St. Louis Cardinals Slump: First to Worst

YOUNNNNGGG CARDINALS

Hello Viewers, back to baseball this week. In this video I tried to do something different by just winging it without a script. Let me know if its better or worse. I’m going to keep to trying to innovate and try new things until I find something I really like. Hope you enjoy this video.

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St. Louis Cardinals Defense

The St. Louis Cardinals are known as a stable franchise with consistent winning seasons, year in and year out. The Cardinals usually can hit the ball well. But they are more so known for their defense. Even before they traded for Nolan Arenado from the Colorado Rockies in early 2021. The Cardinals already had a great defensive alignment. Before we get to team defense, let’s talk about Arenado because his recent gold glove win gives 10 in a row. Nobody plays the hot corner quite like Arenado.  

For example, Arenado was able to rank 1st in every defensive category including putouts, assists, double plays turned as 3B, total zone runs as 3B, range factors and fielding percentage. Most of these are fairly obvious, putouts and assists are when he threw or tagged someone out either directly or indirectly. Double plays as 3B is the amount of double plays he turned. Total Zone Runs is a controversial stat because it works sort of like WAR. It ranks the amount of runs either allowed or prevented based on the number of plays and compared to other players in that position. Its a bit flawed because it’s more like counting stat such as RBI or HR rather than an average like OPS or SLG. Anyway it doesn’t matter because Arenado dominates it. Also in regards to range factor basically calculates the amount of putouts and assists per 9 innings or per game. It doesn’t matter what stat you use, Arenado is a defensive wizard. 

Now let’s turn to the team defense. We know that Arenado is a stud defensively (and he can hit) but who else can pick it in the field? Well Tommy Edman is an infielder who really showed some great defense. Edman, who debuted with the Cardinals in 2019, didn’t commit an error in 2022. Lets check out the rest of the team from this chart: 

As you can see their defense is not just limited to the infield. They have a few outfielders with positive outs above average. Most notably Harrison Bader, who was traded to the Yankees during the trade deadline. But also guys like Lars Nootbar (best name ever), Dylan Carlson and Tyler O’Neil. Some of these guys were hurt, none of them played more than 130 games. Looking at the opposite end of the spectrum, I am surprised to find Nolan Gorman. He was a long awaited top prospect who finally got the call up. I suppose it was his hitting that was so valued. But he had a poor season with 8 errors. Obviously you can ignore that in his rookie season and we’ll see how he develops.

I think the point of the post is that defense can win games. The Cardinals won their division with a 93-69 record (nice) and had a first round wild card exit. The Cardinals had great hitters too which I’m definitely going to cover in another post. One other notable thing about a good defense is that it can help make a struggling pitcher look better especially when you consider field independent pitching or FIP.  

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Thanks to Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant for the charts and statistics!