The Colonel turned in his best strikeout-to-walk ratio of the season and helped the Cardinals split their series with the Giants. Since we’re now at the midway point in the season, and since Wellemeyer’s opponent tonight, Barry Zito, is one of the highest-paid players (and, we might add, most overpaid players), now seems a good time to review the Cardinal roster and see how well players are paying off (let’s hope they’re better than Zito). We’ll use salary as listed by USA Today and value as given by Fangraphs. First, the pitchers:

The big and pleasant surprise here of course is Joel Pineiro. The man who couldn’t make the Puerto Rican WBC team has already exceeded the value of his contract by almost $4 million. Chris Carpenter, with an albatross of a contract, is actually living up to it (so far). And Adam Wainwright’s value is triple the amount his salary. Relievers Ryan Franklin and Trever Miller are ahead of the game, too. Wellemeyer and Lohse are the only major deals that are coming up short. Middle relievers Josh Kinney and Kyle McClellan are in the negative, though their salaries make them relatively small fish.

Now for the batters:

Albert Pujols has — big surprise — already exceeded his contract total (he’s the most valuable hitter — literally — in baseball). The other huge assets are Yadier Molina, Brendan Ryan and Colby Rasmus, all of whom benefit from playing skilled positions (and, of course, playing them well). On the down side, the Cardinals have gotten nothing from Troy Glaus’s $12 million contract this year and are actually “in the red” on Khalil Greene. And as badly as they’ve played, the team’s two to-be free-agent outfielders, Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick, are on pace to make good on their one-year deals.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about Zito. He’s set to make $18.5 million in 2009. Prior to Thursday’s performance, he had earned value of $2.7. We’d say he’s got a ways to go.

• We know that the team has been struggling at the dish lately, but sac bunting with your #2 hitter in the first inning is embarrassing.
• If you’ve never paid attention to Pablo Sandoval’s approach to his at-bat, do yourself a favor and watch him. He writes something in the dirt with his bat on the perimeter of the batting circle as he approaches, then jumps out toward the pitcher with some more choreography. We love that he does most of his work outside of the batter’s box.
• When Chris Duncan struck out with the bases loaded in the third, fans lustily booed him. Sorry, fans, but booing your own for giving an honest effort but failing is poor form. Stay home next time, or save your boos for lack of hustle — or Manny Ramirez.
• Not sure why Bochy allowed Romo to pitch to Pujols in the eighth. He was playing with fire and could’ve easily lost the game then.
• Yadier Molina reached on a fielder’s choice in the eighth, and what a poor choice it was by erstwhile Cardinal shortstop Edgar Renteria. With runners on first and second, two outs, Molina grounded slowly to Renteria. Tyler Greene, one of the Cardinals’ fastest players, had just entered the game to pinch run at first. Molina, one of the team’s slowest, was batting. With two outs and no one holding him on, Greene easily made it to second, which is where Renteria threw. The former Gold Glover needs to remember all these details. Which raises the question: At what point does a fielding decision become so egregious that it ceases to be a "fielder’s choice" and become an error?
• Speaking of former Gold Glovers acting foolishly, Albert Pujols has made a bad habit of fielding throws in foul territory; he’s going to get himself hurt and/or fail to make a play because the ball hits a runner. Yes, Pujols makes some exciting plays, but he also makes some plays exciting.
• Tony La Russa got "p0wned," as the kids say, by Bruce Bochy in the ninth. With the game tied, Wainwright was due to lead off against righty Sergio Romo. Rather than let him bat or at least pinch hit with righty Jarrett Hoffpauir, TLR summoned lefty Rick Ankiel. Sure enough, Bochy countered with southpaw Jeremy Affeldt, who promptly said "gg" to Ankiel on three pitches. TLR gave away an out for free in a crucial situation (and burned a hitter in the process).
• But then we’re not sure why Bochy didn’t leave in Affeldt, who was carving up Cardinal batters, to pitch to Rasmus in the 10th. It probably cost him the game.
• TLR deserves credit, though, for bringing in Franklin in the tie game (read: non-save situation).
• As dominant as Tim Lincecum was Monday night, Adam Wainwright outpitched him with tonight’s performance. Lincecum had a Fielding-Independent Game Score (FIGS) of 76; Wainwright, with 36 batters faced and 12 strikeouts, threw an 80.
• When a pitcher pitches nine innings with 12 Ks, can we please stop wasting time and space by noting how he didn’t get a decision? Just don’t mention it; it’s absolutely stupid.
• No, Bernie, Ryan Franklin should not be an All-Star. It’s a quaint idea, but he’s not even among the top 10 best relief pitchers (let alone starters) in the league. Heck, the Giants’ Wilson and Affeldt are having better seasons.
• It was a momentous night for sportswriters: P-D scribes Rick Hummel and Joe Strauss gave in to the peer pressure and officially began their Twitter careers.

If you live in St. Louis, you might have noticed the “Arches on Parade” around town: 10-foot-tall replica arch statues that commemorate the upcoming All-Star Game. We created a Google map for those of you locals — and any visitors coming to town for the event — who want to know where to find them.

View 2009 St. Louis All-Star Game Arches in a larger map

[Ed. note: Since the following is a list of our personal remembrances, we're going to temporarily suspend the editorial first-person and just go with the first person singular. Hope it doesn't throw you off too much.]

1. Listening to Kool and the Gang after the 1982 Championship
The Cardinals had just beaten the Brewers for the world championship. Images of Whitey Herzog embracing Keith Hernandez, Darrell Porter drinking his diet Pepsi and President Reagan calling to congratulate them all — ah, the good-old days and innocence of my youth. My little brother and I played the Kool and the Gang Cardinals Celebration 45 until our record player broke.

2. Getting Vince Coleman’s autograph, 1985
In August of 1985, Vince Coleman was well on his way to winning rookie of the year, having stolen 72 bases. But he hadn’t yet, so he was still on the signing-autographs-car-dealerships circuit, and my mom took my brother and me to meet the new Cardinal star at a dealership in Belleville. My mother never really accepted the fact that I was a Mets fan at the time, and I certainly didn’t tell Coleman that. I still remember his black velour track suit and huge chain with #29 hanging from it. Little did I know that he would one day be charged with endangerment for throwing a lit firecracker into a crowd of fans waiting for his autograph in the Dodger Stadium parking lot. Guess I should count my blessings.

3. Getting to the Cardinals-Expos game in the eighth inning with my dad, 1988
When I was young, getting to go to a baseball game was on par with birthday parties and trips to Six Flags. Box seats were roughly the equivalent of a trip to Disney World. That’s why, when my dad landed upon a pair of first-row box seats in front of the visiting team’s bullpen, which of course in the old park was just down third-base line, we had to go, even if that meant leaving for the game in the seventh inning (either he worked late, or I had my own ballgame), with the promise of only an inning or so of baseball. The Cardinals were up 2-0 when we left, but as we drove, we heard the Expos rallying on the radio. By the time we arrived at our seats, the game was tied, and it was looking like extras. Talk about validating our decision: The game went 14 innings, and my dad and I got to see nearly a full game’s worth of action. The Cardinals lost, but we had triumphed.

4. Andy Van Slyke refereeing flag football at FCA camp, ca. 1988-89
Like a lot of boys, I grew up reading about baseball in The Sporting News, and I loved their weekly quotes column, in which Andy Van Slyke was a regular. For example, once when asked if he died and could be reincarnated whom would he come back as, Van Slyke replied, "My wife. Then I could see how wonderful I am." This guy was clearly hilarious. So when I attended a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp in Eureka, Mo., during high school and found out that Van Slyke, along with Todd Worrell, Ricky Horton and others would be there, I was thrilled. I had no idea Van Slyke would end up refereeing our flag football game. When I attempted to spot an inbounds throw, I dutifully consulted Van Slyke as to where I should stand. "Ah, just keep going," Van Slyke motioned nonchalantly, as I suspiciously took another 20 feet toward my opponents’ goal. How cool was this guy!, I wondered. At any rate, I should’ve been more confident — what teenager was going to challenge a Gold Glover’s decision?

5. Sneaking up to meet Ernie Hays, ca. 1990-91
In high school, my friends and I sneaked and fibbed our way to any place at Busch Stadium where were weren’t allowed to be, which was usually anywhere but the upper deck. After getting kicked out of the box seats, we got the wild idea to try to meet legendary organist Ernie Hays. After the game, we sweet-talked our way to his booth, where he received us like we were old pals. We asked him about the music he played for the various players, and I asked him if he remembered what he played for Keith Hernandez. "Let’s see," he said. "Ah, yes, it was Jethro Tull — Thick as a Brick." You just can’t get that kind of info from the internet.

6. Ray Lankford sombrero encounter, 1998
While my in-laws, my wife and I were driving to and from the Missouri wineries during a weekend visit, we listened to the ballgame on the radio. It was a classic Cubs-Cards tilt, and Ray Lankford was wearing the ignominious golden sombrero — 0-for-5 with five strikeouts — after nine innings. But he atoned with a game-tying two-run homer in the 11th, then hit a walkoff infield single to win it in the 13th. That evening, we went to dinner at Bar Italia (old location), when who should take a table next to us but Lankford and a pal. I leaned in to tell my father-in-law that Ray Lankford was "sitting right over there!" Hard of hearing, my father-in-law didn’t catch the latter part of my nuanced low talk and replied full-voiced, "You mean the guy who struck out five times today?!" In unison, his wife, my wife and I hushed him and said that he was "sitting right over there!" To which he replied innocently, "Why didn’t you tell me?"

7. Sitting through a sweltering game at old Busch, 2000
You’re not really a Cardinal fan until you’ve sat through a 100-degree afternoon game at the concrete doughnut of old Busch Stadium. My wife and I — at the time Cardinal and Met fans, respectively — sweated out the vintage Darryl Kile-Mike Hampton duel back on Sept. 2, 2000, which Kile and the Cardinals won 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth. I can’t honestly say that I remember Fernando Vina’s walkoff single off the cursed Armando Benitez because I was struggling to stay alive, going to the underpressured water fountain three sections away each inning to fill up our water bottles with warm water. I appreciated what a great game we’d witnessed — about five years later. (By the way, Wolfram Alpha says that it "only" got up to 91 degrees, but the dewpoint — a.k.a. air wetness — was a sultry 75.)

8. "Father’s Day" Game, 2002
I didn’t meet my wife at a baseball game, but we’ve had many formative experiences watching baseball. Like when we were at a Mets-Cards game in 2002: She excused herself and returned with a bag containing a gift for me. I opened it and pulled out a kid-sized Cardinal hat. I blockheadedly wondered why she bought me the wrong size, before I realized that it had a positive pregancy test attached to it, and that it was for our bambino-to-be. A better way to find out that I was a father I cannot imagine.

9. Game 5 of the 2006 Series and becoming a Cardinal fan again.
Baseball doesn’t get any better than being there when your team wins a championship, the important modifier being "your." For me, who had suffered under the yoke of Mets’ fanship for the 23 year prior, the Cardinals became my team again, breaking the Curse of Keith Hernandez, and I saw it in person with my wife and dear friends. I still remember the upper deck shaking as the Cardinals won, and later walking down Washington Ave. high-fiving strangers in cars.

10. Touching Keith Hernandez’s blazer, 2007
The Mets were in town for the 2007 home opener, which meant that my boyhood idol, Keith Hernandez, one of the Mets’ broadcasters, was somewhere in the ballpark. I was giddy with the mere knowledge that I could theoretically meet him. But I wasn’t prepared for what was to happen, when I, starting my job for MLB.com, rode the press elevator down to the ground floor to grab a pregame meal in the cafeteria. As the doors opened, an assembly of Cardinal legends stood in a u-shape, waiting for the elevator (waiting for me, it seemed!). Lou Brock, Bruce Sutter, Ozzie Smith, Bob Gibson — and Keith Hernandez: Baseball heaven, indeed! I forced myself off the elevator toward them — here was the moment I’d been waiting for all my life, to meet Hernandez and get his autograph, and not wanting to appear unprofessional (not to mention like a big dork), I simply couldn’t. But knowing that I needed something, some tangible memento from this encounter, I made my way into the crowd, targeted an opening next to Hernandez and bumped into him, patting the fabric of his royal-blue blazer shoulder while adding a suave, "Excuse me" and never looked back. You may ask what can be gained feeling a person’s material. A lot, let me tell you.

Do I want to be in St. Louis forever? Of course. Because that city has opened the door to me and my family like no other city is ever going to do … People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they’re jealous that we’re in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable … It’s not about the money. I already got my money. It’s about winning and that’s it. It’s about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win. If this organization shifts the other way then I have to go the other way … It’s about being in a place to win and being in a position to win. If the Cardinals are willing to do that and put a team every year like they have, I’m going to try to work everything out to stay in this town. But if they’re not on the same page of bringing championship caliber to play every year, then it’s time for me to go somewhere else. Where? Somewhere else that I can win.

– Albert Pujols, Feb. 2009

It’s as though every few months, Cardinal fans and writers re-realize that Albert Pujols is signed only through 2011 (assuming the team picks up the option on his age-31 season), and they become a flock of chicken littles. Most recently, the venerable Bernie Miklasz posted a strong argument for keeping Pujols in the fold. Then Brian Burwell wrote from Pujols’s standpoint, taking a decidedly Yankeeish ("What have you done for me lately — as in yesterday?") view and demanding to “see some legitimate signs” that the team doesn’t suddenly repudiate the very idea of winning. But is the sky really falling?

As is often the case in the fever swamps of hype and fear, objectivity and data are the last to the discussion. The question of whether the Cardinals should re-sign/extend Pujols’s contract notwithstanding (we don’t think it’s as clear a decision as many do), are the Cardinals "in a place to win"? Ultimately, of course, that’s a question for Pujols to decide. But it may be possible to come to a conclusion more or less rationally.

To try to quantify competitiveness, we came up with four team-health metrics: Annual league ranking of its farm system, payroll, win-loss percentage and attendance. Obviously, the strength of a farm system impacts future possibility of success. Payroll can indicate how dedicated a team’s ownership is to winning, though, as several teams have shown (both high-payroll losers and low-payroll winners), a strong correlation is questionable. Certainly, win-loss percentage demonstrates a team’s actual success and can indicate near-term future success insofar as their improvement is gradual ("When a team improves sharply one season they will almost always decline in the next"). And attendance, while correlating with winning, shows the support of a team’s fan base — something Pujols himself points up as important.

Sources: Baseball America (via Derrick Goold), USA Today, Baseball-Reference.com

For the entirety of Pujols’s Cardinal career, the team has consistently ranked in the top half of MLB in payroll and win-loss percentage and in the top eight in attendance per game — this despite ranking 24th in market size (based on JC Bradbury’s 2004 research).

The major complaint regarding the team’s dedication to competitiveness that we’ve read and heard is the payroll. Granted, 2009 is the lowest that it has been in 10 years. But the 2009 season needs to be weighed in light of recent seasons, after the team returned from its unsustainably high #6 rank in 2005 to closer to its 10-year average of 11th the past two previous seasons. Again, it’s hard to complain about a team in the lower third of market sizes keeping its payroll in the upper third. Boston and New York are about the only places where payroll is consistently greener, and we’re guessing that the fan-loyalty factor cancels that out: Pujols may be able to make more money there, but can he name a player since Mickey Mantle that Yankee fans haven’t booed?

So with payroll, winning percentage and attendance all relatively constant since before Pujols even arrived on the big-league scene, the one variable has been the team’s amazing turnaround in its farm system. If anything, then, a franchise that has not only been committed to winning but has actually won, is currently in as good a position to continue that commitment as it has been during Pujols’s tenure.

We suspect that Pujols intuitively knows how good he has it as a St. Louis Cardinal. Now he has some data to back it up. Then again, data and 25 cents won’t even buy you a cup of coffee. So when push comes to shove, we’ll see how serious Pujols is about it not being about the money. As for that commitment to winning, he’s already got it.

When we wrote in April about Tony La Russa’s newfound penchant for strategic, sometimes en masse, late-inning defensive substitutions — we called them "fielding saves — we had no idea how regular the practice would become. Here we are nigh on July and TLR hasn’t slowed down, sending reinforcements into the infield and upgrading his outfield around the eighth inning. A big reason is that Skip "Howie Shanks" Schumaker is still playing nearly every day at second base, which, other than Chris Duncan actually being healthy enough to swing a bat (to say nothing of his .345 OBP — third-best on the club), is probably the most unlikely happenstance of the season. That means he can easily spell the less nimble (but, in our opinion, more adept that given credit) Duncan in left field, opening a role for the team’s more defensively inclined infielders, like Brian Barden and Joe Thurston to slide to his natural second base spot.

Tthe rules for a fielding save are:

• Player cannot be a starter at the position where he finishes
• Player must be in the field for the team’s final defensive out
• Player must enter the game with a tie or lead when he begins fielding (e.g., he can PH or PR then move to the field)
• Player must not commit an error at the new defensive position

As you might have noticed, a player can be credited with a fielding save regardless of the margin of the lead (unlike pitching saves), but in practice the Cardinals have had leads of more than four in only four of the 41 games in which they’ve tallied fielding saves.

So who has the most fielding saves and fielding save attempts so far?

Of the 67 games that the Cardinals have played, Skip Schumaker has attempted a fielding save in nearly half (33). And he’s been reliable in his old outfield spot (where he usually transfers), converting 32 of thost attempts (he made an error against the Cubs April 24). Joe Thurston and Barden, who typically join Schumaker in the deployment, account for the majority of the rest of the team’s fielding saves.

By now, we have a decent-enough sample to see if the strategy is paying off. By our count, the late shift has made only three errors. But errors are of course too blunt an object to measure fielding with, so let’s turn to Defensive-Efficiency Rate, the rate at which a defense turns batted balls into outs. Let’s break it down by thirds of the game — innings 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9:

The numbers are rough, since we had to hack the errors part of the equation (if anyone knows of a place to find fielding splits, please let us know), and since this data includes all games, not merely the ones in which a fielding save was in play. Still, it indicates that the team’s defense in late innings is more formidable than earlier in the game. Is it due to the practice of fielding saves? We’d say probably in no small part. Know, too, that La Russa has inserted his "hands" players when the team has been down a run, too, so those don’t show up based on our rules. We’d like to see the practice continue — not only is it fun to score, it also appears to have a salutary effect on the team’s ability to finish strong in close games.

Much recent debate has centered on the Cardinals’ need for an infusion of offensive firepower, particular in the infield. But until the teams brings in (or up) a new player, how can the team optimize the players it currently has?

Today we’ll focus on the Cardinal infield, sans Albert Pujols, whom we’ll pen in as the lone constant in the lineup. The principle players and their splits by handedness are as follows:

For the purposes of our analysis, we rated the various combinations without regard to defense, which admittedly is no small concern. Another not-insignificant note: We used players’ to-date stats; therefore, some sample size (see Joe Thurston’s split v. LHP) concern is in order. We used David Pinto’s inimitable lineup-analysis tool to run some OBP and SLG numbers for the various combinations of the team’s current infielders to see how many runs above or below league average they would generate. We used the following NL figures (as of 6/15):

So which is the best infield combination to play against righthanded pitchers?

Sadly, the best the Cardinals can do with their current group is 10 runs below average (for the season), or about one win. Clearly, the Schumaker-Ryan-Barden group is the best and should be playing every day against righties. After that, the difference is fairly neligible until you start including Khalil Greene in the equation, at which point any combination with K-Greene is bad. Why anyone is considering the bizarro Ozzie Smith for a move to the hot corner is beyond us.

So that’s a theoretical look. In practice, Tony La Russa has employed the Schumaker-Ryan-Barden combination three times (4/23, 5/22 and 5/30), including against one lefty. The Cardinals won all three of those games.

Okay, so what about the platoon against lefties?

Here the Cardinals seem to have a competitive advantage, to the tune of eight wins above average. However, it’s based largely on that dubious platoon split from Thurston. He’s only had 34 plate appearance vs. southpaws this season and 44 in his major-league career (in which he has an even more impressive .442/.568 line). Yet even in his minor-league career, in which he had 528 ABs against portsiders, he didn’t exhibit much of a platoon differential (.345 OBP vs. LHP, .358 vs. RHP), so it’s not entirely a farce this year. At any rate, for all their troubles against lefties this year — they are 14th in the league in OBP against them — the Cardinals can mitigate that with a correctly configured infield, which is to say, an infield that routinely includes Tyler Greene and Brendan Ryan. Though it goes against platoon-advantage precepts, righties Brian Barden and Khalil Greene have not done well against lefties and shouldn’t be part of the rotation (unless Barden is facing Sean Marshall).

In case you’re wondering, TLR has yet to use the Ryan-TGreene-Thurston trio this season, despite trying 49 different defensive arrangements (not including pitchers) in 64 games so far. So perhaps he hasn’t alighted on the magic combo yet but will.

Speaking of conjury, if the Cardinals were to magically land Mark DeRosa from the Indians (the trade object du jour), how would he impact each scenario? Versus RHP, he or Barden could play shortstop and with Schumaker would produce -0.031 R/G and -5.022 on the season, so DeRosa (.329/.404) doesn’t really offer much of an upgrade over Ryan (.320/.392). But against LHP (.417/.704), he’d be a real boon, combining with Ryan and Thurston to theoretically produce .958 runs above average per game and 155.2 per season (again, based on Thurston’s unlikely numbers). But first things first: TLR needs to make the most of the players he has, starting with the infield.

Loyal friend and reader DaveBug recently asked via Twitter, "Using your Triple Crown def (RC/TB/OBP) who won it that didn’t win the old trio, and who won that that didn’t win the SABR version?" Ask and ye shall receive, DaveBug. We suppose being part of a limited readership has its benefits! We’ve actually been meaning to do a comprehensive post like this for some time now. After all, we first wrote about our so-called Sabermetric Triple Crown back in 2005 and revised it later that year, so it’s about time.

Major-league players have won the traditional batting triple crown 16 times, including 19th-century leagues. Due to the highly correlative stats in the Sabermetric version, it has been won 55 times. Of the four traditional triple crowns in the National League (three of which were by Cardinals, we should add) and 23 Sabermetic crowns, three have been both (in boldface):

Cardinal Stan Musial, who never won a traditional triple, gets his due with the Sabermetric triple crown (three), while Rogers Hornsby leads all senior-circuit players with five. While it’s been a long time in the National League since someone won a traditional triple crown, fans need look no further than Todd Helton’s 2000 campaign for the latest example of an all-around superior offensive season.

Now for the American League, which has seen nine traditional winners, 21 Sabermetric winners and seven cross-overs:

Babe Ruth, who was shut out out the traditional triple crown by high-average hitters like Ty Cobb, Harry Heilman and George Sisler (despite finishing with a career .342 BA, Ruth won only one batting-average title; he won 13 OBP titles), won the Sabermetric version five times. Carl Yastrzemski’s 1967 triple crown is often cited as the last triple crown in baseball, but his Sabermetric crown in 1970 is the more recent target for junior-circuit players looking to singlehandedly dominate their league.

And for those of you 19th-century aficianados and Federal League fans, the rest of the leagues:

# Meyerle tied with Ross Barnes for the league lead in total bases.

Only one of the nine Sabermetric winners won the traditional. Moreoever, only two — Anson and Brouthers — are in the Hall of Fame. Happily, SABR is holding a special "2009 Overlooked 19th Century Base Ball Legends Election," and Ross Barnes and Pete Browning are on the ballot (the others are Bill Dahlen, Jack Glasscock, George Gore, Paul Hines, Bobby Mathews, Tony Mullane, Harry Stovy and Deacon White; read more about them at the SABR Bio Project). We plan to vote for the two Sabermetric winners; please let us know if you’d like us to vote for anyone else.

Former Cardinal pitcher Dan Haren pulled off a remarkable feat last Tuesday: He had more hits as a batter — three — than he allowed as a pitcher — two. It seemed like a rare enough accomplishment, so we wondered if any pitchers had turned the trick while they were still Cardinals. As it turns out, at least seven have (since 1954):

Murry Dickson, 8/19/1956
Pitching the first game of a doubleheader against the Cubs, Dickson threw a nine-inning shutout, striking out nine and walking only one to go with his two hits allowed. The first of his three hits in the game accounted for the biggest single play (+12% WPA), driving in the Cardinals’ second run in the second inning.

Mike Torrez, 4/15/1970
Torrez didn’t just top his opponent in hits, he tripled their total. Holding the Expos to just one safety in nine innings (33 batters), Torrez knocked three singles and scored twice. On the down side, he walked six (and struck out only three) and hit a batter.

Bob Gibson, 6/17/1970
Gibson tossed one of the most dominant games of his career, defeating the Padres with 13 strikeouts and only one hit. He also raised his batting average to .381 (he would finish the year with a .303 BA and .347 OBP) with a pair of hits, one of which was the game’s biggest play (+10 WPA). Incredibly, it was the second game in one season in which a Cardinal pitcher had had more hits than he allowed.

Bob Gibson, 8/14/1971
What more humiliating way to defeat an opponent than when your pitcher gets a hit and can say he had more hits than the entire opposing team? That’s what Hoot did back in 1971 when he fired off his no-hitter and slammed a two-run single in the process. And if that weren’t enough, he added a sac fly for good measure — and three total RBIs. (We’d be interested to know whether any other pitchers besides Gibson have pulled off the stunt twice.)

John Urrea, 9/21/1978
Urrea’s career was otherwise undistinguished, but on this day, he nearly singlehandedly defeated the Mets 6-2. He yielded only one hit over seven innings (31 batters faced), struck out four and walked two. He drove in two runs to the delight of the 3,912 fans at Busch Stadium who witnessed the feat.

Rick Ankiel, 4/20/2000
Once upon a time, Rick Ankiel was a promising pitcher, of course. In the 13th game of his career, back on April 20, 2000, he offered a preview of what would become of both his pitching and hitting careers. He held the Padres to only two hits over five innings, and blasted a home run and hit two singles. The only problem was that he walked seven batters, foreshadowing the wildness that would ultimately force him off the mound and into the outfield where he could hit more of those home runs.

Al Reyes, 9/25/2004
What is Al Reyes doing on this list, you ask? Back when the Cardinals were winning 100 games a year, Tony La Russa used reliever Reyes late in September to kick off a "bullpen start" in order to rest his starting pitchers. Reyes pitched three scoreless and hitless innings and batted only once. But he made it count, singling off the Rockies’ Joe Kennedy. Interestingly enough, Ankiel relieved Reyes and surrendered five runs. He struck out in his at-bat, then fellow hurler Woody Williams pinch-hit for him — and struck out.

Keith Hernandez is in the news again, so naturally we couldn’t bypass the opportunity to comment. The offensive hero of the Cardinals’ 3-1 win over the Reds Thursday night was Albert Pujols*, who in reaching base twice, tied Mex for consecutive games reaching base at least twice. Both legendary Cardinal first basemen have streaks of 15 games; only Stan Musial has more (since at least 1954):

Interestingly, the major-league record is shared by a pair of cheaters, Pete Rose and Barry Bonds, so perhaps it’s a dubious honor for Pujols to attain to:

The Cardinals face the Rockies’ Jorge de la Rosa tonight, against whom Pujols has a .417 OBP in 12 plate appearances. We like his chances, even if it means surpassing one Cardinal legend and tying another.

*Who has claimed on multiple occasions that he hasn’t used PEDs but has never volunteered to be tested to attempt to prove it.