When the headlines are that Chris Carpenter had surgery and Yadier Molina won a Gold Glove, it’s a slow week in baseball. So, of course, baseball observers everywhere turn to the time-honored November tradition of trade speculation. The big what-if from Friday is whether the Cardinals should or could trade Ryan Ludwick in a deal for the Rockies’ Matt Holliday. A few remarks:

• First, it’s possible that John Mozeliak is merely creating buzz for Ludwick. By associating Ludwick’s name with Holliday, Ludwick’s perceived market value increases.
• Just how big is Holliday’s home-road gap? We eschew batting average, since it has more noise than OBP, so we’ll use Gross Production Average, which combines OBP and SLG more intelligently than OPS. Holliday’s numbers then:
  

  	OBP	SLG	GPA
  Home	.423	.645	.352
  Away	.348	.455	.270

  His road production is about 77% of his home.

• And just how much of an advantage could Coors Field be? Let’s look at the average Batting Park Factors since Holliday debuted (2004), courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com:
  

  Team	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	BPF
  ARI	105	103	105	106	107	105
  ATL	101	101	100	97	99	100
  CHC	103	104	103	104	106	104
  CIN	98	100	104	104	104	102
  COL	113	112	109	108	107	110
  FLA	95	94	95	97	99	96
  HOU	102	101	100	99	98	100
  LAD	95	98	101	104	100	100
  MIL	100	101	101	101	100	101
  NYM	99	98	98	97	99	98
  PHI	105	105	105	105	103	105
  PIT	99	99	98	98	95	98
  SDP	90	92	91	91	89	91
  SFG	101	101	100	100	102	101
  STL	100	101	99	99	99	100
  MON/WAS	105	95	94	94	101	98

  Unquestionably, batters benefit from playing in Coors Field, even in the post-humidor era. But let’s do some rough math: Holliday’s road GPA is .270. Considering that the average park factor for his road games is about 99.4, his "adjusted" or "real" road GPA could be said to be .272. Now consider the ameliorative effects of Coors, and his home-adjusted GPA increases to .297. That’s a big jump, but nowhere near the .352 home GPA that Holliday actually has. Translation: Holliday’s numbers reflect more than a simple boost from what Coors offers from a park-factor standpoint.

• It’s a bit myopic for fans and writers to obsess about Holliday’s home-road splits, when Ryan Ludwick himself has a not-insignificant career home-road inequity. At home, Ludwick has a .300 GPA; on the road, it’s .269, which is about 90% of his home production. What, you say, Ludwick’s numbers don’t represent a reliance on a particular park, as he has called Jacobs Field and Rangers Ballpark home in addition to Busch? That’s precisely the point with Holliday: Since Holliday’s entire career has been played with Coors Field as his home field, it’s impossible to know whether his splits represent a park-influenced number or simply a home-park influence. That is, Holliday could simply hit better when he’s at home, wherever that home is. Granted, it’s certainly suspicious that his home park is easily the most batter-favorable park in the league, but, logically speaking, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it is the reason for his production gap.
• Holliday is the poster child for home-road inequity. But we’ve never read anything about the similarly disparate home-road splits over the same period (since 2004) for such notables as Rafael Furcal, whom some have on their offseason wish list for the Cardinals and who has produced only 81% of his home GPA on the road, Craig Biggio, considered by many as a future Hall of Famer, who has 79% Oh, and is anyone going to mention that Aaron Miles (86%) can’t hit on the road, either? (Insert your own joke here.)
• At any rate, strategically speaking, we prefer the idea of trading Ludwick for young middle-infield help (such as the rumored Kelly Johnson deal). Given the reality that shortages among corner-outfielders rarely occur (that’s the reason Ludwick is expendable in the first place), and that 2B and SS are so far at the right end of the defensive spectrum, a second baseman whose offense is less than Ludwick’s can still be a very good deal.
• With the supposed complication for a Holliday trade being the need for reaching a contract extension, we think we’d rather trade for Holliday _without_ the extension. He’s a year younger than Ludwick, and all of his last three years were better than Ludwick’s best. And Ludwick has a history of injury. The only reason Ludwick is more valuable is long-term, and the Cardinals would exacerbate that loss by paying more money for a declining Holliday, post-2009.

Smelling a rat
We briefly touched on Whitey Herzog’s bizarre "World Series Week” idea last week, but his plan is so wacko that it deserves further critique. Among the planks:

• The World Series would be played at an MLB-built grass-field, retractable-roof stadium in a neutral Central time zone city, such as Nashville, Tenn.
• The stadium would be large enough for every season ticketholder of the two competing teams would have a chance to buy a ticket to the Series.

Some of the ideas — more accommodating start times, beginning the series on Saturday, having an afternoon game — are very reasonable. But like many bad ideas, the overall proposal sprinkles some good with some very bad, the worst of which is Herzog’s neutral-site concoction, which itself is based on flawed logic:

“You’ve got the old school people in baseball who say that you’re taking the World Series away from the home fans and all that,” he said. “That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. If you’re really going to be honest, the hometown fans (because of high ticket prices) don’t get to see the World Series anyway.”

Our understanding (and first-hand experience) is that plenty of hometown fans get to attend the World Series; we dare say that the vast majority of fans at the games are locals, or at least regionals. We’re sympathetic to Herzog’s concern that MLB is currently cutting off its future with young and even dedicated adult fans with some of its policies (though we disagree with Herzog’s methodology for determining the national pastime). But playing the World Series at a neutral site isn’t the answer. We don’t necessarily know the answer ourselves, but we proposed a couple of weeks ago that it might have to do with revamping the current playoff format, which rewards second-place teams, draws out the playoffs and creates less-competitive World Series.

It’s funny that the White Rat is remembered in St. Louis for his "traditional" baseball approach, and yet his ideas these days are so avant garde as to be risible.

Bombs away
SI’s Joe Posnanski gives a sneak peek of a new stat from the forthcoming Bill James Handbook, one at which the Cardinal manager does well — "bombs," which is effectiveness of intentional walks as measured by multiple runs scoring after the walks:

Every year they add some great new statistic like one that breaks down how managers do their jobs… The best intentional walker? St. Louis’ Tony La Russa, of course. Only one out of 21 bombed.

Posnanski also notes the book’s baserunning ratings, which take into consideration non-stolen base running events. The best? Matt Holliday. No.4 was Kelly Johnson. Do we detect a strategy from Mozeliak?

For all you first-time callers, longtime readers
A few of the United Cardinal Bloggers will be participating in a live radio show on BlogTalkRadio this Wednesday starting at 9pm Central.. Be sure to tune in and/or give us a call. You can also listen to the inaugural radio show from 10/27.

The oozing blisters on his hand should be gone by Opening Day
St. Louis Cardinals Yadier Molina reacts to Gold Glove — Post-Dispatch headline

Breaking news from Sept. 23
St. Louis Cardinals make offseason plans — Post-Dispatch headline

He’s only 170 pounds as it is
Yankees chances at getting Mike Cameron slim — Newsday headline

In the offseason, he loves to play Pictionary
Closer Cordero drawing interest — MLB.com headline

Bottom stories of the week:
• More surgery for Carpenter — P-D headline
• Mozeliak making no immediate moves — MLB.com headline
• Mulder officially files for free agency — MLB.com headline
• Hawkins coming back to Houston — MLB.com headline

We have a winner
We offer belated kudos to Nate McKie for winning our second-annual playoff fantasy challenge. His team — the Wild Card Rocks! — tallied a total of 134.9 Runs Created:

Fellow blogger C70 at the Bat was second with 111.8 Runs Created. The key to Nate’s win seems to have been Jason Werth, who was overlooked by all the other "managers." For his prize, Nate gets a guest post on Fungoes. So congrats on a well-earned win, but mark our words: It’s the last time we let a Wild Card team win our little contest.

This entry was posted by Pip on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 9:58 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.