Position: Senior Cloud Engineer

Job Location: St. Louis (Preferred) or Remote

Summary of Responsibilities:

The role of the Senior Cloud Engineer will be to design, develop, and maintain cloud infrastructure for the baseball data systems of the St. Louis Cardinals. This person will collaborate with the Baseball Systems group to ensure that quality data and analytics are accessible in a timely fashion to front office members, scouts, coaches, players, and others in Baseball Operations. This person should be detail-oriented, enjoy sharing expertise with others, keep up with the latest cloud tools and technologies, and have an interest in the game of baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you subscribe to the notion that styles make fights? I’m not 100% sure what that means — I’ve never been a boxing fan. But styles make for entertaining baseball games, and the Cardinals and Dodgers set out to prove that during Wednesday night’s National League Wild Card game.

The Dodgers brought the heavy artillery: a coterie of MVP winners, Silver Sluggers, and All-Stars who led the NL in scoring. Their splendor was slightly diminished by Max Muncy’s absence, but the offense still felt like a battering ram. Their starter? None other than Max Scherzer, the modern avatar of power pitching, all glowering stares and challenge fastballs.

The Cardinals? They’ve got star hitters, too, but nothing like the Dodgers’ onslaught. They thrived this year both by smacking home runs — Tyler O’Neill and Paul Goldschmidt are large and powerful — and by playing the best defense in the majors. Their pitcher of choice Wednesday? Crafty old Adam Wainwright, who rarely tops 90 mph on the radar gun but makes up for it with a time-bending curveball and pinpoint command. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s Note: You can find the Dodgers and Cardinals Wild Card rosters and announced lineups here and here.

While it’s not the blood rivalry Yankees-Red Sox pairing of the AL Wild Card Game, the NL Wild Card matchup does not lack for story lines. The Dodgers are the reigning World Series winners, and despite tying the franchise record for wins (106), finishing with the majors’ best run differential (+269) and outperforming last year’s 43–17 juggernaut over their final 60 (45–15), they finished second to the upstart Giants by a single game, ending their eight-year run of NL West titles. They’re just the third 100-win team to wind up as a Wild Card, after the 2002 A’s (102 wins), who didn’t have to play a do-or-die game, and the 2018 Yankees (100 wins), who won theirs. That their season comes down to a single game despite their dominance over the long haul is either evidence that the current playoff format needs overhaul or that it’s perfect as is; you’re guaranteed to hear both points of view somewhere in the run-up to the game, and probably during and after as well.

The Cardinals (90-72) are the upstart comeback kids. Beset by injuries to an already-thin rotation, they were just 51–51 at the July 30 trade deadline, and their acquisitions of the well-shellacked Jon Lester and J.A. Happ drew more snickers than raves. They were below .500 as late as August 8 (55–56), at which point their Playoff Odds were a season-low 1.3%. Thanks in significant part to the league’s strongest defense and a suddenly-lively offense, they went 35–16 the rest of the way, better than all but the Giants (36–14) and Dodgers (39–11). While they were still just 69–68 as late as September 7, they embarked upon a 17-game winning streak, the longest in franchise history and in the NL since the 1935 Cubs won 21. The streak turned what looked to be a hectic five-team race for the second Wild Card spot into a laugher; St. Louis won going away, clinching on September 28 and outdoing the next-closest team, the Reds, by seven games. The 2.8% odds the Cardinals had on September 7 now stand as the lowest September mark of any team that has rallied to make the playoffs since 2014.

Beyond all of that and a marquee pitching matchup between Max Scherzer and Adam Wainwright, there’s the inevitable discussion of these two teams crossing paths in the postseason, where the Cardinals have gotten the upper hand four out of five times, leaving Dodgers fans smarting in the 1985 NLCS (Ozzie Smith, Jack Clark, Tom Niedenfuer) and the 2013 NLCS and ’14 NLDS (Clayton Kershaw, Hanley Ramirez, Matt Carpenter, and so on). That Kershaw wouldn’t have been the choice to start this one — he’s on the sidelines for October due to yet another bout of forearm discomfort — might only partially quell the anxiety of Dodgers fans given the continued presence of Wainwright and Yadier Molina. Oh, and Albert Pujols is here, too, albeit on the other side of the equation.

For as rich as those storylines may be, they’re not the same as actual analysis. There’s only so much one can do for a single game, but it’s worth touching on a few points. Read the rest of this entry »

With five days remaining in the 2021 regular season, it’s abundantly clear that there won’t be much clarity offered in the National League Most Valuable Player race. Yes, Bryce Harper’s Phillies still have a mathematical shot at a postseason spot per our Playoff Odds, unlike Fernando Tatis Jr.’s Padres and Juan Soto’s Nationals, but not everybody is of the belief that an MVP needs to hail from a postseason-bound team or even a contender.

From a practical standpoint, it’s usually the case that an MVP does hail from such a team; in the Wild Card era (1995 onward), 42 of 52 (80.8%) have done so. The tendency shows an upward trend, the degree of which depends upon where one sets the cutoff. For example, three out of 18 MVPs from 1995-2003 missed the postseason, and likewise three of 18 from 2004-12, but four of 16 from 2013 onward; it’s just as accurate to say that from 1995-2004, four of 20 missed the playoffs, dipping to two of 20 from 2005-14 and then four of 12 since. Either way, all-time greats Larry Walker (1997), Barry Bonds (2001 and ’04), Albert Pujols (2008), Alex Rodriguez (2003) and Mike Trout (2016 and ’19) account for the vast majority of those exceptions, with Ryan Howard (2006), Harper (2015), and Giancarlo Stanton (2017) rounding out the group. That Rodriguez, Stanton, and Trout have doubled the all-time total of MVPs who have won while hailing from sub-.500 teams — a list that previously included only Ernie Banks (1958 and ’59), Andre Dawson (1987), and Cal Ripken Jr. (1991) — is perhaps the more notable trend, with Shohei Ohtani likely to increase that count this year. Effectively, that’s a green light for Soto’s late entry into the race, and also worth pointing out with regards to Tatis, as the Padres slipped to 78-79 with Tuesday night’s loss to the Dodgers.

From a practical standpoint, it’s also true that the notion of value is extensively tied to the things that can be measured via Wins Above Replacement. As old friend Eno Sarris noted at The Athletic (in an article on the value of Ohtani’s roster spot that’s well worth a read), in the past 14 years, only two MVP winners were not in their league’s top three by FanGraphs’ WAR, namely Jimmy Rollins in 2007, and Justin Verlander in ’11. Read the rest of this entry »

With a doubleheader win on Friday, a bizarre 3-2-5-4-2-8-6 double play and a ninth-inning comeback on Saturday, and more late-inning heroics on Sunday, the Cardinals ran their winning streak to a franchise-record 16 games. The streak is the longest in the majors since Cleveland won 22 consecutive games in 2017, and the longest in the National League since the Giants won 16 in a row in 1951 as part of the comeback that culminated in Bobby Thomson’s pennant-winning homer, “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.”

The Redbirds’ winning streak has turned a team that was 71-69 with just 5.0% Playoff Odds into one that’s on the verge of cinching the NL’s second Wild Card spot, suddenly giving the Cardinals a look of invincibility. “With 16 Straight Wins, the St. Louis Cardinals May Never Lose Again,” reads one headline. “Cardinals Look Unstoppable Right Now,” reads another.

For as unbeatable as the Cardinals appear right now, the history of late-season winning streaks tells us that while this run may certainly help the team secure a playoff berth, it doesn’t tell us anything about how they’ll fare in October. Look no further than that aforementioned Cleveland team for a harsh reminder of that lesson. From August 24 to September 15 of the 2017 season, the defending AL champions steamrolled opponents, piling up wins in close games and in blowouts until they’d set an American League record. The team finished with 102 wins, the highest total by the franchise since 1954, and hopes were high that they could secure the title that they’d come so close to winning just the year before. Yet when the postseason rolled around, Cleveland was unceremoniously bounced, losing a tight five-game series to the Yankees.

The story was similar for the team whose AL record they broke. The 2002 A’s won 20 straight games from August 13 to September 6 and finished with 103 wins, the franchise’s highest total since 1988. Yet they too were defeated in a five-game Division Series, losing to the Twins.

In fact, no team that’s run off a late-season streak — starting in August or September — of more than 11 wins has even reached the World Series during the division play era (1969 onward):

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On a hot afternoon in St. Louis on August 8, in a game that felt meaningless at the time, the Cardinals rallied for three runs in the eighth inning to tie their game with the Royals at 5–5. In the next half inning, a Paul Goldschmidt throwing error and a go-ahead single by Nicky Lopez dropped St. Louis to 55–56, mired in third place in the National League Central. The team was 10.5 games behind Milwaukee for the division lead, 8.5 games behind the Padres for the second wild card spot, and, per our Playoff Odds, had a 1.4% chance of reaching the postseason.

But following that ugly loss, back-to-back sweeps of road series in Pittsburgh and Kansas City put the Cardinals back over the .500 mark for good, and a 10-game winning streak entering Wednesday’s game in Milwaukee has them with a commanding lead for that second Wild Card spot, and the overwhelming favorites to stay that way. Since that loss to the Royals, St. Louis has gone 26–13, but those hot streaks show just how, well, streaky the team has been; those 16 wins wrap around a 10–13 run.

Still, whether the wins come in bunches or not, the Cardinals have been one of the stories of September, and that story feels largely ignored, mostly due to the five-team dogfight that is the AL Wild Card and the back-and-forth NL West battle between the Dodgers and Giants. On last week’s episode of Chin Music, Joe Sheehan and I wondered why everyone was talking about the Blue Jays and not the Cardinals in the battle of surging birds. Our take: the team is boring. The Blue Jays have swag, infectious energy and cool jackets for when somebody hits home runs. The Cardinals, meanwhile, are relative automatons, getting overshadowed by a Toronto club that is just more fun to watch.

That’s not to take anything away from St. Louis. Entertainment value be damned, this is suddenly looking like a postseason team planning to line up a surprising ace for the coin-flip game. Here are five key factors as to how the Cardinals went from under .500 six weeks ago to being in the driver’s seat for that final playoff slot.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Cardinals’ 10-game winning streak has given them control of the race for the second NL Wild Card spot, as they’ve built a four-game lead over the Reds, reduced their magic number to clinch a spot to eight, and threatened to cut my Team Entropy workload way down. Monday’s victory over the Brewers, their ninth win in that streak, marked the 200th career win for Jon Lester, thereby increasing the count of active hurlers who have achieved that milestone from two to three, as the 37-year-old southpaw — who was acquired from the Nationals at the July 30 deadline — joined Justin Verlander (226) and Zack Greinke (219).

Before you ask: no, I don’t think this does much for Lester’s Hall of Fame case, not with a 39.5 JAWS, which ranks 156th among starting pitchers, below the likes of Cliff Lee, Jamie Moyer, Carlos Zambrano, Brad Radke, Bartolo Colon and current teammate Adam Wainwright — and more than 20 points behind Verlander, Greinke, and Clayton Kershaw, all of whom are around the Hall of Fame standard (61.7). Two-hundred wins, five All-Star appearances, three World Series rings, and three top-five Cy Young award finishes is a nice set of credentials, but let’s not go overboard.

Anyway, Lester pitched badly with the Nationals, and he wasn’t so hot over his final two-plus seasons with the Cubs, either, as his diminished strikeout rate caught up with him. His tenure with the Cardinals — who were just 51-51 with 2.1% Playoff Odds when they traded outfielder Lane Thomas to the Nationals in exchange for him — began in similarly dismal fashion. Yet over his last six turns, he’s delivered a 2.27 ERA in 35.2 innings, allowing no more than two earned runs in any of those outings, which have come against the Tigers, Reds (twice), Brewers (twice), and Mets. Then again, a peek at Lester’s FIP during that six-start stretch (5.68) — driven by a gaudy 2.02 homers per nine — suggests that not all that much has changed for him, so the question is, what’s underlying those better results? Read the rest of this entry »

The Class of 2020 has had a long wait for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and not just because the coronavirus pandemic set the festivities back nearly 14 months. While Derek Jeter was resoundingly elected in his first year of eligibility, the road to Cooperstown for the other three honorees — Ted Simmons, Larry Walker, and the late Marvin Miller — was more like a maze, full of wrong turns and apparent dead ends. That road finally ends on the afternoon of Wednesday, September 8, when all four will be inducted into the Hall. As somebody who has been deeply invested in the careers and candidacies of all four, I couldn’t bypass the midweek trip, even under pandemic conditions.

“There was never any thought in my head that [my election] was going to happen. So to be completely honest, I didn’t pay much attention,” said Walker during a Zoom session with reporters last Thursday, referring to the annual BBWAA voting. During his first seven years of eligibility, he maxed out at 22.9% of the vote (2012), and dipped as low as 10.2% (2014).

Even those meager showings surpassed Simmons, who received just 3.7% in 1994, his first year of eligibility. “Back then, you were literally off the ballot. And you know, there was really no vehicle at that time that I knew of or heard of that would enable you to come back,” he said during his own Zoom session, referring to the so-called “Five Percent Rule” that sweeps candidates who fail to reach that mark off the ballot.

Simmons could be forgiven for not knowing the ins and outs of the Hall’s arcane election systems. That he even made it onto an Era Committee ballot to have his candidacy reconsidered for the first time in 2011 was itself groundbreaking. As longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer Rick Hummel, who has served on several iterations of the Historical Overview Committee that puts together such ballots, said in 2015, “The first question these Hall of Famers ask you is, ‘How many ballots was he on for the writers’ election? One? They must not have liked him very much.’” Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll forgive you if you thought Adam Wainwright was cooked in 2018. He landed on the IL after three middling starts (12 strikeouts in 15.2 innings, a 3.45 ERA and 5.20 FIP), made a single short start in May, then didn’t pitch again until September. His sinker had never been slower; his curveball had never had less bite. At 37, that’s a scary combination, and it hadn’t come out of nowhere; he posted an ERA of 5.11 in his previous season, along with career-worst marks in K%, BB%, and FIP.

Three years later, Wainwright is a down-ballot Cy Young candidate. He’s accrued as much WAR as the next five Cardinals starters combined. St. Louis probably won’t make the playoffs, but it won’t be because of the once and current ace, a timeless wonder having his best season since before tearing his Achilles in 2015. How has he done it? I’m glad you asked.

Major leaguers are so good these days, on both the pitching and hitting side. Batters have never hit the ball harder on contact or tried so hard to hit home runs. It’s scary out there for a pitcher; any contact could leave the park at the drop of a hat. Pitchers have compensated in the obvious way: throwing pitches that avoid contact. Swinging-strike rate and strikeout rate are both marching inexorably higher, with occasional step changes (the sticky stuff crackdown, for example) fighting the tide.

Wainwright doesn’t have that option, though. If you asked him candidly, I’m sure he’d love to throw 95 mph and snap off sliders that turn into Pitching Ninja GIFs. But that was never his game, and he wasn’t going to suddenly turn into that kind of pitcher at age 39. In fact, when Wainwright began to decline, that was the common diagnosis. An aging sinker-first pitcher in the age of four-seamers? Sounds like a recipe for failure.

That’s all true! Wainwright’s sinker virtually never induces an empty swing. That’s not even a new thing; he’s only had one year in his entire career with a swinging-strike rate above 5% on the pitch. He’s only had a whiff rate higher than 10% in two of his 14 seasons. When batters take a cut, they mostly hit the ball.
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As a shortstop, you never want to be in this position:

You can almost see the expletives flying out of his mouth, and it gets worse: Nolan Arenado is out of frame to the right, which means that ball is ticketed for left field. How did it get to this point? Let’s back up.

When you’re fielding a bunt, decisions come at you immediately. Barehand it? Glove it? Lead runner? Take a beat and take the sure out? You have to make all of those choices in a split second. Here’s the play in the ninth inning of Sunday’s Cardinals/Royals game that left Paul DeJong lunging helplessly:

Obviously, it didn’t turn out well. But it’s not as though Paul Goldschmidt didn’t know there was a chance of failure going in. Going for the lead runner on a bunt is a high-risk, high-reward play; anyone could tell you that. How large was the risk? How valuable was the reward? Let’s find out together, because I think this situation is low-key fascinating. Read the rest of this entry »