The Cardinals may be hobbling along, but you can’t fault their manager for not trying (though you might call him half-cocked for a couple of the moves he made last night). Consider: He has now employed an unheard-of seven different leadoff hitters in as many games (that’s only one fewer than the most he’s used in any season since 1998). He’s called up a rookie to play in the outfield (granted, the veteran who had been playing there was forced to sit — well, we suspect “forced” is a bit strong), and it’s only May. And now we hear tell that tonight Chris Duncan will bat in the cleanup spot. This isn’t the same Tony La Russa of yore, whose riskiest move has been the occasional suicide squeeze.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and La Russa is heeding the call. Even up to the last inning, he had a man stealing third down a run. That’s chutzpah. Sadly, most of the gambles are turning out to be losing propositions. Last night, Albert Pujols was caught stealing in the first. Later, a 3-2 pitch to Albert with a man on first? TLR goes against his grain, perhaps suspecting that he’s a bit like George Costanza and needs to do everything opposite of his inclinations, and sends Taguchi on the pitch. The result? Taguchi fails to see that Albert lined out to the right fielder and gets doubled off first. Even the conventional plays — like a pitcher sacrificing a runner to second — backfire. Later, TLR had a LOOGy facing one of the Rockies’ top hitters, who happens to be a righty. After the count goes 2-1, they intentionally walk him to push the potential (and, as it turned out, kinetic) winning run to third. As a result, TLR had a lefty-lefty matchup, but with one problem: The lefty pitcher wasn’t throwing strikes. By that point, though, TLR had already missed the better matchup, which would’ve been sending in Kelvin Jimenez to pitch to Atkins, a platoon matchup equivalent to Johnson-Hawpe, but with more margin for error. If you assume that the two matchups are roughly equivalent (with the lefty-left edge offset by Johnson’s wildness), we can see how costly the twin decision to not bring in Jimenez to face Atkins/intentionally walk him was in terms of Win Probability. When Atkins stepped to the plate, the Cardinals’ chance of winning was 52%. After they walked Atkins, it dropped to 46.2%. Not colossal, but it’s one thing to try an ill-advised stolen base early in the game, when you can barely break even with win probability; it’s another to voluntarily put yourself in a much worse position to win. One is an unwise gamble; the other is foolhardy.

Speaking of gambles and foolhardiness, when it became clear that the Cardinals would not go gentle into that good night, So Taguchi stole third base with two on and one out in the bottom half of the ninth. Talk about going for broke. Before Taguchi’s mad dash (apologies to Country Slaughter), the team had a 36.4% shot at the win. After he swiped third, it climbed to 47.3% — no doubt a big play. But had he failed, the team would’ve been fork-worthy with a mere 8.7% chance.

La Russa may sense that God is trying to teach him a lesson. Maybe. But we could be witnessing simply an extreme example of “luck,” or, more precisely, bad luck. Either way, we hope La Russa keeps picking himself off the floor and trying, trying again. If he succeeds, it could be his most creative and interesting work yet as a manager.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 5:12 pm and is filed under analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.