Injury Takes Holliday
It looks like it’s not an April Fool’s joke – Matt Holliday is having his appendix out Friday afternoon. A tough spring has just gotten worse for the Cardinals. Approximately how many wins has the team lost in the last month? Let’s count it up.
First they lost as many as five wins when Adam Wainwright went down. Even if Kyle McClellan can replicate his league-averageish FIP work from the rotation (which isn’t likely, considering the penalty usually associated with such a move), the team lost at least about three wins when their young ace grabbed his elbow in pain.
This Holliday situation won’t be as dire. For one, he’s not out all season. The team is saying two weeks, or as few as “six or seven days,” but the typical recovery time can go as many as four-to-six weeks. Let’s be safe and call it three weeks. In those busy three weeks, the Cardinals play 20 games, or about 12% of their season. Pardon the wonky math, but Holliday has averaged 671 plate appearances and 6.33 wins per season. Steal 12% of those plate appearances, and the excellent outfielder might still manage 591 plate appearances. If he had an ‘average’ season despite the injury, he might put up 5.57 wins. That’s not even a full win of a loss.
In his place, Jon Jay and Allen Craig will play a little more over the next three weeks. Jay doesn’t walk much (7.4%), strikes out just a hair below average (17.4%), has below-average pop (.122 ISO), but might be a scratch glove on the corner outfield. His own fans projected him to have about an average-ish wOBA (.328), so if he combined that with neutral defense, he could put up an average-ish WAR. Let’s call him a 2-win player over 600 PAs, or a .27-Win player over 80 PAs. Subtract that from the Holliday loss and you’re looking at losing a half a win.
We’ve shown this sort of thing before. A star player goes down for a while, and we tend to over-react. Zooming out, it may only cost the team a half a win or so. Taken in a vacuum, it wouldn’t be a huge deal, especially if the recovery time trends towards the timetable suggested by the team.
But look at this in tandem with the loss of Wainwright, and it does change things a little. If we were more likely to say the team was only going to lose about three wins (instead of five) with the drop from Wainwright to McClellan, we’re now a little more likely to push that number in the other direction. In a division that is likely to be decided by fewer than four games in the final standings, this April Fool’s day surprise was not a pleasant one for the Cardinals.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
Using WAR in this way does not seem very useful. WAR is an abstract calculation – it doesn’t reflect reality in small sample sizes.
I agree and disagree. Surely, we have no idea ‘which’ three weeks we would have missed out of Holliday’s season – might have been a sweet stretch or a poor stretch. But, also, the sample sizes behind the WARs used are fairly big (four seasons), so using it to paint broad strokes (what might the team miss) seems appropriate to me.
Perhaps he’s also suggesting that you’re taking the “wins” part of WAR too literally, given the uncertainty of the true “replacement level.”
Marginal Win costs have to come into effect here too. The 3-6 wins we’re talking about here aren’t the Royals going from 70 to 76 wins or something similar to that. It’s from into the playoffs vs. out of the playoffs. That’s why these matter so much. The cusp of competition is a dangerous land.
In 2009, Jonathan Ericsson of the Detroit Red Wings had his appendix removed. Three days later he logged 16:47 in ice time against Pittsburgh in the Stanley Cup Finals. He missed one game.
This is not a slam on Holliday and the playoff finals of any sport are a little more urgent than the first week of the year. I just find it amazing that anybody could have surgery and play hockey three days later.
Matt Cassell had his appendix removed during the last football season and played quarterback for the Chiefs eleven days later. He only missed one game.
Football players play in rain and snow too. Suddenly, I’m hearing George Carlin in my head…
Yes but with the lack of urgency of a late NFL game for a playoff team and the Stanley Cup finals, coupled with the length of Holliday’s contract, certainly begs for a bit more caution.
Plus after all, these are only baseball players right?
Yeah, hockey’s something else. Heck, back in the days when goalies didn’t wear masks, one of them would probably just do the surgery on himself with a spare skate blade, during a line change, and keep playing.
And on the other end of the spectrum, it took Adrian Beltre 3 years to recover from his appendix issues.
🙂
For those who appreciate that the surnames of Matt Holliday and Roy Halladay will be confused by someone discussing this: Doc made a start May 10, 2007, had his appendix removed, and returned May 31. He even pitched 7 shutout innings!
WAR doesn’t really reflect how Holliday’s absence will affect how pitchers pitch to the Cardinals lineup, which to begin with isn’t super terrifying.
Agreed. The number drop off for 2-3 weeks won’t be too bad. Albert won’t be seeing anything to hit with runners on base though.
Andres Torres set the bar pretty high for appendectomy recovery.
Should this Cardinal fall back considerably far in the NL Central would they consider stocking their farm to elite status by trading Carpenter & Pujols ?
You know what’s funny? Having Mat Latos, Cory Hart and Matt Holiday on your fantasy team. Happy April’s Fools.
I had Latos and Holliday, plus Wainwright, Greinke, and Utley.
So if the Cards win 55% of their non holliday games, no harm, right?
If Allen Craig is a 2.5 WAR over the same time period that Matt Holliday is a 6 WAR player, then the Cardinals lose about .25 WAR over 16 games.
That takes the Cards from about an 88 win team to about an 87.75 win team. It makes the margins between Cardinals/Brewers/Reds a little slimmer, but ultimately, it doesn’t change the playoff probability odds in any significant manner
I could see it taking longer to be ready to swing a bat than play some other sports after an appendectomy. You definitely don’t want to re-open that wound!
But knowing he’s a baseball player, the surgeon can do a keyhole operation that avoids injury to those muscles as much as possible and leaves a very small incision to heal. I don’t know that that’s what they did, but I would assume so. It’s not the big slash-and-yank that left the nasty scars like when some of us were kids.
Torres came back in 11 days after the surgery but really was right until the 2nd round of the playoffs. He mentioned that the stitches made it hard to put in a full swing because he could feel them pulling as he rotated. So, the question isn’t just how long Holliday is out, but how long this bothers him and to what degree.
(1) Albert doesn’t see pitches to hit with RISP anyway. I wonder just how many of his walks are of the “unintentioally intentional” variety. He seems to know when this is happening as evident by his posture. At times, it seems he’s dropping the bat as the ball is approaching.
(2) I think there is some concern with Holliday for 2 reasons. First, the guy swings very hard and secondly, his timing mechanism is a high leg kick (more complicated). His dad is the hitting coach for LSU and that always seemed weird to me for him to have that since it’s usually reserved for a lighter guy to generate power. He’s basically “Urlacher Lite” as a physical specimen.
(3) It will be very interesting to see how StL handles Carp and Pujols if they do fall out of the race. There are some traditional contenders that are not as strong in starting pitching as they usually are (and they have the budget to sign him to an extension or new contract) and teams will have an interest in Albert even if he is a 2-month rental.
The hardest part, due to the grouping of the NLC, might be trying to figure out if they are or are not “in the hunt”. In that regard (and that regard only) it could benefit them if CIN starts running away with the division. Not to rehash prior discussions, but the Cards are limited to who they can sign (considering AW’s option) and for how much. This year is now even more interesting for StL, especially when considering the future. I don’t think STL is one of those teams that can just full scale rebuild, but getting something instead of nothing (or just draft picks) might be the better move. I would not want to be GM Mo this year. Even a potentially good decision is likely to be very unpopular.
Carp has to go if the Cards have any intention of keeping Pujols, and you have to assume the Yankees would be thrilled to have Carp, and they have the pieces to make it work.
But lets say they keep carp and trade Pujols? What would the Cards get for him?
As for Pujols … I’m hoping that Texas has 1B troubles early and a trade for Feliz is possible. *grin*
It really depends how desperate teams are for contention. A team like TBR may be interested, allowing Zobrist to play a more demanding position. A SP prospect is probably what StL is looking for. Maybe not one that is MLB ready but closer than A ball.
The best scenario is competition between TEX, TB, OAK, etc … AL teams that would be more likely to let pitchers go to a team they don’t face … And need offense or 1B help.
I don’t know what STL can get for Pujols, but 2 monthes of him is probably 1.5 wins over whoever he replaces. That could mean the diff btw playoffs and not.
The Cardinals season is not starting off well, SSS aside. If they do trade Carp and Pujols, they likely need prospects that are close to MLB, so that Holliday’s contract, Wain’s option and Rasmus’s controlled years are not wasted on a non-playoff team.
I cannot remember a more anxious season as a Cardinals fan.
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