Kyle Lohse pitched around shoddy plays by Felipe Lopez and Ryan Ludwick in the first inning and through a potentially dangerous Arizona lineup to help the Cardinals ensure themselves a .500 season. It looked like he was painting the black most of the night, with the exceptions being hit for a couple of hard home runs (both with a lead, we should note). The linchpin in the lineup is Adam Dunn, and it was Lohse’s ability to deal with the big bopper that saved his outing. In the first, Lohse intentionally walked Dunn to get to the much lesser batters Justin Upton and Chris Young, and kept Dunn in the park (barely) in the third, and struck him out swinging in the fifth. Let’s see how Lohse did it (not including the four intentional balls):

Not surprisingly, Lohse kept out of the middle of the plate and worked on the inner and outer edges of the zone. That’s a good strategy generally, but looking at Dunn’s "hot zones" courtesy of Fox Sports, Lohse (and Jason La Rue) was spot-on:

The blue fastball dot with the red ring around it in the first chart was the pitch that Dunn hit to the warning track in the third (not surprisingly). Other than that, Lohse’s pitched to Dunn’s textbook with pinpoint accuracy, working him inside and low-and-away, his weakest places. This season, Lohse has struck us as a pitcher whose strong asset is control, and his work against Dunn anecdotally bears that out.

• At the time, we questioned the judgment of having Nick "No Stick?" Stavinoha sac bunt in the sixth. With the Cardinals up 5-3 and Ludwick on first with none out — for an initial win expectancy of 86.4% — the successful bunt cost them WE: afterward, the Cardinals’ chance of winning was 85.6%. We know that the team is having a hard time filling the corner outfield spots these days, but is bunting really what Nick Stavinoha is up here for? Can someone explain this?
• Another dubious move was sending the runners with two strikes on Ludwick in the seventh inning. They didn’t have a whole lot to gain, and Ludwick strikes out a lot (24% of the time, compared to MLB average of 18%).
• While we’re on the subject of TLR boners, bringing in Ryan Franklin for the "save" was pretty bush-league. Chris Perez, who admittedly isn’t exactly Bruce Sutter yet, had just gotten the second out of the eigth inning and the Diamondbacks had cut the lead to 7-4. But the Cardinals’ WE was 94.8% — not really anything to worry about. Why not give Perez an opportunity to grow a little out there?
• Noob, a coworker of ours who attended the game, noted that Albert Pujols "hits the ball harder than anyone else." Evidence? Chris Young broke in on Pujols’s third-inning line drive, only to almost lose it over his head.
• Speaking of Phat, he fulfilled Derrick Goold’s bold prediction that he would earn 100 walks this season (though not quite as quickly).
• How is it that in seven games vs. the Diamondbacks the Cardinals will have avoided Dan Haren this season? It must be proof that God is merciful.

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 3:23 pm and is filed under by the numbers. 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.