Before or during Jack Flaherty’s start today, viewers are likely to hear about his 0.91 second half ERA. It is the third-lowest second-half ERA since 1920. The second-lowest second half ERA belongs to Greg Maddux, who accomplished the feat in the strike-shortened 1994 season and pitched barely more than 50 second-half innings. The first belongs to Jake Arrieta, whose 0.79 ERA in the second half in 2015 propelled him to the Cy Young award. Of course, ERA alone doesn’t tell the whole story. For one thing, as with Maddux, it doesn’t show how many innings are being thrown. For another, different eras produce vastly different run-scoring environments. Pitching with a juiced ball or juiced players can make life more difficult for pitchers, rendering a lower ERA even more impressive. To that end, we can put Flaherty’s second half in perspective.

The easiest way to do so here at FanGraphs is to use RA9-WAR, which takes runs allowed, innings, and the run environment into account. Flaherty’s second-half RA9-WAR was 6.4, way out in front of Jacob deGrom’s second-place 4.8 mark. If you cut Flaherty’s RA9-WAR in half, he would still rank ninth in baseball since the All-Star Break. We have second-half splits going back to 1974; here’s where Flaherty ranks among the couple-thousand qualified second-half pitchers:

Read the rest of this entry »

The early innings of Game 1 at SunTrust Park on Thursday evening — and for that matter, the late ones — served as a reminder that you can watch baseball all year long, and drill deep in analyzing and anticipating what might happen come the postseason, but sometimes, things simply unfold in ways that run counter to numbers and expectations. Depending upon where you sit, that’s the thrill and the agony of October baseball. For seven innings, the mistakes by a stellar Cardinals defense loomed large against the backdrop of a low-scoring affair, but then a late-inning slugfest produced nine of the game’s 13 runs against a pair of usually-solid bullpens. Ultimately, the Cardinals overcame a 3-1 deficit, scoring six unanswered runs in the final two frames and hanging on for a 7-6 victory.

In the regular season, the Cardinals made fewer errors than any other NL team (66), posted the league’s highest Ultimate Zone Rating (32.8), second-highest defensive efficiency rate (.706), and third-highest total of Defensive Runs Saved. That excellent work gave a pitching staff that produced a middling 4.27 FIP quite a leg up; the team’s 3.82 ERA ranked second in the league, and the 0.45 runs per nine gap between ERA and FIP was the majors’ largest. Without that defense — which Craig Edwards called the primary driver of their success just a few weeks ago — the Cardinals might well have wound up in the Wild Card game, or even outside the playoff picture instead of winning the division.

Meanwhile, a bullpen that lost closer Jordan Hicks to Tommy John surgery in late June wound up finding a silver lining in Carlos Martinez’s rotator cuff strain. As with last August, when he rehabbed his way back from a previous shoulder strain as a reliever, Martinez returned to the bullpen. He pitched very well if not dominant, posting a 3.05 ERA and 2.86 FIP while converting 24 of 27 save chances. He allowed just two home runs in 48.1 innings. On Thursday night, when it appeared the game was firmly in hand, he allowed two more and made things interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

Not only is the Cardinals’ division series roster filled with homegrown talent, the number three and four hitters in their lineup were acquired in successive offseasons for a total of seven prospects who all began their professional careers with the organization. The ability to develop talent in their farm system is a big reason why St. Louis has had 12 consecutive winning seasons, although they’re making their first playoff appearance since 2015.

Here’s how every member of the Cardinals’ 2019 NLDS roster was originally acquired. The team’s full RosterResource Depth Chart and Payroll pages are also available as a resource.

Homegrown (12)

• Yadier Molina, C: Drafted Fourth Round 2000
• Matt Carpenter, 3B: Drafted 13th Round 2009
• Carlos Martinez, RP: Amateur Free Agent (Dominican Republic) April 2010
• Kolten Wong, 2B: Drafted First Round (22) 2011
• Jack Flaherty, SP: Drafted First Round (34) 2014
• Daniel Ponce de Leon, RP: Drafted Ninth Round 2014
• Harrison Bader, CF: Drafted Third Round 2015
• Paul DeJong, SS: Drafted Fourth Round 2015
• Ryan Helsley, RP: Drafted Fifth Round 2015
• Dakota Hudson, SP: Drafted First Round (34) 2016
• Tommy Edman, INF/OF: Drafted Sixth Round 2016
• Randy Arozarena, OF: Amateur Free Agent (Cuba) July 2016

Total WAR: 23.0

Signed in Free Agency (4)

• Dexter Fowler, OF: December 2016 (CHC) — Signed to five-year, $82.5 million contract.
• Miles Mikolas, SP: December 2017 (Japan) — Signed to two-year, $15.5 million contract; signed four-year contract extension (2020-23) in February.
• Andrew Miller, RP: December 2018 (CLE) — Signed to two-year, $25 million contract ($12 million club option for 2021).
• Matt Wieters, C: February 2019 (WSN) — Signed to Minor League contract ($1.5 million salary).

Total WAR: 3.3

Acquired Via Trade (7)

• Adam Wainwright, SP: December 2003 (ATL) — Acquired in trade that sent J.D. Drew and Eli Marrero to the Braves.
• Jose Martinez, OF: May 2016 (KCR) — Acquired in trade that sent cash considerations to the Royals.
• Marcell Ozuna, OF: December 2017 (MIA) — Acquired in trade that sent Sandy Alcantara, Zac Gallen, Magneuris Sierra, and Daniel Castano to the Marlins.
• Yairo Muñoz, INF/OF: December 2017 (OAK) — Acquired in trade that sent Stephen Piscotty to the Athletics.
• Giovanny Gallegos, RP: July 2018 (NYY) — Acquired in trade that sent Luke Voit and international bonus slot money to the Yankees.
• Genesis Cabrera, RP: July 2018 (TBR) — Acquired in trade that sent Tommy Pham and international bonus slot money to the Rays.
• Paul Goldschmidt, 1B: December 2018 (ARI) — Acquired in trade that sent Carson Kelly, Luke Weaver, Andy Young, and 2019 competitive balance round B pick to the Diamondbacks.

Total WAR: 9.5

Acquired Off Waivers (1)

• Tyler Webb, RP: June 2018 (SDP)

Total WAR: 0.1

Acquired Via Rule 5 Draft Triple-A Phase (1)

• John Brebbia, RP: December 2015 (ARI)

Total WAR: 1.3

Please note, this posting contains multiple positions.

Position: Data Quality Engineer

Location: St. Louis

Summary of the background and skill set best suited to excel in this role:
The role of Data Quality Engineer will be to ensure data management (ETL) processes for the Cardinals’ testing and quality standards are met across existing and new data sources being ingested by the organization. This person will work closely with other members of the Baseball Development department to understand their data needs and incorporate them into the data management (ETL) processes. This role requires a detail-oriented mindset, analytical ability, an ability to work independently, and an interest in the game of baseball.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related technical field from an accredited college or university or equivalent work experience
• Candidates in school expecting to graduate Winter 2019 or Spring 2020 with work towards such degrees will also be considered
• Experience with end-to-end data testing and/or data analysis as well as knowledge of best practices and methodologies for data QA
• Demonstrated proficiency with SQL for creating/modifying queries
• Experience with JSON, CSV, XML and other data exchange formats
• Excellent organizational, interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills
• Ability to work well in a fast-paced environment under deadlines in a changing environment
• Proven problem-solving skills and analytical ability

Preferred Qualifications:

• 1+ years of experience with software and/or data quality assurance
• Experience with Cloud data pipeline tooling and principles

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Data Engineer

Location: St. Louis

Summary of the background and skill set best suited to excel in this role:
The role of Data Engineer will be focused on supporting the data pipeline infrastructure that supplies the Baseball Development department with the data needed to make actionable insights in day-to-day operations. The person in this role will be responsible for maintaining the current data infrastructure and develop new innovative methods to deliver data to drive actionable business outcomes. This person should be detail oriented, analytically inclined, and have an interest in the game of baseball.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Candidates in school expecting to graduate Winter 2019 or Spring 2020 with work towards such degrees will also be considered
• Experience with data processing software (such as Hadoop, Spark, Pig, Hive, Beam) and/or algorithms (MapReduce, Flume)
• Experience in writing software in one or more languages such as Python, Go, Java, C++ and/or JavaScript
• Demonstrated proficiency with SQL for creating/modifying queries
• Experience with JSON, CSV, XML and other data exchange formats
• Experience working with API endpoints (REST, oAuth2, CRUD, SOAP)

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with data warehouses, including architecture and design of infrastructure components, ETL/ELT processes, reporting/analytic tools and environments
• Experience working with big data, information retrieval, data mining or machine learning
• Experience with Cloud data pipeline tooling and principles

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Analytics Engineer

Location: St. Louis

Summary of the background and skill set best suited to excel in this role:
The role of Analytics Engineer will be focused on supporting the analytics pipeline that supplies the Baseball Development department with the data tools and processes needed to make actionable insights in day-to-day operations. The person in this role will be responsible for facilitating the analytics team members with the necessary components in their data modeling processes. This person should be detail orientated, analytically inclined, and have an interest in the game of baseball.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Candidates in school expecting to graduate Winter 2019 or Spring 2020 with work towards such degrees will also be considered
• Experience working with big data, information retrieval, data mining or machine learning
• Experience working in Python and/or R
• Experience working in SQL and/or NoSQL

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with data processing software (such as Hadoop, Spark, Pig, Hive, Beam) and/or algorithms (MapReduce, Flume)
• Experience in one or more modern machine learning languages, such as TensorFlow, Caffe/Caffe2, PyTorch, Keras, MXNet, Scikit-Learn
• Experience with Cloud data pipeline tooling and principles

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Senior Data Scientist

Location: St. Louis

Summary of the background and skill set best suited to excel in this role:
The role of Senior Data Scientist is to conduct quantitative research aimed at developing/enhancing predictive, machine learning, and other quantitative models to help the Cardinals organization gain insights as well as make actionable decisions related to all aspects of baseball operations.

Minimum Qualifications:

• BS, MS, or PhD in an appropriate technology field (Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Math, Operations Research, etc.)
• 3-5+ years of experience with data science
• Expertise in R or Python
• Expertise in SQL
• Solid communication skills with demonstrated ability to explain complex technical issues to both technical and non-technical audiences
• Passion for baseball and strong intellectual curiosity

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proficient in a modern machine learning framework such as TensorFlow, Caffe/Caffe2, PyTorch, Keras, MXNet, Scikit-Learn
• Published research demonstrating clearly defined methodologies and use of technical abilities

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

Position: Application Developer

Location: St. Louis

Summary of the background and skill set best suited to excel in this role:
The role of Application Developer is to design, implement and maintain analytics and technical systems (Frontend & Backend) in collaboration with the Baseball Development department. These applications will be used by Baseball Operations personnel and field staff. This person should be detail oriented, intellectually curious, and have an interest in the game of baseball.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
• 1-3+ years of experience as a software engineer, developer, or equivalent technical experience
• Proficiency working with one or more of the following: JavaScript (including MVC frameworks such as AngularJS, Angular, React, or Vue.js), Java, Python, Go, CSS or HTML
• Proficiency developing, securing and consuming REST / JSON APIs using modern server-side or client frameworks (such as Node.js, GraphQL, Angular, etc.)
• Experience with SQL

Preferred Qualifications:

• iOS and/or Android Mobile App development
• Familiarity with NoSQL
• Experience with cloud developer tooling

To Apply:
To apply, please complete the application that can be found here.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the St. Louis Cardinals.

After winning their respective divisions, the Atlanta Braves will face off against the St. Louis Cardinals starting on Thursday. This series looks evenly matched, with our Depth Charts projections (53%) and ZiPS (55%) both seeing the Braves as slight favorites. Before we get to the meat of the preview, let’s lay out the schedule. All games will be televised by TBS.

When and Where:

• Game 1: Thursday, October 3, 5:02 PM EST in Atlanta
• Game 2: Friday, October 4, 4:37 PM EST in Atlanta
• Game 3: Sunday, October 6, time TBD in St. Louis
• Game 4 (if necessary): Monday, October 7, time TBD in St. Louis
• Game 5 (if necessary): Wednesday, October 9, time TBD in Atlanta

What We’ll Be Watching For:

Injured Players
Ender Inciarte will remain out for this series, at least, after a hamstring injury struck him down in mid-August. Matt Joyce and Adam Duvall have platooned some with Inciarte out, though the Cardinals have no lefty starters, so the 35-year-old Joyce could play a big role in the series. He hasn’t shown a ton of power the last few years, but he’s walked 15% of the time against righties since the beginning of 2016 with a decently low 21% strikeout rate. Inciarte’s replacement in center actually meant an upgrade as Ronald Acuña Jr. took over, but the Braves’ star outfielder has injury concerns of his own; an apparent hip injury was classified as a groin strain and it is unclear how that injury might affect his superb baserunning or his defense in center field.

The health worries don’t end there for the Braves. Freddie Freeman has a bone spur in his right elbow, which he is still favoring, and though he played over the weekend, he struck out four times in 11 plate appearances and didn’t come up with an extra base hit. It was only the third three-game stretch all season during which Freeman struck out that often and didn’t get an extra base hit. All three stretches have come in the last six weeks. Every player is going to have sporadic, three-game down stretches, but given what we know about Freeman’s elbow, look for a lot of inside pitches to test whether the injury will continue to hobble the Braves’ first basemen. Josh Donaldson sat out the last game of the season after being hit on the hip with a pitch, but that injury appears less severe. Donaldson, Acuña, and Freeman have accounted for half of the 27.9 WAR accumulated by Braves’ position players this season (Ozzie Albies is the only other position player with more than 2.1 WAR); Atlanta would be a completely different team without that trio at full strength. Read the rest of this entry »

When he stepped off the mound after a dominant seven innings last Tuesday night, Jack Flaherty surely thought he’d thrown his last pitch of the regular season. The Cardinals led the Diamondbacks 1-0 and the Brewers by 3 1/2 games in the NL Central. A win that night would all but lock up the division; three games up in the loss column with five games left to play is a tough lead to cough up.

But it wasn’t to be. Andrew Miller gave up a tying home run in the ninth inning, the Cardinals ended up losing in nineteen (!!) innings, and the Brewers started to catch up. Saturday night, after a beatdown at the hands of the Cubs was matched by a Brewers loss in Colorado, leaving the Redbirds a game ahead in the standings, the Cardinals announced that Flaherty would start Sunday afternoon.

In the real world, the game was a breeze. Flaherty put together another strong outing, going seven scoreless and allowing only two hits, and the Cardinal offense came to life en route to an easy 9-0 victory. The Brewers, meanwhile, pulled their starters when a St. Louis victory became inevitable, eventually losing 4-3 in 13 innings.

But those are the results that actually happened, not the results that could have happened, and knowing what could happen is often more interesting than seeing the actual results. To that end, I was curious: did the gambit of starting your best pitcher in the regular season rather than saving him for a potential elimination game make sense? Let’s do the math.

To work out the cost and benefit of starting Flaherty, we need to work out the potential scenarios that follow a Flaherty start. First, there’s the world that actually occurred: the Cardinals win the NL Central and move on to face the Braves in the NLDS. In that situation, the cost of starting Flaherty in the last game of the regular season is low. He’ll start Game 2 of the series, and can start a potential Game 5 on regular rest. There’s almost no cost here; if Miles Mikolas had pitched yesterday instead, Flaherty would start Game 1 and Mikolas Game 2 instead of vice versa, and Flaherty would still start Game 5. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the fourth installment of this year’s Team Entropy series, my recurring look not only at the races for the remaining playoff spots but the potential for end-of-season chaos in the form of down-to-the-wire suspense and even tiebreakers. Ideally, we want more ties than the men’s department at Macy’s. If you’re new to this, please read the introduction here.

The final weekend of the 2019 season is upon us, and while five of the divisions and all of the super-complicated tiebreaker scenarios are off the table, with three games to play, each league has multiple scenarios that could result in at least one tiebreaker game. Seven hundred or so words is worth a picture, so first, behold this:

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Ned Yost announced that he would retire at the end of the season. While the news came as a surprise, the man himself has always kept a healthy perspective on the game. Based on Alec Lewis’s profile, he’ll leave the game feeling fulfilled and ready for the next chapter of his life. His departure, along with a juicy rumor that Royals special advisor and former Cardinals manager Mike Matheny will replace him, made for an eventful Monday morning in Kansas City.

As a skipper, Yost was never a visionary strategist. He’s not analytically inclined by nature, and he struggled in game states that require managers to play the percentages. Too often, his choices looked reflexive and dated: He liked having his fast shortstop lead off, OBP be damned. His good players bunted far too often. He didn’t always know when to deploy his closer. Managing the bullpen proved particularly challenging.

In one 2014 game, Yost summoned young Danny Duffy into a tied, extra-inning contest on the road, and then turned to Louis Coleman after the lefty loaded the bases. All that time, he had all-world closer Greg Holland ready to go, but he never got to pitch; Baltimore walked it off against Coleman. Later that year, Yost brought in a lefty specialist specifically to face (then) feeble-hitting Jackie Bradley Jr. with one on late in a one-run game; the Red Sox predictably inserted lefty-basher Jonny Gomes, who socked a two-run homer to give Boston a one-run win. After that episode, the manager memorably took responsibility, saying he’d “outsmarted himself.” Perhaps more than anyone over the last decade, Yost earned an almost anti-analytic reputation, becoming the face of what sabermetric seamheads spent so much time ranting about on Twitter.

But as Yost’s time in the dugout stretched on, the criticisms of his tactical acumen felt like an increasingly small slice of the story. For subscribers of the iceberg theory of managing, it’s clear that he compensated with other strengths. Yost always absorbed the blame whenever things went haywire, a point that both his bosses and charges acknowledged and appreciated. He also had a steady hand with young players. In Milwaukee and Kansas City, he helped turn perennially losing teams into playoff-caliber squads, happily shepherding young talents through the inevitable growing pains. Notably, a number of highly touted prospects who began their big league careers slowly — Eric Hosmer, Alex Gordon, Mike Moustakas, Jorge Soler, and Adalberto Mondesi among them — eventually blossomed. Might they have done so sooner under another manager? Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless, most of the best prospects under Yost’s watch figured things out eventually. Read the rest of this entry »

With a four-game sweep that took Chicago’s playoff odds from likely to long-shot, the Cardinals put the Cubs’ season in the trash like an uneaten commemorative cake. Due to the Cubs’ recent run of success, and the painful way the club lost four, one-run games at home (while holding the lead or being tied in the ninth inning in three of those games), their fall is the most-attention grabbing aspect of the series (and we’ll get to that). But the sweep was massive for the Cardinals in its own right. Look at the Cardinals’ odds to win the division in the second half:

While the Cardinals still have some work to do, the division title is very likely theirs after failing to make the playoffs the last three seasons. At the beginning of the series, the team had some ground to cover, with a 58% chance at the division. Losing the first game of the series likely would have taken those odds below 50%. Despite the Brewers winning four straight, the Cardinals were able to push their chances upward due to their three-game lead over Milwaukee with just six games to go, while also eliminating their rival from division contention. The series might be viewed as microcosm of the season for St. Louis. The Cardinals offense was typically inconsistent, scoring nine runs in one game, and just nine total runs in the other three. Jack Flaherty pitched fantastically, continuing his run as the NL’s best pitcher in the second half. The bullpen was solid despite multiple short starts from the rotation, and the defense played its part, turning seven double plays.

A year ago, the Cardinals played the role of the Cubs. After going 39-23 in the second half after firing Mike Matheny just before the All-Star Break, the Cardinals got their playoff odds up to 79.5% with series against the Brewers and Cubs to close the season. But the Brewers swept the Cardinals in St. Louis, dropping the team’s playoff odds down to 19.6%. When they dropped the opener to the Cubs, those odds fell under 1% and their season was essentially over in four games. Speaking of a season essentially ending after four tough games:

Read the rest of this entry »

Across all full-season minor league affiliates in 2019, the list of the top three hitters in K%-BB% looked like this:

1) Nick Madrigal
2) Wander Franco
3) John Nogowski

Madrigal, of course, was the fourth overall pick in the 2018 draft out of Oregon State and is currently ranked as the No. 26 prospect in baseball on THE BOARD. Franco, an 18-year-old switch-hitting shortstop, was considered the top prospect in the 2017 July 2 international signing class, signed for $3.85 million, and is currently the game’s top prospect. Both Madrigal and Franco are high-profile minor leaguers who have been projected to make a future impact in the big leagues for some time.

And then there’s John Nogowski. Read the rest of this entry »