With seven of the Cardinals’ nine potential free agents declaring their liberty yesterday, let’s review each player taking into consideration his type and projected value for 2010 (based largely on the Bill James Handbook projections).

• Matt Holliday (offer long-term contract, arbitration): Holliday is, of course, the lynchpin of the team’s offseason plans and has been since the team traded for him in July. Unfortunately, the hope of signing him is going to die a long, slow death. The key for the Cardinals will be recognizing when it’s time to cut bait, because their flies aren’t enough to land this fish. As Erik Manning noted, the situation could be analogous to the Cardinals’ ultimately fruitless effort to sign AJ Burnett during the 2005 offseason. They wound up signing Sidney Ponson and cobbling together a staff with him, a horrendous Mark Mulder and Jeff Weaver, while forcing Jason Marquis to give them 194 innings of 6.02 ERA. In waiting, they missed out on signing players like Brian Giles, Esteban Loaiza, Jamie Moyer and Russ Springer. What will be the opportunity cost of waiting for Holliday to snub them, especially given Bill DeWitt Jr.’s frank acknowledgement that the matter won’t soon be settled: "Some of the bigger free agents with Scott [Boras] have always taken longer."? If John Mozeliak is serious about his desire to "make sure we don’t miss any opportunity," it may mean moving on before the Holliday sweepstakes are over. Teams like the Angels and Red Sox, who’ve signed Bobby Abreu and acquired Jeremy Hermida, respectively, aren’t waiting. The Cardinals should make their best, “take-it-or-leave-it” offer in the next 15 days and offer arbitration when Holliday and Boras spurn them.
• Troy Glaus (no action): Without a clear option at third, the Cardinals would seem to need Glaus. But while Bill James estimates a productive 2010 for him, the Cardinals can probably get by with David Freese and at much less cost. If the Cardinals did want to bring Glaus back (which Matthew Leach expects won’t happen), offering arbitration might make some sense but be too much of a gamble, especially considering that they also have Type-B Mark DeRosa. And they can’t offer to both.
• Joel Pineiro (offer arbitration): We’ve written before, and we’ll do it again: The Cardinals should thank Pineiro for his service and wish him well — with someone else. Again, James is bullish on Pineiro repeating in 2010, but 2009 was the first time in Pineiro’s career that he put up an xFIP below 4.00; we’re not banking on him being the second coming of Warren Spahn. As much as they’ll need starting pitching next year, the Cardinals should follow the pattern of recent Duncanized pitchers, such as Braden Looper and Jeff Suppan, and let Pineiro make more and produce less for some other team. Offer the arbitration, though, as it represents a win-win opportunity.
• Mark DeRosa (offer arbitration): If the Cardinals do offer arbitration to one of their Type-B third basemen, the surer bet is DeRosa, who stands to make less than and offer comparable production to Glaus. DeRosa would likely look for a multiple-year deal and so the chance of him taking the offer is low.
• Khalil Greene (no action): The Cardinals have replacement-level players in the wings, so bringing Greene back under any circumstances would be an unwise use of a roster spot.
• John Smoltz (offer one-year contract): A one-year deal similar to his 2009 contract of $5.5 million, which he exceeded in value, would work well given that the team can reliably expect a lot of innings from only John Adam Wainwright and Kyle Lohse. Remember, Chris Carpenter’s 192 2/3 IP in 2009 was an unexpected windfall, which he likely won’t repeat. Smoltz, of course, is no spring chicken, but he’ll provide quality innings when he does pitch. Given Duncan’s stated reluctance to promote Jaime Garcia, the starting rotation is, in our opinion, an underrated area of concern this winter.
• Todd Wellemeyer (no action): Next year the Cardinals will have plenty of other options in relief, which is probably the best place for Wellemeyer to be in order to limit the damage of his career 4.37 BB/9 rate.
• Rick Ankiel (no action): Hopefully the 2009 campaign was enough to wake Tony La Russa and overly sentimental fans from their Ankiel dream. Yes, James expects him to return to his 2008 form, but we’ll take the under and so should the Cardinals, who have no shortage of farmhands who will could post on-base percentages above .300. Better to save the bench spot for someone who can at least make contact against lefties, and, despite the occasional highlight-reel play, Ankiel’s defense is overrated.
• Jason LaRue (offer one-year contract): LaRue provided positive value in 2009, which is more than Glaus, Greene, Wellemeyer and Jason Motte can say. With Matt Pagnozzi not yet ready for prime time (.299 OBP in 86 games at Memphis) and Bryan Anderson in limbo, LaRue makes sense as limited-use backup again at around $1 million.

The voters got one right: Hideki Matsui deserved the World Series MVP award.

Amongst a handful of heroic performances, Matsui’s was most valuable. Chase Utley tied Reggie Jackson’s series home-run record and Cliff Lee turned in the fourth-best fielding-independent start of all-time. But Matsui’s pounding of Phillies’ pitchers provided the most win-probability added of all players.

Matsui propelled the Bronx Bombers with a barrage of base hits, including two hope-crushing home runs off Pedro Martinez and four total in the series, in which the Yankees and Phillies tied the six-game-series record of 17 home runs (New York AL 9, Brooklyn NL 8, 1953). Matsui was responsible for three of the top 10 plays of the series:

Coming into Game 6, Lee had tallied the most WPA, mostly on the strength of his .519-WPA start in Game 1. But Matsui, who had .300 WPA through the first five games, saved his best for last and tacked on another .339 WPA in the deciding game to leapfrog over Lee:

So while Lee and Utley were memorable in the Phillies’ losing effort, and their individual performances will likely endure longer, Matsui earned the MVP. Kudos to Godzilla — and the voters.

Alex Rodriguez has apparently “learned” clutch-hitting skill after all of these years. By the way, if ARod can suddenly stop being a playoff choker, does that mean that Chase Utley could someday lose his clutch-hitting skill?

Stats from Fangraphs

Considering the ballparks where this year’s World Series is being played, it’s not surprising that multiple balls are flying out of the yard each game. By regular-season rates, the Yankees and Phillies are right on pace for their expected number of circuit clouts this series and could set a World Series record.

Although more sophisticated park factors normalize home-run rates by making them team-independent, such normalization isn’t necessary when estimating how many home runs the particular World Series teams might hit. Instead, let’s simply look at the number of home runs per game in the regular season, in which Yankee Stadium and Citizens Bank Ballpark led their respective leagues. We’ll then extrapolate how many home runs the series might have, based on the number of games played at each park (e.g., for a six-game series, three at Yankee Stadium and three at Citizens Bank):

With 12 home runs between them in the four games played thus far, the Yankees and Phillies are one ahead of their regular-season rate and are now within striking distance of the record for combined home runs in a five-game series of 15 (Baltimore AL 10, Cincinnati NL 5, 1970). Although neither of the Game 5 starting pitchers, AJ Burnett and Cliff Lee, has allowed a home run in the playoffs, Burnett has a 39.2% flyball rate (11th in the league and the highest of his career since at least 2002) and Lee has a career rate of 42.3% (though only 36.5% in 2009). So unless they miss bats all night (like Lee did in Game 1), chances are decent that at least one plate appearance will end in a trot around the bases.

If the Phillies prevail tonight, the teams will eye the six-game-series record of 17 (New York AL 9, Brooklyn NL 8, 1953). The seven-game series record is 21 (San Francisco NL 14, Anaheim AL 7, 2002).*

The flip side of having so many home runs is that the series has had no triples, one of the game’s most exciting plays, and which the two host parks offer few of (Citizens Bank had the fourth-fewest in the NL , and Yankee Stadium was dead last in the AL with only 13 triples all season). If the series ends with nary a three-bagger, the Yankees and Phillies will tie the record held by several teams.

*Records courtesy of The Sporting News 2008 Baseball Record Book.

Inspired by Cliff Lee’s masterpiece in Game 1 of the World Series last night, we decided to see where the outing ranked among the great pitching performances of the Fall Classic. We tweaked* the formula for Fielding Independent Game Score, so here’s where Lee falls:

According to pitching-independent stats, Lee’s performance ties Sandy Koufax’s 10-strikeout game in 1965 for fourth-best all-time — better even than Don Larsen’s perfecto. Talk about a double-whammy for Yankee fans.

*FIGS = 60+2*SO-3*BB-13*HR+Outs-BF. Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout game, considered by many to be the most dominant performance of all-time, scores a 98. We’d also like to note that the great Carl Erskine’s record-setting 14-strikeout game in the 1953 series barely missed the top 20 above, with a 68 FIGS.