Our fearless predictions for the National League East — with wins included!

1. Phillies (92 wins): Champs are largely back intact, though injuries to Utley and Hamels are concerns. Replacing Burrell with Ibanez was a lateral move, but it makes the lineup more susceptible to lefthanded pitching (see division foes Johan Santana and Oliver Perez).
2. Mets (91 wins): Will the Mets ever live up to expectations? After Pythagorean winning 89 games last year and the Phillies 93, did the bullpen additions of K-Rod and JJ Putz close the gap of four games? We don’t think so.
3. Braves (84 wins): The were seven Pythagorean wins better than their actual record in 2008. With Vazquez and Lowe additions, they have the best pitching staff, starters and relievers included, in the division, if not the league, but not enough OBP in the outfield or first base. And it’s hard for Chipper to be lucky in both health and BABIP again.
4. Marlins (77 wins): Won’t roll over for anyone, as usual, with Ramirez and Uggla, but not enough experience all around to do much.
5. Nationals (60 wins): The Nats might contend someday if they could channel Howie Shanks like the Cardinals have done with Skip Schumaker and convert some of their outfielders to infielders. About five times over.

During Wednesday’s United Cardinal Bloggers Radio show, Nick from Pitchers Hit Eighth and Derrick Goold from Bird Land discussed what the Cardinals’ opening-day lineup might be. With the club seemingly settling into a routine in the last week, we thought we’d revisit a little exercise we tried last year around this time: Based on each player’s number of appearances in each lineup spot during spring, is it possible to project the opening-day lineup?

First, let’s look at the lineup spots each player has seen in games this spring (through Friday 3/27):

If it were simply a matter of most appearances at each position, the above order would pretty much be the regular lineup, subbing in the pitcher spot for Jason LaRue, who kind of hits like a pitcher, anyway. And that may very well be the regular order of things on most days. But specifically versus righthanders, the situation is a little less clear. Here are the splits vs. RHP; boldfaced names are our best guesses for the actual spot "winner":

Spots one through six seem to be set. But, obviously, Colby Rasmus (assuming he makes the team), can’t bat both seventh and ninth at once (where he has had the plurality of games started), and in the first place, he won’t even be in the lineup if Ankiel, Duncan and Ludwick are. So we should assume that Yadier Molina will bat seventh, especially since his relatively few appearances were simply a matter of him playing in the WBC this spring (and, incidentally, why Jason LaRue saw so much action). Despite TLR’s newly fickle attitude about batting the pitcher eighth, we’ll assume that the pitcher will indeed usually bat eighth against righties (for Nick’s sake, if nothing else). But that leaves the nine hole a mystery, other than that it will be whoever is playing third base (as is the case in today’s game against the Red Sox): Mather, Tyler Greene, Joe Thurston, David Freese? Take your pick. In the scenario that Rasmus does start, that lineup might include Thurston batting seventh and Rasmus ninth, as TLR has done three times this spring, with Ludwick being the odd-man out.

As the Cardinals will likely face Pittsburgh lefthander Paul Maholm on April 6, Tony La Russa will probably mix things up a bit. So what has he done in spring when facing a team with a lefthanded starter? The Cardinals have faced only five southpaws this spring, so the sample is limited, but here’s who played:

Ankiel has a career .255 GPA vs. LHP; Duncan a .202. So although Duncan has received more starts this spring vs. lefties, we find it hard to believe that he’ll play much at all against them in the regular season. Rasmus hasn’t had much of a platoon disadvantage in the minors — .288 GPA vs. RHP and .281 vs. LHP — so he’s a legitimate candidate for the ninth spot versus southpaws. And although Schumaker has been working on his approach against lefties this spring, the reality is that he has been awful against them in his major-league career, with a .172 GPA. Whether his veteran status compensates for that and affords him the starts over the rookie Rasmus is of course La Russa’s call. It’s entirely possible, too, that TLR can leverage Joe Mather’s two-way status and put him in the outfield and play the righthanded David Freese (or Barden, whoever makes the team) at third, keeping both Rasmus and Schumaker on the bench. In that scenario, then, Freese might bat eighth and the pitcher ninth.

As a final note, it’s interesting to see how the lineup has evolved over spring. Take Rick Ankiel and Chris Duncan, for example. Here are their game logs (dots indicate a LHP):

Both have jumped up two positions as spring has worn on, with Ankiel starting out as cleanup batter and moving to the two hole and Duncan bumping up into Ankiel’s old cleanup role. The turning point came a couple of days after Duncan tallied five total bases batting second and Ankiel four batting fourth on March 10. It’s a reminder than a lineup is always in some state of flux on a Tony La Russa team. At least this season, the Cardinals seem to have enough interchangeable parts to afford such interesting combinations.

It is easier to find four starting pitchers than five.

– Earl Weaver (from Weaver on Strategy, 1984)

Much discussion these days is given to a team’s lineup choices. But what about the other side of the ball — that is, the pitching rotation? What is the optimal way to order the pitching staff?

With Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Kyle Lohse, Todd Wellemeyer and Joel Pineiro slated as the Cardinals’ starting rotation having been "set well before a game is played," we’re tempted to play the old Sesame Street game: Which of these things is not like the other? Let’s look at their projected ERAs (averages of Bill James, CHONE, Marcel and ZiPS systems):

From their projected ERAs alone, the anticipated rotation order does not appear to be optimized. Furthermore, the Cardinals will likely continue an approach that has become the norm for three decades, but which does not seem to be an optimal way to use starting pitchers: The five-man rotation, which includes, of course, Pineiro.

Several years ago, Baseball Prospectus’s Rany Jazayerli wrote a compelling argument for the old four-man rotation, contending that the five-man confers neither the assumed health benefits nor improved performance on the field. In his research, Jazayerli found that one major reason that the five-man rotation fails is simply because it takes away starts from better pitchers and gives them to worse ones. Here’s his chart of average starts by rotation slot, using 1973 and 1999 as the examples:

Roughly eight starts were taken from a team’s top three pitchers and given to fifth or worse starters. So the question then is, does that distribution make a difference in the Cardinals’ case? To find out, we’ll have to estimate how many innings each starter will pitch at each slot. First, let’s do the numbers for the projected rotation based again on their average projections for Games Started and Innings, which will give us innings per start. We’ll assume that the mysterious sixth man will have an ERA worse than Pineiro (which we’ll put at 5.00), though admittedly, that is a big assumption (after all, Brad Thompson figures to have a 4.54 ERA).

Now that we have innings per start, we can apply those numbers to the number of starts each pitcher will make in each rotation, based on those 1973 and 1999 numbers:

Now we can estimate Wins Above Replacement (using the indispensible Sky Kalkman spreadsheet). First, let’s do the anticipated five-man rotation:

All right, not bad with 12.2 WAR. But what if the Cardinals reordered their starters by expected ERA and went with a 1973-style four-man rotation?

The four-man reordered rotation would yield 12.9 or .7 more wins that the current group. While an improvement, it’s not a very significant upgrade. Why? It would seem that the team lacks an ace pitcher who can work deep into games. Carpenter may offer excellent ERA, but he figures to go only 5.5 innings per start, whereas the league’s top pitchers, like Dan Haren and Tim Lincecum, lasted an average of 6.5 or more in 2008. However, on second look, Wainwright may actually fall into that category; his projections give him an unrealistically low IP/GS because he was a reliever in 2006. What if we assumed Wainwright were able to continue his average from 2007-08 of 6.4 IP/GS?

Now we’re talking, with 13.4 WAR, an improvement of 1.2 wins. It’s still not earth-shattering, but that’s about the difference that finagling with a lineup can make on the offensive side, so it’s worth considering. For all his cogitating over who is going to bat ahead of and behind Albert Pujols, Tony La Russa may want to spend some time on the pitching side of planning.

Joe Posnanski interviewed Albert Pujols for the cover article in the upcoming March 16, 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated. Today we entered the time machine known as pre-dated internet posting and read the article. Here are our reactions to a few selected passages.

"We’re in this era where people want to judge other people," Pujols says. "And that’s so sad." He would like to leave it with those three words—that’s so sad—but then people might wonder.

Right, we wouldn’t want to judge anyone for their actions, because that would mean that people would have to be responsible for their actions. This is of course the oft-used trope that confuses the word’s popular meaning of "feel morally superior to someone" and its denotation of "infer, think, or hold as an opinion; conclude about or assess." It’s convenient for Pujols to hide behind the former when he’s really talking about the latter.

So he continues: "But it’s like I always say, ‘Come and test me. Come and do whatever you want.’ Because you know what? There is something more important to me—my relationship with Jesus Christ and caring about others. More than this baseball. This baseball is nothing to me."

Pujols has been inviting people — not anyone who actually has been the recipient of a blood or urine sample, mind you — to test him since at least May 17, 2006, when he told the AP that Major League Baseball could test him for illegal drugs "every day if they want." It has now been 1029 days (or 2 years, 9 months, 22 days) since that interview in which he added "I’m happy with my career so far and what I’ve done in my career, and I don’t need anything extra." Gosh, it seems like we’ve heard that before somewhere. At any rate, it’s time for Pujols to put up — as in a blood sample — or shut up. We can only read this tripe so many times.

"I think deep down he does care," his wife, Dee Dee, says. "He really cares…. He wants to be a hero to people."

If Albert wants to be a hero — a real hero, not just a rich guy who gives a lot of money and things to people, as generous as that is — he’ll do the heroic thing and step across the Union line and voluntarily subject himself to the most stringent battery of tests. There’s nothing stopping him except ostracization from Don Fehr’s parties. As we’ve written before, the truly heroic Jackie Robinson faced a lot harsher consequences for what he did.

"They tried to ruin my image," he says [on why he felt so betrayed when a local television station sent a crew to his St. Louis restaurant to follow up on the charge that Pujols was named in baseball's Mitchell Report].

Perhaps the media acted irresponsibly. But let’s be honest about it: Baseball, from the commissioner’s office to the Players Union to owners to the clubhouse attendants — and, of course, the players — has done and is doing plenty to ruin its own image without any help from the media. Speaking of the local media, we’ll give a sawbuck to the first St. Louis CAG (Clubhouse-Access Guy) who asks Pujols why he doesn’t voluntarily get tested (heck, we could probably afford to make it $100). For his part, Posnanski peppers his hagiography with uncritical biographical narratives and pop-culture references. So much for hard-hitting journalism and speaking truth to power.

"I fear God too much to do any stupid thing like that."

If Pujols fears God, then why worry about standing up to a little human institution called the Players Union, in which Donald Fehr only thinks he’s God?

He also knows that more or less every player has denied using steroids. "We are under a dark cloud," he says. "Nobody believes anything [players say]."

That’s exactly right. Posnanski might’ve rejoined, "Can you give us one reason why we should believe you guys?" No one believes anything players say, so perhaps they should try doing something. You know, instead of, well, talking more.

"I make fun of him all the time," Dee Dee says. "It’s like he’s as pure a guy as you could possibly get."

Wow, we’re convinced. It doesn’t get any more compelling than testimony from a player’s wife.

"You know how I want people to remember me?" Pujols asks. "I don’t want to be remembered as the best baseball player ever. I want to be remembered as a great guy who loved the Lord, loved to serve the community and who gave back. That’s the guy I want to be remembered as when I’m done wearing this uniform. That’s from the bottom of my heart."

This is starting to sound a little too much like The Mark McGwire Defense, minus the God talk, for our tastes. Notice that there’s no mention of playing the game with integrity or playing it "clean," but only the red herring of "giving back," plus the modest-sounding denial of courting greatness.

Pujols knows that he cannot make people believe him. It is like Dee Dee says: "People just have to make up their own minds."

Yep. We’re going to. We’d be happy to change it. But even God worked miracles in history to prove that he was trustworthy of people’s faith. Albert Pujols needs to give us something to work with before simply demanding blind faith.

"The guy can do anything," La Russa says.

Yes, he can. But will he?

For the last couple of weeks, the United Cardinal Bloggers have been taking turns posing and replying to roundtable questions ranging from whether the team erred with Lohse’s contract to favorite non-Keith Hernandez mustaches. On our turn this week, we posed the following lighthearted yet, in our opinion, revealing question:

If you could customize the main scoreboard at Busch Stadium, what would you put on it and why? (e.g., specific different stats, minor-league news, pictures of player mustaches, etc.)

Following are the various responses from UCB members, whom we thank for their participation:

Obviously, selected quotes from the blog posts of the day.  : )

It would be nice to expand into some of the more esoteric stats, if you will.  (I say that from a layman’s perspective.  Some of the stats are probably vital to the sabermatrically inclinded.)  The way to educate the fan base is to put it out there.  Have them ask what VORP is or how you calculate OPS.

– Daniel Shoptaw, C70 at the Bat

I’ve always thought it would be good to have scores from the top three or four minor league affiliates, with maybe a blurb as to what the top prospect or two for that team did. Of course I’m sure most of you expected that to be my answer.

– Erik Manning, Future Redbirds, Play a Hard Nine

Definitely more shell-game-under-Cards-caps.  I kick ass at those.

More Kiss Kam. Because trying to explain via hand gestures that you are sitting next to your brother and NOT your boyfriend while an entire stadium tries to get you to kiss is really awesome.

Posted text messages that focus entirely on STDs.

– Andrea Reiher, Bugs and Cranks

I like the idea of expanded stats. How cool would it be to have a short video of Adam Wainwright explaining k/9 and why it matters? Then they could start working that kind of info into the mix.

Obviously, more kiss cam, and, Andrea, sitting next to your brother does not disqualify you for the kiss cam in MO.

– Ryan, Cardinals Diaspora

I’ve not been to the new Busch Stadium.  Based on some grainy pictures from on line, though, I would mandate:

• Less blatant advertising chewing up scoreboard space.
• Numbers of the umpires working the game.  List of all umpires in MLB would also be included on the scorecards sold at the ballpark.  One of the unique features of the Dodger Stadium of my youth.  I’d like to know the name of the guy when he blows a call.  It would also give me a clue as to what kind of strike zone to expect walking into the game.
• Space to list who’s warming up in the bullpen – Instead of on one of the satellite scoreboards in the park.
• I’d shorten the lineups to the player number and position.  The stadium emcee announces the player’s name before every at bat, and the scorecard insert includes their name with their number.  I don’t need to stare at their name the entire game.

— Mike Metzger, Stan Musial’s Stance

I like Mike’s suggestion of listing who’s warming up in the ‘pen, and also Daniel’s idea for displaying lesser-known stats like OPS. I’d also include some random odd facts about the ballpark or the team or the player at-bat, things that maybe the majority of fans don’t know.

– Sarah Purkett, La Beisbolista

I like the odd facts idea. For example, so-and-so collects tropical fish or so-and-so played the role of the Cowardly Lion in a high school production of the Wizard of Oz.

— Deaner, Cardinal Nation Globe

In this time of even most casual fans understanding OPS, why not begin to include more run-influential stats?  BAvg is old news – show me OBP and OPS.  Show me BAbip for pitchers, so I know if Ryan Franklin is terrible or unlucky.

Perhaps most importantly, why not fielding statistics?  It often shocks me how much the casual fan underestimates defense in game outcomes.

Finally, how about some milestones that each player is chasing – IE ‘Albert Pujols needs X more HR to reach 400.’  I’m a history buff, what can I say?

Perhaps just showing something different each inning instead of the same stale stats – mix it up

– Nick, Pitchers Hit Eighth

History Nerds unite! I’m with you man — give me live updates on stats, no matter how trivial. I would even take it one step further and show Brett Wallace updates and a Jess Todd watch to the Big Show.

As much as it is probably a no-no, give me a Matt Holliday On-the-Move percentage when the trade deadline nears. I love competition and looking over your shoulder is never a bad thing in the baseball business.

– Josh, Redbirds Row

And how would we answer our own question? We’d still keep the scoreboard largely stats-oriented, but we’d change the stats a bit (big surprise, right?). Specifically, we’d replace the dinosaurs of Batting Average, Home Runs and RBI with On-Base Percentage, Total Bases and Runs Created. And for pitchers, readers know how we feel about Win-Loss records. We’d post ERA, FIP, K/9, K/BB and OBP Against. Speaking of pitchers, we’d love to see replays of the MLB Gameday pitch tracker — such as when a player strikes out, animated images of each pitch from the umpire’s point of view, with type of pitch, etc.

Finally, one of the best scoreboard ideas we’ve heard — in addition to several of our fellow UCBers above — comes from sometime Fungoes contributor Nate McKie, who has been quietly agitating for a plate-appearance-based Win-Probability to be displayed (also on TV), along with a running graph (a la Fangraphs) of the game’s WPA changes. How exciting would it be to give fans a statistical understanding of how each play bears on the outcome of a game? Not only would fans know just how improbable the Cardinal win back on July 5 was, they’d also be able to distinguish between cheap saves and clutch performances. Who knows — maybe fans would never be interested in seeing Saves or pitcher Wins ever again. One can dream, anyway.