What is it with starting pitchers spurned by the Cardinals? Last April, erstwhile Cardinal hurler and persona non grata Jason Marquis faced down his former mates, pitching seven innings, walking none and striking out five. And last night, Kip Wells, golden boy of the St. Louis media, returned triumphantly to freeze out most of the Cardinal bats. Wells actually didn’t pitch as well as the scoreboard indicated and was actually outpitched by Kyle Lohse, as their FIGS — Fielding-Independent Game Score — show:

Though the walks marred his record, two of the three that Lohse allowed were somewhat excusable: the first was to Holliday, with a man on third in the first inning, and the other was to Tulowitzki, who, well, if you can limit him to a walk, you’re ahead of the game. Some other notes from Opening Day Night:

• McClellan debuted with authority. It wasn’t an easy intro to the bigs, facing brawny Matt Holliday with a one-run lead in the sixth. But McClellan blew a high-and-tight fastball in on Holliday on his first major-league pitch, then promptly threw a nasty pitch on the outside corner that Holliday waved at. Nice start, kid.
• If it was a good start to McClellan’s season, it was a dubious one for TLR’s. Threatening to turn a potential strength into a weakness, La Runcan mismanaged the bullpen, probably bringing his relievers into the game in the wrong order. Facing the bottom third of the Colorado lineup in the seventh, TLR wasted Springer, who last year was the team’s second-best reliever (considering his innings). That left Ryan Franklin to pitch to the heart of the Rockies’ lineup, most of whom had had success against him in the past. In turn, it forced Flores into an extended appearance. Flores is notoriously bad with RISP and the bases loaded, and Springer, on account of his being a power pitcher, is much more adept in those situations. The more general point is that you want to deploy your best relievers — which we see in descending order as Isringhausen, Springer, Franklin and Flores — in the most critical moments. Last season, TLR misused Springer and Flores:
  

  Reliever	pLI	WPA
  Russ Springer	0.77	1.52
  Randy Flores	0.79	-0.76
  Ryan Franklin	1.27	1.54
  Jason Isringhausen	1.32	2.7

  In 2007, Flores saw more critical at-bats — pLI — than Springer yet produced a negative Win-Probability Added. Similarly, yesterday, Flores and Franklin were pitching with the game on the line, while Izzy and Springer were relegated to relatively inconsequential moments in the game (though we did like seeing Izzy in the game in a non-Save situation to keep the game close):

  Reliever	pLI
  Jason Isringhausen	0.57
  Kyle McClellan	1.05
  Russ Springer	2.10
  Ryan Franklin	2.76
  Randy Flores	4.01

  Let the Wednesday-morning managing begin!

• ‘Roiders Row, the 3-4-5 batters in the lineup vs. righties (Pujols, Ankiel and Glaus), went 1-for-11 with a walk.
• Speaking of Springer, the guy had to have led the team in swinging-strike percentage. He’s got a good start on 2008, too: We had five of his nine strikes as swinging.
• Albert Pujols made his fifth opening-day start at first base and eighth overall. He’s halfway to the team record for first basemen:
  

  Player	Yrs
  Bottomley	10
  Hernandez	9
  White	6
  Konetchy	6
  Mize	5

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 4:38 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.