The Cardinals face possible elimination today at the hands of the Pirates. It has been a wild year for the National League Central. One could make an argument that, this season at least, the National League Central was right up there with the American League East as the best division in baseball. The Cardinals won that division and tied the Red Sox for the best record in baseball.

But it could all end for St. Louis today. Although I personally do not have a rooting interest in this series (yeah, it would be fun to see the Pirates advance, but that is not the same as being a fan of either team), it would be too bad to see the Cardinals’ Matt-heavy lineup depart. It has Matt Carpenter, a legitimate MVP candidate in his first year of full-time major league play, Matt Holliday, who overcame a relatively slow start to have another very good season, and Matt Adams, a rookie who is starting the place of the injured Allen Craig, and who managed to whack 17 home runs in part-time action.

With my own semi-vested interest in Matts, and with the Matt-loaded Cardinals playing perhaps their last game of 2013 today, a bit of trivia is in order: the best-hitting Matts in playoff history.

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One of the things about advanced metrics is that they can tell you things you might not have guessed. The other day, for example, I wrote about a showdown between Alex Cobb and Danny Salazar, and by some of the numbers, that looked like one hell of a potential duel. Thursday, A.J. Burnett and Adam Wainwright also looked like one hell of a potential duel. Wainwright, people know about — he’d be another year’s Cy Young winner. Burnett, though, was more quietly outstanding, after being dismissed by New York. Wainwright finished with the National League’s third-best FIP. Burnett finished fifth, just in front of Cliff Lee and two of his teammates. On that basis you could argue Burnett is the Pirates’ best starter.

One of the things about A.J. Burnett is that, who knows? We’ve never really had a great measure of starting pitcher inconsistency, but if we did, Burnett would probably be at or near the top of the list. Inconsistency has long been his reputation, and so long as the potential is there for a meltdown, it can never mentally be counted out. And Thursday, Burnett melted down. In what could’ve been a compelling showdown of aces, Wainwright was ahead seven runs before he threw a pitch in the fourth. When the Pirates pulled within six, the Cardinals extended the deficit right back. Both starting pitchers showed up, but only Wainwright did more than that.

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It is time to look at the third team on the field for the National League division round, the umpires. Each umpire is given a quick look to see if they have any unique strike calling patterns. Also, I posted their 2013 K/9 and BB/9 rates which I scaled them to the league average strikeout and walk rates. A 100 value is league average and a 110 value would be a value 10% higher than the average. Additionally, I added images of their called strike zones verses right and left handed hitters (from catchers perspective) compared to the league average. The scale is the percentage difference where -0.1 means 10% points less than the league average

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With one weekend left in the regular season, there are some important things still at stake. In the American League wild-card race, for example, the Rangers are still alive, one back of the Indians and two back of the Rays. The Pirates and the Reds will go head-to-head, basically to decide who gets home field in next week’s likely one-game playoff. And the Braves and Cardinals will figure out who finishes with the National League’s best record. They’re not about to play one another, but they’re each about to play three games, and the team with the best record will face the not-Dodgers in the NLDS.

And that would be nice, since the Dodgers have gone 61-26 since they started 30-42. Right now, the Braves and the Cardinals have the same record. The Braves, also, hold the tiebreaker, having won the season series against St. Louis, so at this point we’re looking at Braves vs. wild card and Cardinals vs. Dodgers. But it’s not set in stone, so, clearly, the teams have something left to play for as they prepare for October. No team would ever admit it’s afraid of another team, but the Dodgers don’t look like a favorable draw.

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A few weeks ago, Dave Cameron wrote a piece on RE24, explaining that, because RE24 measures offensive production with respect to the specific base-out state, one could compare it to a context-neutral offensive metric, such as Batting runs, in order to measure the effects of situational hitting.

Situational hitting is a vague term often used to laud making outs as long as it moves the runner up a base, but as I see it, all the phrase means is hitting differently depending on the situation. That is, good “situational hitting” is distributing your hits and extra base hits into the times that you hit when runners are on base, and especially in scoring position.

Subtracting Batting Runs (or Bat) from RE24 works as a good measure of situational hitting because it compares the value of the context-neutral event (single, strikeout, home run, etc) with the value of the actual change in base-out state. A single is worth more in certain situations; that “more” is measured using this method.

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“I didn’t send him out there to paint,” Dusty Baker would say. “It was no secret.”

One of the things about strategic maneuvers in baseball is that they’re usually evident ahead of time. There aren’t many equivalents to, say, a corner blitz. If a manager goes to the bullpen, the other team sees the new reliever first, and can get ready to hit him. If a defense shifts for a hitter, the hitter can observe the shifted positioning, and think about how he wants to adjust. If a manager inserts a pinch-runner, the other team can figure that runner might be running. There’s little sense in a pinch-runner otherwise. Much about baseball can be surprising. The same cannot be said for much of baseball strategy.

Billy Hamilton made his major-league debut Tuesday night, in a scoreless game between the Reds and the Cardinals. He made it not as a starter, but as a runner, having recently come up as a September promotion. Hamilton ran for Ryan Ludwick with none out in the bottom of the seventh, and it didn’t matter that the opposition had Yadier Molina behind the plate. I mean, it did — of course it mattered — but Molina’s presence wasn’t going to stop Hamilton from trying to do what he was going to try to do. Everybody understood why Hamilton was in the game. He wasn’t out there to paint.

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A few things to know, that you already knew: (1) FanGraphs isn’t very busy on the weekends. (2) Much of the content on FanGraphs is planned and scheduled ahead of time. (3) We’re coming off a holiday weekend during which an awful lot of people got away to do some traveling or relaxing. (4) Baseball, this past weekend, was as active as ever. Put it all together and, here on FanGraphs, one could argue baseball has lately been under-covered. Things have happened that didn’t get words to them.

Things like trades on or before August 31, which is an important deadline for purposes having to do with postseason roster eligibility. Last Friday and Saturday, there were five trades swung in major-league baseball, none of which were written up on the site. This is an attempt to make up for that, by addressing them all at once. “Better late than never,” is an expression that applies, to a point. Below, find all five moves, each with its own subjectively appropriate classification. Five moves for five contenders. What have they done to themselves?

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Allen Craig, so far, has been one of baseball’s all-time best hitters with runners in scoring position. Yes, as in ever. This year, he’s leading the league in batting average in that split. Last year, he led the league in batting average in that split. He is the leader, all-time, in such situational batting average, and his lead isn’t small. If you sort by OPS, Craig’s near the top of the historical leaderboard — between Albert Pujols and Joey Votto. Either the man has a knack for delivering important hits, or he just makes people feel that way.

The other night, Craig batted in the bottom of the seventh in a game between the St.Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds were leading 5-4, but the Cardinals had the bases loaded with two outs. J.J. Hoover threw Craig a first-pitch fastball, up and away, and Craig swung and took it up and away for a deciding grand slam. For the Cardinals, it’s been a magical season when it comes to runners in scoring position, and no one’s had more magic than Craig. And for him, this is just more of the same. Which leads one to wonder: What’s going on with Allen Craig, anyway?

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Even after their big offseason moves, the Blue Jays were not the consensus pick to win the 2013 American League East, as three or even four teams seemed to have a good shot. Very few, however, probably thought the Jays would be the one team left out of the race almost from the start. Yet here we are in the middle of August, and Toronto is the only team in the division under .500, a distant seven and a half games behind the fourth-place Yankees. The litany of problems is well-known: the starting pitching has been terrible, Jose Reyes got hurt, and more. Not every player has been disappointing, however. Colby Rasmus, who came to the Jays in a 2011 trade with the Cardinals, is having his best season since 2010. Indeed, his performance this year resembles that 2010 season in multiple ways.

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Episode 372
Derrick Goold is the championship beat writer of the Cardinals for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He’s also the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 46 min play time.)

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