  Ironically, it was his throwing error, on an easy double play ball, which helped pave the way to a fairly easy (albeit controversial) Cardinal win.

With Atlanta's shocking infield-fly-rule-defeat has come an outpouring of negative sentiment directed towards the Cardinals for having the audacity to advance in the playoffs; after all, they only won 88 games.  The mighty Braves won 94 games!  "That's not fair!"

Please, get over it.

With St Louis advancing to the NLDS, their opponents - the NL East champion Washington Nationals - were expected to restore order in the best of five showdown with the Wild Cards.  After all, the Nats had led all of major league baseball with 98 wins; ten games more than the upstart Redbirds.  The script seemed to be going as planned when Washington took Game One, with a come-from-behind 3-2 win over the Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

That frustrating defeat seemed to wake the Wild Cards out of their funk, as they scored 20 runs over the next two games to forge ahead in the series, two games to one.  But, whatever momentum the Cardinals had seemed to disappear in Game Four's agonizing defeat to the Nats by a 2-1 score; featuring Jayson Werth's dramatic walk-off home run on the 12th pitch he saw from Lance Lynn.

Game Five began ominously for St Louis when starting pitcher Adam Wainwright was roughed up for six runs in less than three innings.  About that time, a gleeful Chipper Jones, who recently got hooked on Twitter (@RealCJ10) tweeted "Ball Game!"

Not quite, Chipper.  You should know better than that.  The rest of Game Five is glorious Wild Cards' history, featuring a relentless comeback that had St Louis down to their last strike on two different occasions in the 9th-inning, still trailing by a couple of runs.  With Carlos Beltran perched on third base with two outs in the ninth, the Wild Cards had a 3.5% chance of winning the game.  Yet, they did.

Naturally, this was a revolting development for those smug-now-stunned Nationals fans who were expecting to party on Friday night; not attend a franchise wake.  Although most of the blame went to nearly everybody in the Nationals organization, many fans joined the growing legion of Cardinal-haters, simply because it seemed like the right thing to do.

Now, the Wild Cards are in the NLCS, facing a worthy opponent - the San Francisco Giants - who made postseason history, themselves, by sweeping the final three games of their NLDS against the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ballpark.  Of course, it was the first time all season the Reds managed to lose three games in a row at their own ballpark.  Postseason pressure can do that to a team.

Postseason momentum was still with the Wild Cards last night, as they beat the Giants in Game One of the NLCS at AT&T Park in San Francisco.  Home field advantage, anyone?  Later this evening, Chris Carpenter will try to make it two in a row over the Giants, before the two teams head to St Louis for the next three games (if necessary).  ***Update:  Giants tie Series 1-1 with 7-1 win over Cards.

Those of us who are into saber-metrics know there is a more accurate measurement of a team's relative strength than simply checking their won-loss record.  The Pythagorean Winning Percentage is based on a team's run differential.  The higher the differential, the stronger the team.  It's really that simple.  Of the ten teams that got into the postseason, here's how they all stack up, saber-metrically:

TEAM          PYTHAGOREAN W-L  (RUN DIFFERENTIAL)     ACTUAL W-L

Washington               96-66                           +137                              98-64
NYY                         95-67                           +136                              95-67
St Louis                    93-69                           +117                              88-74
Atlanta                      92-70                           +100                              94-68
Oakland                    92-70                            +99                               94-68
Cincinnati                 91-71                             +81                               97-65
Texas                       91-71                            +80                                93-69
San Francisco           88-74                            +69                                94-68
Detroit                      87-75                            +56                                88-74
Baltimore                  82-80                             +7                                 93-69

From a relative strength standpoint, the Cardinals were the third best team in major league baseball.  Strangely enough, they're better than their division rivals - the NL Central champion Cincinnati Reds.  Hey, they're also better than the Atlanta Braves, Chipper!

For all those naysayers who are still indignant about the St Louis Wild Cards' early success in the postseason; I say, it shouldn't be a big surprise.  They may even go on to win the World Series, again.  Back-to-back World Championships for the St Louis Cardinals?  From Wild Card to World Series champion two years in a row?  I'd bet Atlanta would love that.

Maybe Chipper would post a nice tweet about it?

2012 Cardinals Impersonating 1927 Yankees?

After the first thirty-one games of the 2012 season, the St Louis Cardinals are even hotter than they were over the final thirty-one games of the 2011 season, when they were by far, the hottest team on the planet.  But are they merely "hot" or are they just incredibly good?  At what point do we conclude this team is for real; that they are clearly the best team in the National League - quite possibly the best team in either league?

Taking it one step further, this particular Redbird edition is performing at such a ridiculously high level, it may well be regarded by Cardinal baseball historians as the best team in franchise history.

Far better than the fabled World Champion Gas House Gang of 1934 - featuring 30-game winner Dizzy Dean and fearsome slugger, Joe Medwick.

Far better than the '42 St Louis Swifties, who won 106 regular season games en route to an easy World Series title over the New York Yankees - featuring the greatness of rookie Stan Musial and the hard-nosed Enos "Country" Slaughter.

Far better than that great World Championship '67 team - featuring the electrifying Lou Brock and intimidating Bob Gibson at the peak of their careers.

Far better than any of them.  Certainly, the 2012 St Louis Cardinals have the talent, but also have the usual caveat:  They need to stay healthy to accomplish this historic potential.  If they can avoid an over-abundance of those season-shortening injuries (they've already had their share), I like their chances.  In fact, if this team is as good as they appear to be after thirty-one games - they may well be regarded as one of the most dominant teams in MLB history.

Believe it.  The sample-size is still only about 19% of the 2012 season, but these Redbirds are putting up some staggering numbers in three key (saber-metric) measurements of performance that boggle the imagination:

*Run differential - +75 after 31 games.  Aside from the Texas Rangers, no other MLB team is even within striking distance.  What this means is the Cardinals are scoring - on average - nearly two and a half more runs per game than their opponents (actually, 2.42).

*OPS+ - Forget batting averages, slugging percentages, home runs, and all those other traditional measurements of offensive production.  This number summarizes everything.  Keep in mind that a score of 100 is "average".  On a broader scale, even a few ticks higher than average can result in lots of extra wins.  After 31 games, the Cardinals' composite total is a whopping 128.

*ERA+ - Forget the traditional earned run average, strikeouts, hits allowed, and all those other traditional measurements of pitching effectiveness.  The same rules apply as above.  After 31 games, the Cardinals' composite total is a very strong 119.

The Father of Saber-Metrics - Bill James - devised a very complicated formula (PYTHAGOREAN WINNING PERCENTAGE) for determining a team's winning percentage, if "luck" - good or bad - were removed from the equation.  Here's the formula, which of course, makes absolutely no sense to me:

                    (RUNS SCORED) ^ 1.83
__________________________________________
(RUNS SCORED) ^ 1.83 + (RUNS ALLOWED) ^ 1.83

Let's suppose the Cardinals maintain their current pace for a full season; let's compare those projections to how the previous eleven World Championship Cardinal teams performed (as shown below).  It's no contest; the 2012 Redbirds has all those other great Cardinal teams outdistanced by a fairly wide margin.  They're on a pace to win 105 games in 2012; according to Bill James' Pythagorean winning percentage, the Redbirds should be winning more like 120 games this season.

It's interesting to note, the only team in MLB history that compares favorably to the early-season Cardinals of 2012 are the 1927 New York Yankees - considered by many baseball historians (including this one) to be the greatest team ever.  They weren't called "Murderers Row" for nothing.  Ruth and Gehrig were the featured attraction.

YEAR  ACTUAL W-L (RUN DIFFERENTIAL) PYTHAGOREAN W-L             OPS+       ERA+
1926            89-65           817 - 678 = 139                 90-64                                   101        107
1931           101-53          815 - 614 = 201                 97-57                                     98        116
1934            95-58           799 - 656 = 143                 90-63                                     97        115
1942           106-48          755 - 480 = 275                107-47                                   103        135
1944           105-49          772 - 490 = 282                107-47                                   107        134
1946            98-58           712 - 545 = 167                 97-59                                     99        115
1964            93-69           715 - 652 =  63                  88-74                                     94        112
1967           101-60          695 - 557 = 138                 97-64                                    101        108
1982             92-70          685 - 609 =  76                  90-72                                     95        109
2006             83-78          781 - 762 =  19                  82-79                                     97          98
2011             90-72          762 - 692 =  70                  88-74                                    112         99

2012 STL    105-57          909 - 517 = 392                120-42                                   128       119
1927 NYY   110-44          975 - 599 = 376                109-45                                   127       122

Statistically speaking, the 2012 Cardinals of Freese, Molina, Beltran and company are almost identical to the '27 Yankees of Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri and company.  There may have been previous seasons in St Louis Cardinals history that began as robustly as the current one; however, that seems unlikely.  Whether or not this team can maintain this torrid pace for an entire 162-game schedule remains to be seen.

Regardless, the 2012 season to this point has been one of great satisfaction for Cardinals fans.  Yes, it's still early; however, there's a very good chance this team is only getting better; that's almost a scary thought.