In the midst of Pittsburgh’s two-game visit to Busch this week, watching former Cardinal farmhand Jack Wilson in a Pirate uniform got us wondering: What would the last seven and a half years have been like for the Cardinals if they hadn’t traded Wilson back in 2000 for bust LOOGy Jason Christiansen?

Since Wilson became a regular with the Pirates in 2001, taking over for the disappointing Pat Meares (whose career highlight was winning the sausage race at Milwaukee County Stadium dressed as a 10-foot bratwurst), the Cardinals have had three regular shortstops, Edgar Renteria, David Eckstein and now Cesar Izturis. The latter two were hired as free agents, and the swap for Renteria predated Wilson’s trade, so tracing the impact of the moves is mostly a matter of value proposition, though the players traded away for Renteria need to be considered.

Interestingly enough, Wilson’s B-Ref comps include a few Cardinals: Adam Kennedy (#2 overall), Royce Clayton (#1 at current age) and Julian Javier (#1 at age 27) — even Ron Hunt. And as providence would have it, Meares makes an appearance, too, at #9 overall (not to mention that Wilson is Eckstein’s #10 overall comp). All that adds to the curious question of whether Jack Wilson remaining a Cardinal would’ve changed things much for the team that won four division titles since he came to the show. (For the sake of the comparison, we’ll use one Cardinal player each year who played the plurality of games at short, since, after all, Wilson himself is just one player.) A year-by-year comparison using Salary, Win Shares and WARP3:

In terms of total Win Shares and WARP3, Wilson only attained around 72% and 81%, respectively, of his positional counterparts’ production. Then again, he only cost about 60% of their total salary. And we suppose there’s something to be said for stability at a position, though stability doesn’t directly produce runs (or wins). The Cardinals certainly could’ve saved some money over the years with Wilson, which leads to the actual bottom line: Was the marginal utility of Renteria, Eckstein and Izturis worth it? Another way to put it: Could the Cardinals have used the money they saved on their shortstop on an impact player at a different position? It’s hard, if not impossible, to know. Certainly the team could’ve upgraded along the way at right field and left field, and as solid as the rotation was in the period, no team has so much pitching as to not appreciate an improvement. However, what we can do is recreate the team’s win totals subbing Wilson in for the players who actually played, pretending that Wilson was never traded (and that the Cardinals opted for Wilson over Renteria starting in 2001). Extrapolating the team’s wins using the players’ Win Shares, here’s a breakdown of the team’s win-loss record, the division’s best competition record and the number of Games Ahead (or, if it’s a negative number, Games Behind):

Perhaps amazingly, the results — at least as far as division finishes go — for the Cardinals would’ve been no different had they held onto Wilson, and they would’ve banked some coin along the way (Wild Card in italics, Division title in bold):

It’s all academic, anyway, since Wilson had barely finished his first season of pro ball in the Rookie League when the Cardinals traded for Renteria (and they signed Renteria long-term before the 2000 season, when Wilson had only reached high-A at the age of 21). If, though, they had not acquired Renteria, they would’ve gotten to keep Braden Looper (not to mention Armando Almanza, who was a comparable LOOGy to Christiansen). Would La Runcan have converted Looper to a starter back then? Probably not, since their rotation from 2000-2001 was solid, and if anything, they could’ve used him in relief (the solid if not spectacular Dave Veres led a closer-by-committee). Interestingly enough, had the Cardinals held onto Looper, who was coming into his own in 2001 as a reliever, they probably would not have signed Jason Isringhausen as a free agent in December 2001. So, ultimately, the Jack Wilson trade led to Jason Isringhausen’s Cardinal career, which was in no small way helpful to the team winning those four division titles. As fans sort out their emotional reactions to the news that Izzy’s career may or may not be over, they might have Jack Wilson to thank for having had the pleasure of cheering — and booing — the team’s second-best reliever all-time (in cumulative WXRL) lo these last seven years.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 at 5:13 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.