Much is being made of the Cardinals’ camp having few "familiar faces" from its 2006 championship roster, with "only three starting position players" (Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina and Chris Duncan), as the FOXSports.com team report gloomily describes. We’ve heard the lament before about how few players teams have left from their winning seasons and have wondered what a reasonable expectation really is in terms of player retention these days. That is, first, do the Cardinals really have a relative few from their 2006 team in camp this spring, and, second, does it even matter?

Let’s start with some perspective. If we’re reviewing team-roster continuity over a two-year period, we might begin with the 2004 and 2006 Cardinal clubs. For all intents and purposes, the 2004 team was the best in baseball, and it was only two years later that the team returned to the World Series (and actually won it). Of that 2004 roster, 11 players who earned at least one win share were on the 2006 roster — here’s what they did back in 2004:

So of the 2004 team that earned 315 total win shares (105 wins), players responsible for 172 of those win shares — a full 55% of the team’s total — played at least some part on the 2006 winning bunch. Interestingly, however, the group didn’t provide as much punch in 2006 as they had two years earlier:

172 to 127 win shares — that’s a dropoff of 25% from the "core" players. What was slowly becoming clear in 2006 is obvious as we begin spring training in 2008: The team was built around a core of aging and/or injury-susceptplayers whose continued production at high levels was unlikely. So what about 2008? Which players in camp remain from the 2006 championship, and how important were they?

Of the 2006 team that tallied 249 win shares (83 wins), 14 players are returning (and that doesn’t even include Schumaker and Mulder), who were responsible for 133. That’s a lot fewer than the returning crew from 2004-2006, but it’s roughly the same in percentage terms (53%), and it’s more in terms of total number of players. So in terms of of a returning roster, the 2008 club isn’t really that much different a bunch from 2006 as the 2006 group was from 2004. Of course, the more important question is whether emulating an 83-win team is a good idea in the first place. But let’s go back to that dropoff in production from the "core" from 2004 to 2006. The other descriptor we’ve seen of the players in camp this spring is "young." Looking back at the 2006 "core," it’s not unreasonable to think that several of those players — that is, the ones on the happy side of age 27 — will perform at or greater than their levels two years ago. Pujols, of course, may not be a lock on 39 win shares, and certainly not Carpenter for 19 (double-digits will be a stretch). But we’ll wager that Duncan, Molina, Wainwright and Reyes (if he’s around) will easily exceed the 30 win shares they posted two years ago.

Later this week, we’ll review the roster continuity of some other playoff teams two years after their success to help determine how important the lack of turnover is.

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, February 18th, 2008 at 11:51 am 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.