• Albert Pujols showed that when it comes to fielding, like that great Seinfeld character Slippery Pete, he’s the best — and the worst. With a runner on first during Saturday’s game, Pujols was playing behind the runner with the lefthanded Kosuke Fukudome batting. Fukudome hit a liner right at Pujols, which he promptly dropped, hoping to be able to throw to second to begin a double play. It was ruled a lineout, but it was an example of how Pujols is always thinking. On the other hand, as the Cubs were hammering the nails in the Cardinals coffin Sunday, Fukudome grounded weakly to Russ Springer, who turned to throw to first. Pujols, again playing deep, took his time getting to the bag, causing Springer to double-clutch. Pujols strafed his way to the base, like a tight end coming across the middle of the field, and Springer threw errantly. Springer drew the error, but Pujols had put him in a tough spot.
• Pujols hit his 300th home run Friday. While it’s an accomplishment, fans shouldn’t deceive themselves to think that it’s the same feat it once was. After all, of the five players to reach 300 the fastest, four of them did so in the (quiet now) steroid era.
• Tony La Russa and Troy Glaus complained about the ninth-inning strike calls in Friday’s game (TLR: "Check the tape. I think they’ll see there’s a legitimate gripe."). Did he have a "legitimate gripe"? Let’s look at the called pitches for each side:
  
  It would appear that, if anything, Cardinal pitchers had the benefit of as many calls as the Cubs. Indeed, while the Cardinals didn’t have any pitches inside the zone called balls, the Cubs had a couple, and the Cardinals had more pitches outside the zone called strikes. It just so happened that of the four (or so) pitches outside the zone that went the Cubs’ way, three of them happened in the ninth inning.

Erstwhile Cardinal and current Cub centerfielder Jim Edmonds received a hero’s welcome Friday night at Busch Stadium. Given Cardinal fans’ prior history, we wonder at Edmonds’s power to trump team loyalty with some kind of baseball Kavorka. Here was a player who, after the team very generously (and unwisely) extended his contract prior to the 2007 season, put himself ahead of the Cardinals this past winter and requested a trade. Granted, St. Louisans seldom boo players — unless, of course, they’re still Cardinals (see Mitchell Boggs Thursday or Jason Isringhausen, oh, just about anytime). But after another fan favorite, Keith Hernandez, was traded back in 1983, the fans’ response was decidedly different from how Edmonds was welcomed back. The captain of the 1982 World Championship team, a player who came up through the Cardinals’ system and cried tears of lament when he found out that he was traded (and considered retiring), was subsequently vilified and impugned by the locals. In Edmonds’s case, however, fans have been suckers for a player who rejected them (is it, like Bernie Miklasz proposes, the psychology of the spurned lover?). It’s odd, considering some of the facts and similarities:

• The Cubs are, dare we say, every bit as much a rival as the 1983 Mets were.
• At the time of the trade, Hernandez led the team in win shares as a Cardinal; Edmonds was only second (to Albert Pujols).
• When he was traded, Hernandez never derided the Cardinals as an organization; Edmonds has been quoted in less-than-fond words about his Cardinal tenure.
• At the time of the trade, Hernandez was in the prime of his career at age 29 (indeed, he went on to 149 more Win Shares with the Mets and Indians); Edmonds was clearly ready to be put out to pasture.

Perhaps that’s all there is to it, that, as Miklasz suggests, booing indicates a kind of respect, and Edmonds simply doesn’t pose much of a threat to the Cardinals these days (certainly not as much as Hernandez did in the mid-’80s as a Met). But we figure that Edmonds’s comments and current loyalties outweigh his deteriorated abilities. After all, what if Edmonds had homered last weekend?

With Edmonds, the Cubs now have two players on their roster who once earned 14 win shares in a season for their Central-division rivals. Judging from some of the initial reaction in Wrigleyville, the Cub fickle faithful weren’t exactly amiable to the idea of the Cardinal icon patrolling the "friendly" confines. We can’t say we blame them; after all, while the idea of someone like a post-prime Alfonso Soriano (we suppose we repeat ourselves) coming to wear the Birds on the Bat may not be as much anathema to St. Louisans as Edmonds was to Chicagoans, it might take some time to warm to him. Now, however, it’s a swoonfest at Wrigley (Cardinal fans aren’t the only ones susceptible to the Kavorka, it turns out).

Perhaps the newfound love of Edmonds isn’t so much due to his charm but the fact that Cub fans have gotten used to the routine. After all, it isn’t the first time a noted Cardinal has come to roost in Wrigley after spending his most productive years in St. Louis. Following is a list of some of the players who once achieved stardom with the Cardinals (with at least one 14-WS season; each player’s final Cardinal 14-WS season is listed) then moved on to the Cubs:

We aren’t old enough to know how Cardinal fans received former stars like Dean, Hornsby and Pollet (we’re guessing Osborne heard more that a few catcalls, if anything). We doubt whether Edmonds’s legs (shoulder, etc.), let alone fragile ego, will allow him to get much "Cubs history in [his] background," but judging from the reaction of the Cardinal "faithful" Friday night, Cardinal fans are all for it. Apparently, fans will give anything to be possessed by the Edmonds Kavorka.

That was the game-changing at-bat that got us right back in it. Guys were tired. There had been some long innings and that was a lift.

– Troy Glaus on Chris Duncan’s pinch-hit, game-tying home run

Jerry Manuel must’ve been tired, too. How else to explain some of his moves? To be sure, the Met players lost the game on their own merits (or lack thereof), but Manuel’s backward managing didn’t help them. In the first, after Jose Reyes singled, Manuel turned over any momentum that created by having No. 2 man Endy Chavez sacrifice Reyes to second. With all due respect to Joel Pineiro, the Mets don’t need to be playing for one run in the first inning of the game. Of course, the root problem may be that Chavez is batting second for the Mets in the first place, but if you’re going to be bunting Reyes over in the first inning against Pineiro, wouldn’t the same strategy hold in the third inning, when Reyes led off again with a hit?

At any rate, fast-forward to the eighth, when Chris Duncan came to the plate representing the tying run (read: high-leverage situation!). The Mets must not have done enough homework on Duncan: Although in the regular season, Duncan was previously hitless against Feliciano, Duncan had homered off the lefty in a pinch-hitting appearance in the sixth inning of Game 5 of the 2006 NLCS (how soon we forget!). It’s easy to criticize in hindsight, but why not use your best reliever — who happens to be lefthanded — in the most important situation of the game? We’re happy to say that reports of Chris Duncan’s demise have apparently been greatly exaggerated.

It was just one of those nights where I missed 50 percent of my spots.

– Joel Pineiro

Pineiro threw 59 of his 89 pitches for strikes, or 66.3%. That’s about where his season average is (66.7%), so we’re not sure what he was getting at. Even though his line didn’t look that impressive, he actually pitched his third-best game of the season by FIGS:

There’s no justice in this game usually, but today there was.

– Tony La Russa

What does this even mean? Perhaps TLR simply meant that the Mets deserved to lose the game.

While scouting the recent transactions in our office fantasy league, we came across a player we’d not heretofore taken note of: Minnesota third baseman Brian Buscher. Buscher has apparently been hitting well since he was recalled a couple of weeks ago, and his batting average entering Wednesday’s action stood at a heady .368. What really caught out attention, though, was his on-base percentage: .366. Yes, you read that right, Buscher’s OBP is lower than his batting average.

It’s certainly possible, of course, for that to happen, if a batter has at least as many sacrifice flies (or, as Dodgers’ announcer Vin Scully more accurately calls them, "scoring fly balls") as bases on balls (the formula for OBP is H+BB+HBP/AB+BB+SF+HBP). And that’s exactly what Buscher has in 41 plate appearances so far: two sac flies and a walk.

And, as is our wont, that got us wondering if any Cardinals had ever accomplished the dubious feat. And indeed some had. We must warn you, though: This list is not for the novice Cardinal fan, as it will tax your trivial knowledge (not to mention, you’ll see some truly hideous numbers). If you can handle obscure names like Luis Arroyo and Lonnie Maclin and some OBPs like .095 and .067, here you go (listed by year):

The list may not be complete, since sacrifices have only been reliably tracked for the last half-century or so (see the stat’s storied history). But it does reveal some curiosities. Several on the list are pitchers, as one would presume, including the well-known Bob Forsch, who had 14% of his plate appearances go for run-scoring flies back in 1986. But if you think that was something, hurler Tom Poholsky hit six sac flies for a rate of 21% back in 1954 (we’re not counting Bruce Sutter’s 22% over nine plate appearances in 1982). Ed and Omar Olivares will always be known as a Cardinal father-son combo, but they share more than blood. Interestingly, the club has had at least two "negative" OBP seasons in every decade since the SF came into existence, and yet no one in the twenty-aughts has turned the trick. Will 2008 be the year? Let’s see if anyone is close:

Everyone is keeping his OBP head above BA water so far. Will Roberto Mejia be the team’s last negative OBP-BA season? Nick Stavinoha may be the team’s best bet to be the first of the new millenium. If not, trading for Buscher is always an option. Do the Twins need a LOOGy, by chance?

I just didn’t make the pitches. I fell behind, tried to come in and missed inside. And the last one wasn’t close either — four bad pitches. Our game plan was to attack him with the fastball away, because he tries to pull everything, and my stuff matched up good for that situation. It just didn’t work out that way.

– Chris Perez

Perez is now the worst on the team in BB/G, behind even Randy Flores (which is saying something). Perhaps we’re a little late to the party on this one, but the fact that two of Tony La Russa’s favorite relievers in June — Flores and Perez — are so walk-happy struck us that La Runcan is more tolerant of walks than of fly balls, the areas in which Flores and Perez are weak and strong, respectively, and in which Iron Cap Reyes is exceptionally strong (he leads the team in BB/G) and relatively weak.

For the life of us, we don’t understand the preference; can someone make a rational case for it?

I just got to where I thought it was going to be, and when I got there, it wasn’t. I just misplayed it, I guess. I think it cut, because I was right there. I was calling it, and all of a sudden, it was behind me.

– Rick Ankiel

We’ve heard of rampant friendly scoring around the league this season, and Ankiel’s non-error misplay is the latest example. (We suppose that if he had played it better and gotten a glove on it, it would’ve been ruled an error.) Ankiel receives a lot of just credit for his amazing plays, but his fielding account needs to be similarly debited for his ostentatious (and sometimes errant) throws and misplays like Sunday’s blooper in the clutch.

That’s one of those things that makes you enjoy this level of competition. Both clubs had chances. Lot of heroics to get something going, a lot of heroics to stop them. What a great competition.

– TLR

The surest sign that the team successfully pulled itself up from the KC series by its bootstaps: After losing in extra innings, its manager talks of "enjoying the competition."

We got beat. but it was a great series and a great game. Today’s not one of those games where you’re walking with your head down and kicking stuff.

– Joel Pineiro

For his part, Pineiro was perhaps more lucky than good, striking out only one, while allowing a home run (53 FIGS). One of the reasons that the loss was so tolerable was the way the bullpen was deployed. We’ve complained on more than one occasion about how TLR seems to save his best relievers for last (sometimes resulting in them not being used at all), rather than deploy them in a best-first approach in extra innings (or in high-leverage situations). Sunday, however, the relievers appeared in some order of their expected FIP ERAs:

In retrospect, using the rookie Perez in the eighth was unwise. But we commend TLR for using Springer and K-Mac ahead of Isringhausen, Villone and Parisi (and resting the overrated Franklin and underwhelming Flores).

Except for last year, I’ve always been a .300 guy.

– Nick Stavinoha

True, the rookie has a lifetime minor-league batting average of .302. But we’d rather he focus on being a .350 guy — on-base percentage, that is (he’s subpar in our book with a .346 OBP in his minor-league career). Bragging about batting average, this guy clearly didn’t come up through Oakland’s farm system!

I wasn’t going to let (Pineiro) lose that game.

– La Russa, on bringing in Perez to relieve when the go-ahead run came to bat in the eighth

What a ridiculous reason for making a move.

We play the same every day. I don’t care if we’re up or down by nine or 10. Even if we’re down by a mile, we’re going to scratch for an inch because an inch is more than a centimeter.

– Ron Villone

Who says lefties are strange, anyway?

Other than Joel Pineiro outdueling the Royals’ Kyle Davies (67-61 FIGS) in his second-best start of the season, the Cardinals’ 2-1 loss Tuesday gave us little to get excited about, what with the lack of offense (seven total bases and a mere 1.7 runs created). Little, that is, other than the Fan Question of the Day at the ballpark: "Do you support instant replay in baseball?"

(Before we provide our thoughts on the matter, indulge a revelation of this one peccadillo: public opinion polls masquerading as some kind of hand of justice. We live in a constitutional republic, so whether or not a majority of fans think that Cub fans should be locked up — for the record, we don’t — it’s wrong to do so. Whether to use the instant replay in baseball shouldn’t be a matter of public opinion. It’s a matter of doing what’s right.)

Lots of fans and talking/writing heads love the idea of instant replay in baseball. Some claims are true ("Everyone else is doing it," "It will get the play right"), while some are dubious ("It will speed up the games"). But like any possible solution to something that may be a problem, it’s easier to think of the benefit than envision unintended bad consequences (think Wild Card and interleague play). It’s not unlike that classic economic example, the "The Broken Window," in which observers assure a shopkeeper that his newly broken window is actually a good thing because it gives the glazier business: The flaw is that the observers don’t view the economy as a whole. The destruction of the window does, in fact, create some visible economic activity, but you cannot see what activity you would have had without the destruction.

Ditto instant replay. One of the unique historical attractions of baseball — whether people realize it or can articulate it — is its natural element, its ethos of simplicity of design and equipment: It’s played by people of any age and size (MLB, for instance, has the greatest diversity of age and body size of any of the major pro sports), in any field, with little more than a wooden bat and a leather ball.

So in this light, the problem of instant replay becomes not so much a question of "removing the human element" from baseball, but, rather, adding a non-human one. Aesthetically, the sport is self-contained and natural, and requiring a layer of technology destroys that. The very rules of the game would be changed, and yet most places where baseball is played would not be able to play by the new technology-requiring rules, effectively creating a separate set of rules (and you thought the DH was bad). People should be able to play a baseball game with the most nominal accoutrements — and not a replay monitor and camcorder.

The irony of the latest hullabaloo for introducing the use of instant replay is that it is based on the most tenuous example for needing instant replay. As readers may recall, the debate was rekindled by a string of hard-to-rule home runs last month:

• Sun May 18 Carlos Delgado
• Mon May 19 Geovany Soto
• Wed May 21 Alex Rodriguez
• Fri May 23 Ben Francisco

In all four cases, the problem would’ve been averted if the design of the ballpark were improved to clearly distinguish home runs from foul balls and balls in play (watch the videos for yourself). For instance, the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez lost a home run when umpires decided the ball hit the fence. Replays showed it glanced off a yellow staircase behind the fence. This requires not the sophistry of why MLB doesn’t use instant replay but begs the common-sense question of why anyone would design a park such that a staircase could interfere with the visibility of a home run. At the very least, fans deserve to be able to easily know when important plays — like home runs — occur, and bad park design robs them of that. In the already-ridiculous Minute Maid Park, the outfield wall is reminiscent of a wiffle-ball setup, with nothing but masking tape delineating a home run from in-play. Major League Baseball could implement an instant-replay review sideshow to fix this. Or they could simply require better ballpark field design. It’s not that hard (or, as is likely as important to MLB, costly). See Wrigley Field: Its wire basket not only keeps inebriated fans from falling onto the playing field but provides a visible, unambiguous indicator for home runs.

We’re not convinced that blown calls are a big-enough problem in baseball as to require a fundamental change to the game’s core aesthetics. Does anyone seriously think that the century-plus history of the sport is plagued by unworthy champions and phony statistics because it’s lacked the enlightenment of instant replay? People who are that concerned with the right team winning should be much more outraged by the wild card, the imbalanced schedule due to interleague play and the multi-tiered playoff system (and with the division championship series being only best of five games). But, like the shopkeeper’s friends, these observers are too myopically focused on the short-term and fail to see the bigger picture. Instant replay may yield some minor gains, true. But will anyone think about what has been lost?

Besides Sunday’s game being a thrilling (and, with Yadier Molina’s injury, a bit costly) victory for the Cardinals, the game had the somewhat less momentous distinction of having six players drafted in the June 1999 amateur player draft; five of them actually played in the game (though the most accomplished was on the DL):

We thought it was noteworthy, though we haven’t taken the time to prove it as a record, that so many players in one draft appeared on the same field together at once. After all, only 165 players drafted that year actually have made it to the major leagues.

Here’s a breakdown by round of players from the draft who’ve made it to the majors, with a couple of late-round sleepers highlighted:

If only Bo Hart and Jimmy Journell coulda stuck.

Joe Strauss chronicles Adam Kennedy’s plight this season in the wake of the sometime second baseman’s meeting with TLR to discuss playing time. Talk about a platoon: La Russa says he’s "going to play all four guys," meaning Kennedy, Brendan Ryan, Aaron Miles and Cesar Izturis in the middle infield spots. We can’t say we blame him, given that, beyond Ryan, they’re fairly indistinguishable by their RC27:

When it comes to fielding, though, it’s possible to differentiate the infielders, though not by much (we’ve listed the players at the positions where they’ve had the most time):

The RZR data still relies on too small a sample at this point in the season to be very reliable, but we can perhaps conclude Miles and Kennedy are the weakest links overall and that Ryan is the stronget.

Coincidentally, another middle infielder is actually making a case for himself to play everyday. The problem is that he’s no longer in the Cardinal organization: Edgar Gonzalez, whom the Cardinals spurned last year, is getting a chance to do his thing — which is mainly hitting — with the Padres. In 70 plate appearances this season, EGonz has an RC27 of 6.17 (that’s Miles and Kennedy combined). Though the knock against him while he was with the Cardinals was his glove, he’s holding his own (again, small sample size) with the leather so far: In 28 plays over 87 innings at second base, he’s got a .933 RZR.

It may make sense to rotate the infield foursome to keep everyone fresh. But if we had our druthers, we’d have a keystone combo of Little Cesar and The Flyin’ Irishman playing the majority of innings. As for what to do with Kennedy and Miles, well, perhaps the Padres would be interested in a two-for-one. We hear they need relief pitching, and Miles has a sparkling ERA (just don’t look at his expected FIP).

Well, so much for having a rested bullpen. A day after Braden Looper gave his former relief mates the night off, four pitchers combined to lose the last three innings of Thursday’s game in Cincy, spoiling a decent start by the returning Joel Pineiro (58 FIGS).

Surrendering walks is generally not a proven method for winning, and the bullpen walked five of the 17 batters they faced. That’s a poor percentage, and one that is thankfully well off the team’s season rate. The Cardinal bullpen, despite (or is it because of?) not being terribly overworked, is about league average in BB/BF as well as ERA but one of the worst in K/BB:

Two of the main culprits responsible for that figure were behind the ‘pen’s implosion Thursday: Mark Worrell and LOOGy Randy Flores, with K/BB rates of .25 and 1.08, respectively (and that was before the game). Why Tony La Russa continues to put Flores in the game in high-leverage situations is beyond us.

Bringing Flores into a game against a lefty is one thing; bringing him into a game in which runners are already on base is another. That is, it’s a situation in which he does not excel: for his career, with runners in scoring position, opponents have a .405 OBP (.303 GPA) against him; with men on, it’s .385 (.288 GPA).

So that’s point one. Point two is this: Bringing Flores into a game against a lefty is one thing; bringing him into a game against a righty is another. Righties have hit Flores for a .382 OBP (.288 GPA). We’ve harped on this before, so we don’t want to sound like a scratched CD, but Flores needs to be strictly deployed against lefties only (and even then, judiciously) and should never see a righty with the game on the line.

But that’s what TLR let happen. First Flores walked the righty Paul Janish, then he walked Ken Griffey Jr. with the bases loaded, bringing up the righty Phillips. Prior to his at-bat in that seventh inning, Phillips had had what might be called some success in his career against Flores: a single, a triple and an intentional walk in six plate appearances. Perhaps TLR was swayed by the two strikeouts that Flores had on his side of the ledger, but with two outs in the inning, the Cardinals didn’t need a strikeout.

Conversely, against Russ Springer, Phillips was 0-for-6, with two strikeouts. Springer obviously was available since he came in to relieve Flores two batters later — in the eighth inning — two batters too late. Surely Tony La Russa has access to these same stats, and if he doesn’t, doesn’t common sense dictate bringing in Springer to face Phillips?

Bullpens are going to have off nights and walk people. It happens. But if TLR prides himself on putting people in situations in which they have the best chance to succeed, he needs to stay awake at the wheel when dealing with high-leverage situations and his relievers.

I think not only did our team need it, our bullpen needed it. For me personally, it’s an achievement I can always look back on. Obviously, it’s not a no-hitter, but I gave up only three hits in a nine-inning shutout. That’s pretty good, I’d say.

– Braden Looper

Who would’ve thought back in the spring of 2007 that one day — let alone only a year-and-half later — career reliever Braden Looper would pitch a complete game? His shutout Wednesday night in Cincinnati represents a culmination of sorts in Looper’s transformation as a pitcher.

While Looper’s shutout is the team’s only one to-date, it wasn’t the team’s most dominantly-pitched game this season, nor was it even Looper’s — he accomplished that in his previous start:

Not to take anything away from Looper, of course; as he said himself, it’s pretty good. It was perhaps fitting that Looper tossed his gem on the same night that another reliever-conversion project asserted himself likewise as a success story. The Athletics’ Justin Duchscherer pitched in 189 games in relief without starting (he started five games before that streak) doesn’t have near the relief bona fides that Looper had, but he too is showing that a thirty-something career reliever can offer more value as a starter, and that the difference between a reliever and starter is more of a continuum than conventionally believed.

Today our starter was really, really good. And that’s great because it sets the pen up. We’ve got four more games this week.

– TLR

People talk about "innings-eaters," and with 83 IP this year, Looper has had the second-best appetite on the team (behind Wainwright’s 91 2/3). More importantly (or more accurately), Looper is also second in total batters faced and in batters faced per start:

So if the bullpen is rested, TLR usually has Wainwright, Looper or Wellemeyer to thank.

It’s enabled me to get on top of the ball and keep all my pitches consistently down. All my pitches were down for the most part today.

–Looper

His seemingly self-inconsistent statement (was he saying that all of his pitches were mostly down?) notwithstanding, let’s compare Looper’s pitch charts from that 5/27 game against Houston and Wednesday’s performance:

Looper was indeed lower in the zone Wednesday, particularly with his fastball and sinker (or at least what MLB Gameday identifies as a sinker), which he featured less than he did two weeks ago. Give Looper credit: He’s worked hard to become — and remain — a starter, and it sounds like it’s because he listens to good advice on how to improve. It’s an example that the team’s influx of rookie pitchers will do well to heed.