Now that we’ve determined the competition that the would-be Cardinal LOOGys will be facing next season, let’s see which pitchers are best qualified for the job. With Trever Miller and Arthur Rhodes as possible LOOGy solutions, which one is a better fit? Given their records against the likeliest batters they’ll be pitching against, should Cardinal fans be welcoming Miller or Rhodes? Or both? Or neither? Let’s see their career work against the batters:

By those numbers — a .241 Gross-Production Average Against for Miller and .170 for Rhodes — both pitchers seem like good bets for next year; by comparison, the Cardinals’ two main LOOGys last season combined for a .260 GPA vs. lefties. But those stats aren’t really right, since they’re skewed by the batters that the pitchers have faced most often in their careers, not by how frequently they’ll face them in 2009. To weight them acccordingly, we’ll weight the GPAs by the number of anticipated plate appearanced vs. the Cardinals in 2009 — for reference, we’ll throw in Ron Villone, too:

Now, take these numbers with a grain of salt: Since the sample sizes are usually small for each batter, it’s hard to make too much of them. Still, it’s a reminder that different is not always better, especially when it comes to LOOGys. It’s possible that Ron Villone could do as good a job (or better) as either of the two guys that the Cardinals are dealing with now. The key to Villone’s mediocrity in 2008 was his usage: Righthanders had a .299 GPA off him, while lefties hit only .219. Unfortunately, TLR had him face more righties (121 PA) than lefties (108). If the team intends to hire someone who can face some righties, too (that is, isn’t really a true LOOGy), then perhaps that explains their pursuit of mssrs. Miller and Rhodes, each of whom had a better GPA split vs. righties last year (.272, .253, respectively).

This entry was posted by Pip on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008 at 3:04 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.