The 1985 Cardinals of the Year 2015

On Monday’s edition of the podcast, Dave Cameron and I discussed in some depth his trilogy of posts from last week concerning the intersection within baseball between run-scoring and time of play. The former is trending downward; the latter, upward. The reasons for these twin developments are surely manifold, but one definite influence is greater specialization among relievers. More relief pitchers leads to greater effectivenss on a per-batter basis for those pitchers. It also leads to shorter outings for starters, allowing them to exert themselves more thoroughly and thus prevent runs at a greater rate, as well.

During the course of that discussion, when asked to identify a historical example which might serve to guide hypothetical rule changes by Major League Baseball, Cameron offered the 1985 St. Louis Cardinals as an aspirational model. Before losing the World Series to Kansas City in seven games, the 1985 Cardinals led the National League in runs scored while also hitting the second-fewest home runs. As a club they relied on excellent baserunning and making the most of the contact they did make.

Tom Herr, Willie McGee, Ozzie Smith, and Andy Van Slyke all stole at least 30 bases for that St. Louis club — and all produced above-average batting lines relative to league average despite a dearth of power. Vince Coleman failed to record a league-average batting line and Terry Pendleton stole just 17 bases, but each more or less embodied the Cardinals offensive profile, as well.

“Who,” I thought recently, “who, among the game’s current players, might have best fit on that edition of the Cardinals — and who, in turn, might serve as the model by which any potential rule change ought to be made?”

To answer the question, I attempted first to identify those properties which most immediately defined the 1985 Cardinals. Here’s a sortable table of numbers, which I’ll explain below the sortable table of numbers:

Team	SBA%	BsR	HR/H	BABIP	wRC+	—	zSBA%	zBSR	zHR/H	zBABIP	zWRC+
Cardinals	24.7%	22.6	6.0%	.298	102	—	3.3	3.3	-1.8	1.9	0.2
Expos	17.0%	1.4	8.8%	.273	92	—	1.4	0.2	-0.5	-0.9	-1.0
Cubs	14.8%	15.0	10.7%	.281	92	—	0.9	2.2	0.4	0.0	-1.0
Blue Jays	14.5%	-3.7	10.7%	.289	104	—	0.8	-0.5	0.4	0.9	0.5
Reds	14.4%	2.0	8.2%	.282	92	—	0.8	0.3	-0.7	0.1	-1.0
Rangers	13.4%	-6.2	9.5%	.276	91	—	0.5	-0.9	-0.1	-0.5	-1.1
Indians	13.0%	-4.2	7.9%	.291	93	—	0.4	-0.6	-0.9	1.1	-0.8
Yankees	12.6%	7.9	12.1%	.280	112	—	0.3	1.2	1.1	-0.1	1.4
Royals	12.3%	4.7	11.1%	.271	93	—	0.3	0.7	0.6	-1.1	-0.8
Dodgers	12.0%	2.1	9.0%	.286	102	—	0.2	0.3	-0.4	0.6	0.2
Phillies	11.8%	2.3	10.5%	.281	91	—	0.1	0.3	0.3	0.0	-1.1
Pirates	11.3%	-3.7	6.0%	.276	82	—	0.0	-0.5	-1.8	-0.5	-2.2
White Sox	11.2%	-2.5	10.5%	.274	89	—	0.0	-0.4	0.3	-0.7	-1.3
Athletics	11.1%	-1.7	10.5%	.286	104	—	0.0	-0.3	0.3	0.6	0.5
Giants	10.8%	-3.8	9.1%	.262	83	—	-0.1	-0.6	-0.3	-2.1	-2.1
Mets	10.7%	0.4	9.4%	.281	99	—	-0.1	0.1	-0.2	0.0	-0.1
Astros	9.9%	-5.0	8.3%	.288	102	—	-0.3	-0.7	-0.7	0.8	0.2
Angels	9.5%	-1.1	11.2%	.274	99	—	-0.4	-0.2	0.7	-0.7	-0.1
Mariners	8.5%	3.0	12.1%	.279	100	—	-0.7	0.4	1.1	-0.2	0.0
Tigers	7.9%	-3.1	14.3%	.269	103	—	-0.8	-0.5	2.1	-1.3	0.4
Braves	7.9%	-8.2	9.3%	.269	83	—	-0.8	-1.2	-0.2	-1.3	-2.1
Twins	7.4%	-5.8	9.7%	.283	97	—	-1.0	-0.9	0.0	0.3	-0.4
Orioles	7.0%	-5.3	14.7%	.279	111	—	-1.1	-0.8	2.3	-0.2	1.3
Brewers	6.6%	-1.7	6.9%	.286	92	—	-1.1	-0.3	-1.4	0.6	-1.0
Padres	6.3%	-5.4	7.8%	.281	93	—	-1.2	-0.8	-0.9	0.0	-0.8
Red Sox	5.4%	0.3	10.0%	.303	110	—	-1.4	0.0	0.1	2.5	1.2

What one finds here is all of baseball’s 26 teams from 1985 and their performances, as a club, by five different metrics — which metrics, in sum, illustrate with some degree of accuracy which qualities made the Cardinals unique.

SBA% denotes stolen-base attempt percentage and serves as a proxy for stolen-base attempts relative to opportunities. I’ve calculated it by dividing each club’s stolen-base attempts by its sum of singles, walks, and hit-by-pitches (i.e. SBA / [1B + BB + HBP]) — which is to say, the three major events that put a runner on first base. The 1985 Cardinals led this category by a considerable margin — and finished more than three standard deviations above the mean.

BsR denotes baserunning runs relative to average. The Cardinals produced the league’s best figure by his measure, as well.

HR/H denotes home runs per hit. This is similar to isolated power (or, ISO), except that it accounts only for home-run power relative to hits (and thus doesn’t penalize clubs that hit doubles or triples at an above-average rate). The 1985 Cardinals tied with Pittsburgh for last in the majors by this measure. In other words, when they were getting hits, those hits were mostly singles and doubles and triples.

BABIP, of course, denotes batting average on balls in play. St. Louis finished second in the majors — and first in the National League — by this measure, about two standard deviations above the mean.

Finally, there’s wRC+, which denotes wRC+ — or, that is, each club’s park-adjusted batting line. Despite their conspicuous lack of power, the Cards still produced the top park-adjusted batting line in the National League.

All column headings preceded by a z- denote a z-score — or the number of standard deviations relative to the league average — by the relevant metric.

What do we learn from the portrait of the club as presented by the data here? In essence, this: the Cardinals ran way more often and way more effectively than other clubs in the league. They produced fewer home runs per hit than all but one club in the league. That said, when they did make contact, it became hit more frequently than it did for basically every other team*. And finally, despite exhibiting certain offensive extremes, their overall batting line was better than league average.

*Again, some of these elements are likely park-related. I’ve chosen to ignore park effects for the sake of simplicity.

Using this basic sketch, I endeavored to identify those current players whose statistical profiles best evoke those qualities exhibited by the 1985 Cardinals. To do this, I utilized the Steamer projections available here at the site and calculated z-scores for all the 4368 batters included in those projections relative to major-league averages and standard deviations between 2012 and -14.

Once again, I’ll present the results first and then some brief, dull explanatory paragraphs.

Name	SBA%	BsR	HR/H	BABIP	wRC+	—	zSBA%	zBSR	zHR/H	zBABIP	zWRC+
Mookie Betts	22.6%	1.3	7.9%	.312	118	—	1.5	0.4	-0.6	0.8	0.8
Jose Altuve	28.9%	1.1	4.8%	.322	113	—	2.2	0.4	-1.1	1.5	0.6
Josh Harrison	19.4%	1.0	7.1%	.313	109	—	1.1	0.3	-0.8	0.8	0.4
Carl Crawford	22.4%	2.1	8.6%	.310	107	—	1.5	0.7	-0.5	0.6	0.3
Denard Span	18.2%	1.4	3.3%	.314	104	—	1.0	0.5	-1.4	0.9	0.2
Alejandro De Aza	18.8%	0.1	8.5%	.324	103	—	1.1	0.0	-0.6	1.6	0.1
Lorenzo Cain	21.1%	0.9	5.4%	.333	95	—	1.3	0.3	-1.0	2.2	-0.2
Rajai Davis	39.4%	4.3	6.1%	.312	93	—	3.4	1.4	-0.9	0.8	-0.3
Leonys Martin	28.9%	2.0	6.9%	.320	93	—	2.2	0.7	-0.8	1.3	-0.3
Chris Taylor	18.4%	0.8	3.6%	.320	91	—	1.0	0.3	-1.3	1.3	-0.4
Craig Gentry	25.5%	2.8	2.9%	.308	89	—	1.8	0.9	-1.4	0.6	-0.5

These are, very much in theory, the current players who most resemble the sort who defined the 1985 Cardinals’ style of play. The five columns directly to the right of the player names contain the same metrics as featured in the table above with all of 1985’s teams in it. In this case, all the numbers are courtesy Steamer’s projections for 2015, prorated to 600 plate appearances (or 450 PA for catchers). The five right-most columns (the ones with headings that begin with a z-) are the z-scores for those same metrics relative to league average between 2012 and -14.

Because projections are, to a large extent, the result of regression applied to a player’s recent performances, it was never going to be the case that any of Steamer’s forecasts for 2015 produced a single player projection that matched all of the Cardinals’ offensive extremes from 1985. Consider the case of baserunning, for example: the top projection for 2015 by that measure belongs to Kansas City’s Jarrod Dyson at +5.6 BsR. That figure is only 1.9 standard deviations above the league average between 2012 and -14 — i.e. more than a full standard deviation behind St. Louis’s mark as a club from 1985.

Different metrics are regressed more heavily, as well, meaning that players are projected to approach single season-type extremes by certain metrics but to receive more uniformly conservative projections by others. To identify the 1985 Cardinals of the year 2015, I needed to establish some kind of thresholds for the five categories used here, however.

After some haphazard experimentation, I arrived at the following thresholds (although the reader is invited to experiment with his or her own using the entire data set):

SBA%: > +1.0 SD
BsR: None
HR/H: < -0.5 SD
BABIP: > +0.5 SD
wRC+: > -0.5 SD

Ultimately, the results of this quixotic endeavor seem credible. Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve are almost uniformly beloved, even if the former has played less than half a major-league season. Lorenzo Cain officially became a star last October. Carl Crawford has, at the very least, been one of the game’s most exciting players. Rajai Davis and Craig Gentry are probably best utilized as bench players — and Davis possesses an oddly poor defensive profile relative to his speed — but, in that context, are something better than palatable, as well.