The Cardinals Offense and the Failure to Live Up to 2013
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Cardinals were just behind the Brewers in the National League Central. Just over a week ago, the Cardinals pulled just barely ahead of the Brewers. Today, after taking three of four against Milwaukee, including yesterday’s 9-1 crushing, the Cardinals are five games up on the Brewers, who are actually now in third next to the Pirates. Over the last week the Brewers’ rotation has not exactly made its defenders look good.
While one could go on about the Brewers’ fall, the Cardinals are the main story. They have never really been out of it. At the beginning of the season, St. Louis was a solid favorite to win their division. Two months ago, when they were four games behind the Brewers, the Cardinals’ chances of winning the division were roughly the same as the Brewers. Today, they are overwhelming favorites.
The 2014 Cardinals are not clearly dominant in either pitching or hitting. In particular, on the offensive side they have not hit nearly as well as the 2013 team. Yet they again are poised to win the division. In many ways, the regression was predictable. But does that mean the Cardinals made mistakes when preparing for 2014?
In terms of just straight up run-scoring, the 2013 Cardinals led the National League in runs handily with 783. In particular, the 2013 Cardinals rightly were known for hitting well in clutch situations. With runners on base, the 2013 Cardinals (excluding pitchers) had a 241 wRC+ (.324/.389/.481) with runners on, far ahead of the next best team in the league, the Diamondbacks (110 wRC+). With runners in scoring position, the Cardinals were even better: 148 wRC+ (.384 BABIP).
Whether or not this represented some particular skill, it seems to me that people tended to miss how well the Cardinals hit last year, period. Cardinals non-pitchers led that National League with a 112 wRC+ (.278/.342/.416, .462 BABIP). Last year’s Cardinals’ hitters were not very powerful, as they were third-to-last in home runs with 124. What really made the 2013 Cardinals hitters stand out was their apparent ability to smack line drives around the field, as they had a .318 BABIP, second only to the Rockies, who play in a hitter’s BABIP paradise.
Now, wherever one comes down on the “skill” issue, it is clear from the basic numbers that the Cardinals hit better in key situations. The Clutch metric does a decent job of painting the overall picture. As a description, it basically gives an account of how many wins a team or player was worth by performing better (or worse) in key situations relative to how they performed in general. According the the Clutch metric, the Cardinals’ hitters were easily the best in the National League last year at 3.33. The next best were the Brewers at 2.35.
Now, individual players who are at the top of the league and the teams constituted from them are always “regression candidates,” but the Cardinals in particular were seen as due for serious regression when it came to scoring runs. Not only had they hit well, but they did so with a high BABIP, they hit much better with runners on and in scoring position (not generally considered a repeatable skill), and, worst of all, their BABIP was extremely high with runners on and in scoring position!
While it would have been fun for the defenders of the 2014 Cardinals if they had defied the odds and kept it up, the 2014 Cardinals offense did indeed come back to earth. They are currently 10th in National League in runs. St. Louis is seventh in non-pitcher wRC+ (102, .261/.330/.384) with a .303 BABIP (ninth). They are currently last in the National League in non-pitcher home runs with 94.
The team’s alleged skill with runners also seems to have disappeared. With runners on they have a 97 wRC+, (.256/.330/372), 12th in the National League. With runners in scoring position the Cardinals have just a 98 wRC+ (.260/.344/369), 12th in NL. Their .66 Clutch is fourth in National League, but that is not an extreme score, and given the previous numbers, clearly has more to do with late-inning performance than with hitting with runners on base.
Given that they are in the middle of the pack in terms of runs scored and are a near lock to not only make the playoffs but win the division, it is tough to criticize the Cardinals’ off-season decision making. Still, it is a sharp drop in performance. What happened? One thing is clear: the team did not simply see its luck with runners on change.
Carlos Beltran, who had a nice season for the Cardinals in 2013, left. His replacement, Allen Craig, who hit well as the Cardinals primary first baseman in 2013, was a disaster (80 wRC+) for St. Louis in 2014 before getting traded. Oscar Taveras’ future should not be judged by a bad partial season as a rookie, but he has been even worse (70 wRC+) than was Craig. Matt Adams, who finally got the first base job when Craig moved to right field, has hit decently in 2014 (115 wRC+), but not up to Craig’s or even Adams’ own 2013. The constantly-underrated Matt Holliday is still a good hitter (126 wRC+), but is significantly down from last year (147 wRC+).
Two of 2013’s superstars for St. Louis have had changes in fortune that have made a big difference for the Cardinals’ offense. The most obvious is that the Cardinals lost Yadier Molina for a big chunk of the season due to injury. While Molina has hit well for a catcher when he has played (106 wRC+), it is a significant drop off compared to last year (133 wRC+).
The other big drop was last year’s surprise superstar Matt Carpenter. In 2013, Carpenter looked like the paradigmatic Cardinals hitter: low strikeout rate, good walk rate, only decent power (11 home runs but 55 doubles), and, yes, lots of line drives (.359 BABIP) adding up to a 146 wRC+ (.318/.392/481), which would be great anywhere, but especially for a second baseman. Carpenter shifted to third this year to make room for Kolten Wong. Wong has not hit as well (94 wRC+) as last year’s third baseman, David Freese (105 wRC+) did, but the bigger change has been Carpenter’s offense. A 118 wRC+ (.275/.375/.382) is still very good for a second or third baseman these days, but is obviously not anywhere close to last year’s performance. Given what we know about the relative correlation of hitting metrics, the particular manner n which Carpenter has regressed is not very surprising: he has retained his good plate discipline and contact, but his BABIP has come down to more normal levels. He is hitting home runs a bit less frequently, but the main source of his power drop has been that his rate of doubles has gone down.
Leaving aside issues of being clutch (as the 2014 Cardinals had the best offense in the National League even setting those aspects issues aside), did the Cardinals make mistakes when planning their 2014 offense? It would be easy to point to the standings and simply say “no,” but even looking deeper, it is hard to go that far. Yes, many players have performed worse than last year. But they have not all been disasters. Matt Holliday still hits well enough, and Carpenter does, too, while playing a position that is hard to fill. I doubt many think that the Cardinals should have kept Carlos Beltran. Though Craig was pretty terrible, that was unexpected, and in any case the Cardinals had one Taveras waiting in the wings. Matt Adams has not been bad, necessarily, just worse.
In other words, most of the players the Cardinals kept around hardly projected to be easy to improve upon, and, Craig (and perhaps Wong) aside, have mostly performed well, if not up to last year. And it is not as if everything has gotten worse. The Cardinals’ big post-2013 free agent signing was Jhonny Peralta, who has filled the gaping hole at shortstop extremely well (.270/.344/.461, 127 wRC+). Peralta has not been the only surprising performer at the plate, either, as John Jay has hit .315/.384/401 (124 wRC+).
The 2014 Cardinals’ offense is not the juggernaut that the 2013 team’s was. Even if last year’s team’s ability to score runs was exaggerated by their hitting incredibly well in key spots, they were excellent nonetheless. The 2013 offense is decent. Even without pointing to the standings, though, it is difficult to say the Cardinals made a bunch of wrong moves. Molina had been one of the more durable catchers in the league for years. Keeping Beltran would hardly have helped the team in even the short term. While players like Carpenter, Holliday, and Adams have not lived up to their 2013 performances, it is not as if their 2014 numbers would have been easy to replace. And the Cardinals did quite successfully fill their major hole at shortstop.
Even before the season started, the 2014 Cardinals offense was quite unlikely to match 2013’s, and it has not. But it has been good enough, and it is hard to blame the decision making that led to it.
Matt Klaassen reads and writes obituaries in the Greater Toronto Area. If you can't get enough of him, follow him on Twitter.
I can assure you there was at least some skill to the hitting with RISP. I am a Cubs fan and have seen them fail miserably over and over again. They “look stupid” in clutch situations while the cardinals look smart. That is apparent before the outcome of the at bat is seen.
The Cubs lack of clutch certainly seems to be a skill (or lack of) as they are unclutch every year.
If clutch is a skill, then it is barely relevant. From 2004 to 2013, the Red Sox ranked 20th in aggregate hitting clutch. In 2013, they ranked 18th. In 2007 they ranked dead last. In 2004, they ranked 17th. In all three of their world championship teams, the Red Sox had a negative clutch score. Meanwhile, in 2004 the Reds had the best clutch score, and they finished the year at 76-86.
I’m of the opinion that Clutch exists and it’s effects are greatly overstated, but one can make the argument that FanGraph’s Clutch metric is off. Which I would say it is, though I would say it is off because it isn’t measuring the same thing I am trying to measure.
There are a few important flaws in this statement. Though the world champions in 2004, 2007, and 2013 may not have had clutch hitting, they may have been so good in other categories that clutch hitting didn’t matter.
This does not mean clutch hitting is also “barely relevant” to other teams. It may have been very relevant to the 2013 National League champions, for example.
You’d want to use a lot more information before quantifying its effect. In any case, the answer will almost certainly be that it matters least when a team is dominant in other aspects of the game.
Could this almost be looked at (to an extent) as a “rebuilding year” of sorts for the Cardinals? Obviously, the team expected to win and has, but between Matt Adams, Kolten Wong, and Oscar Taveras, this seems like a very young team. If Adams hits the way everyone thinks he can, and Wong picks up his offense closer to where it has been lately, and OT hits his potential, couldn’t you pretty easily have a strong offense next season? The last couple of weeks have seen a surge in offense, and it seems to be in large part because of certain players playing closer to expectation: Peter Bourjos, Oscar Taveras, and Kolten Wong in particular. Given that they were all young or in a new place, a bit of struggle isn’t terribly surprising. So could this year be a changing of the guard of sorts even if they don’t recapture their RISP magic (which seems improbable, at best)?
That is a lot of if’s that cannot reasonably be expected. Matt Adams is hitting the way everyone thinks he can; I don’t think many non-Cardinal fans think he is a true talent 135 wRC+. Kolten Wong also has a solid 94 wRC+ and was never expected to be a huge offensive performer. Peter Bourjos just isn’t that great of a hitter; his 94 wRC+ is right in line with his career 96 wRC+. Even top prospects fail, so I don’t think we should assume Taveras will hit as well as his most optimistic supporters (Cardinal fans) believe. He still has potential, but he didn’t exactly light up AAA over the past 2 years (116 wRC+).
The team has some youth to it, but I don’t think their offense is under-performing much.
They also got better defensively at all four IF positions and CF with Bourjos playing some. Taveras is likely an upgrade over Beltran/Craig as well. There’s been some tradeoff yet the Cardinals still have an average offense.
Fine article, Matt. (May have been a couple of typos, though, with the “241 wRC+” and the “.462 BABIP.”)
I’m not sure I agree, Chris, about the youthfulness of the lineup. In Peralta, Holliday and Molina three important contributors are on the wrong side of 30 — and I don’t think I’d list the 26-year-old Adams alongside Taveras & Wong as part of a youth movement.
It’ll be interesting to see if the team makes a big push for Giancarlo Giannini Stanton during the offseason. Jeff Loria is a creep and a crook and a compulsive liar who of course cares not one ounce about winning baseball games…at least compared to his tender lustful feelings for shapely piles of cash. So when he asks for millions under the table, will Cardinal ownership oblige?
(Some team will, you can count on it. Stanton will be traded, and the return in personnel will be surprisingly, even shockingly small, and people will openly ask why Loria and his management team allowed themselves to be shafted. It’ll be because money changed hands, and lots of it.)
If the St. Louis ownership gives up Taveras + Carlos Martinez + $10-15M off the books, that might get them Stanton — and that would make them once again a distinctly above average offense.
I’m not sure what the point here is. I applaud you stating the obvious. People who were ignorant of the Cardinals going to come down to earth and lack offense was going to happen. But even projections have not projected the current performance of say Peralta and Carpenter. In fact most projections thought carpenter would be fairly significantly worse at the start of year. Most thought he’s be at most 3 war when he looks a good bet to make 4 War(still a significant drop off). Cardinals were going to struggle quite a bit without serious additions. The Cardinals seemed to have known this and has emphasized Defense. Wong is in there not just for his bat but he’s a solid defender and baserunner. Bourjos and Peralta have added defensively. While getting rid of Craig improves defense and baserunning(he was one of the worst defenders). The article becomes utility comes in doubt when you factor that the Cardinals have made a conscious effort to improve defense and is one of the best defensive teams in the league. While they have weathered injuries that have helped limit them, their defensive is amazing. This team has done a lot with what they had to deal with. The Cards are getting lucky again however and are significantly outperforming their base runs. However the Cards aren’t relying on that they continue to retool the team to leverage resources to win. If the Cardinals had sit back and not at least attempted to improve their defense they wouldn’t even be in the race. The cardinals farm strengths have never been mashers but players like Wong and Carpenter who are balanced. More are on they way. Cards are merely positioning themselves to be lucky. Things that are more glaring is the lack of development on Shelby Miller, Taveras struggles and Rosenthal’s wildness. However such things do happen. Cardinals were never going to overturn that regression unless they overturned the half the roster. Instead they clearly tried to boost their defense. Cardinals are over performing and shouldn’t be anybody’s favorite to win the series but to say that they haven’t taken steps to take into account eventual regression seems a bit of a reach.
The article was titled The Cardinals Offense and the Failure to Live Up to 2013 and end with Even before the season started, the 2014 Cardinals offense was quite unlikely to match 2013’s, and it has not. But it has been good enough, and it is hard to blame the decision making that led to it.
That seemed to be the point of the article.
To be fair, the article meandered quite a bit and just generally isn’t well written. Kind of an exploratory idea with margin notes, submitted as a product. I’m sure this author will agree he’s written much better.
But it also states what could have been done about the roster. Which is basically to point out the cardinal is a failure without any explanation why they are still a .500 team according to base runs. The Cardinals did nothing on offense drastically because they shored up defensely. If that was the point of the article then the article should have been one title and one paragraph. If its just a statement then it should just go on instagraphs. instead he talk about management decision yet completely moves away from the impact of their decisions. That is my point. Just not a good article. You have to realize that I have no problem with he statement I too felt they would regress significantly. But by tlaking about management decisions on the roster it ignores the reason for the roster approach which was an eye toward defensive improvement. The implication is that the Cardinals simply ignored possible regression which doesn’t seem to be the case. The Cardinals player WAR is only about 2 WAR less than last year and actually has a higher MLB ranking this year 8th versus 13th. This is despite the regression because they improved sigificantly defensively. They improve their Team Def stat from -6.5 to 54.5. Making up heavily for their lack of offense. That is clearly achievable based on roster decisions.
I want to caveat by amazing I mean amazing compared to last year. They are now 5th in defensive WAR.
This team has been even luckier than last season. Cumul. War puts them about 3 games over .500. Overrated and getting old fast. Taveras obviously was a huge overhype.
Do you write off top prospects on your favorite team after 200 plate appearances? This seems like an overly bitter comment to me.
St. Louis gets lucky most years. It’s the residue of design.
During this past off-season, the Cardinals made a concerted effort to assure that the TEAM would have a similar chance to in the WS in 2014. The first need was defense, and it appears that the major steps were defensive–Carp back to third, Bourgos. The second step was making room for youth (Wong, see above, Taveras– Beltran was clearly out). Craig was there as part of the 3-for-2 with Taveras and Adams, and would probably still be in StL but for the pitching injuries/disappointments. Overall, the Cards offense is just about where it might have been expected, with Holliday’s drop and Yadi’s injury somewhat beyond expectation (Holiday’s drop quite likely related to the new batting order(s), as it takes a while for a team to understand itself (NB Oakland As since Cespedes-Lester).
This year’s team IS in position to win again. The defense seems to be substantially improved; the O, while not equal to 2013, is not impotent.
Being a “solid favorite” to win the division in March doesn’t necessarily suggest wire-to-wire. It’s very clear that this team was put together to be there in October, regardless of its April.
Bizarre article. How can you ask whether the team made mistakes while not commenting on one of the key moves (e.g. the Bourjos/Freese trade) and instead looking at things like the performance of Holliday, Carpenter and Molina?
Holliday is locked in with a no trade clause. He’s going nowhere. Same goes for Molina. Those decisions were made before the 2013 season and so non-decisions last offseason. Essentially the same goes for Carpenter who is extremely cheap. The fact that they kept him doesn’t suggest that they, or anyone else, assumed that he would perform at his 2013 level.
I would say that the Bourjos trade turned out OK, though maybe not quite as well as hoped — perhaps partly due to Matheny. Same goes for the decision to rely on Wong.
The Peralta signing was, as you say, fantastic. A bit more under the radar, so was the Neshek signing.
They apparently thought that Motte would be sound this year, which was a mistake, though a fairly small one.
Looking at just offense, the Cardinals are certainly worse than last year, but when you factor in the whole she-bang, I think they made mostly sound decisions. They just decided to heavily upgrade the defense and speed of the team.
Trading Freese for Bourjos and Grichuk looks like a huge steal right now. Bourjos, by himself, has outperformed Freese – at a much smaller salary, to boot – and that’s not factoring in having Grichuk for six-plus seasons. That trade also opened up Wong at second, who is, in all likelihood, going to finish with a 2 WAR season — not bad for a pre-arb player.
To answer the question, I imagine Mozeliak expected Carpenter and Holliday to regress some due to BABIP normalizing and aging, respectively, but it’s not like he could replace those players. I think it’s worth mentioning that Mozeliak probably assumed the offense would be worse, which is why he signed the best hitting SS in free agency, Peralta, and was linked to heavy discussions about Tulowitski this winter. Nobody thought Craig would implode like he did, but that’s baseball. Can’t blame the Cardinals for Craig. They did have Adams and Taveras as replacements for him, in any case. And Mozeliak (and even dunderhead Matheny) made many quotes in the offseason about expecting the irrational clutch success to regress, so they weren’t blind to that, either.
I know this article was solely about offense, but I think it’s clear Mozeliak expected the offense to be worse and decided to augment the team in other areas. For the most part, it has worked. For next season and beyond, I think it’s worth discussing if Taveras has the bat capable of carrying a team, because his defense and baserunning is fairly poor. Perhaps they package him and pitching to a team who still believes in him? Stanton would change this whole conversation, right? I think the team is set, otherwise.
“Freese for Bourjos and Grichuk” Don’t forget Fernando Salas. He’s actually been great for the Angels this season. Bourjos+Grichuk for Freese+Salas seems to be one of those rare trades that helped both teams. I like the Cards end of the deal in 2015 and beyond, but in 2014, both teams got 2+ WAR from positions of need.
I’d be very surprised if Taveras left the team in the off-season, unless the return is a Stanton-level superstar. I reckon the Cardinals reckon he’s going to blossom next season, and hopefully get slightly better at covering right field.
It’s been a weird season. Given they’ve had a steady season (every single month, above .500) the strong impression is Matheny can’t manage worth a damn, and it’s a great team that makes him look like a great manager (three seasons in the job, looks like it’s going to be three post-seasons). Bourjos is blossoming with regular playing time, Wong looks like a solid everyday player, Holliday is, dips aside, continuing to be strong…2014 is a huge defensive upgrade over 2013, and the bats not performing even to career averages couldn’t have been predicted.
I think a better way to look at the article would be why the Cardinals are, W-L wise, doing so much better than their poor offense indicates they should be. I mean, they’re still last in HRs, for example (I think).
of course they were going to regress a lot, but the main story is how much better the defense is, and how great Peralta has been at shortstop.