When the Cardinals traded for Khalil Greene this past winter — essentially acquiring the one remaining year on his contract at $6.5 million — it was a defensible move. Re-signing Greene for a contract beyond 2009, however, would be foolish.

After the dissatisfying all-glove, no-hit 2008 season from Cesar Izturis, the Cardinals were poised to upgrade at least offensively at shortstop in the offseason. The team didn’t have any major-league-ready prospects at the position and Tony La Russa seemed loathe to turn the reins over to Brendan Ryan. The market could only reasonably offer Greene, whose hitting had been in decline ever since his rookie year in 2004, but the Cardinals were willing to chance that Greene’s decreasing ability to reach base was due more to park factors than individual skill.

Given the small sample of the 2009 season, it would be unfair to write off Greene’s offense — or, more glaringly, his defense. Greene isn’t as bad as his five errors in the field or as bad as his .304-wOBA hitting have made him seem. But even when his defense steadies, which it’s bound to do, we’re not looking at much defensive upside: As Dave Cameron noted at the time of the trade, “expect Greene to be something like a league average defensive shortstop or maybe a tick above.” It’s also worth noting that the hope-inspiring .408 BA that Greene had in Spring was illusory: on the regular season, he’s creating only 3.30 RC27, 14th in MLB (behind, yes, Cesar Izturis). The idea was that, if Greene could get away from the capacious Petco Park, he’d be less inclined to muscle up and would then level out his approach. However, Greene has continued his bad habits, with a GB-FB rate (.72) similar to his last three years in San Diego (as opposed to his rookie campaign of .80).

Then there’s the cost of Greene. After making $6.5 million in 2009, he is unlikely to take much, if any, of a pay cut. Beyond 2009, the question for the Cardinals at shortstop is the same as it is at every other position: What is the difference between the cost of a replacement and the value that replacement provides?

The answer to this is found in what the market offers and what the Cardinals already have in their system. In some ways, the team could find itself in a repeat of where they were at the end of the 2008 season — needing to turn to the marketplace — except for a couple of big differences: They’ll know more about Ryan and Tyler Greene, currently with a .412 OBP at Memphis. While neither projects do be much of an impact on offense, both are skilled and versatile fielders. The team could save around $5 million opting for an in-house shortstop while not losing much on either side of the ball.

So unless Greene — Khalil, that is — returns to his rookie-year form for the rest of the 2009 campaign, the Cardinals would be wise to turn either to the marketplace for another a la carte selection or to their own organization. Whereas the Cardinals couldn’t have been criticized for acquiring Greene in the first place — he represented a bargain based on his salary (1.25 wins) and projected output (2 wins) — they would be unwise to continue the arrangement. While the free-agent opportunities will be scarce, the Cardinals will find that Khalil Greene is replaceable from within, at a fraction of the cost.

Following Todd Wellemeyer, whom we’ve cited in this space for his three-true-outcome pitching propensity, in the rotation, Joel Pineiro took the mound against the Mets and pitched to contact. A lot of it. Pineiro got the Mets to put the ball in play, but kept it in the park, facing 30 batters en route to the team’s 5-2 win Wednesday.

It was an intriguing performance, given that Pineiro had such little apparent control over the outcome of the game. He struck out none and walked only two. With two-seam fastballs and changeups (in 2009, Pineiro is throwing his changeup more than twice as often as he did in 2008), Pineiro induced 17 ground balls en route to a team defensive-efficiency ratio of .786. It was a seemingly amazing 93.3% balls put in play. So how unique a feat was it?

Well, courtesy of BRef, here is a list of Cardinal players since 1954 who faced at least as many batters as Pineiro and had an even higher percentage of balls put in play (of total batters faced):

If nothing else, it’s a fascinating list of stars (Morris, Tudor, Gibson) and also-rans (Lary Sorensen, Lynn McGlothen and Tom Poholsky). It’s amazing that three Cardinal starters have had pitched a game in which every batter put the ball in play. So Pineiro still has a ways to go to top the venerable Jim Kaat (who, incidentally, was a similarly nimble fielder at his position), who faced 36 Pirates back in 1980. But at least the Cardinals won Pineiro’s game: Kaat allowed two one-out singles in the 10th inning at Three Rivers Stadium, then induced a ground ball. But the Cardinals couldn’t turn a double play and the runner scored from third. Sometimes, a strikeout is indeed better than a ball in play, and it’s better to be good than lucky.

We joked recently that Skip Schumaker is picking up "fielding saves" by moving to left field late in games when the Cardinals wanted to protect a lead. Little did we know how much he would be used in such a role until we, you know, did some research.

Of course, there’s no such thing as a fielding save, and despite our efforts in this post, do we think one should seriously exist (our hatred for the pitching save being well-known). But in an attempt to amuse ourselves and perhaps a reader or two (yes, we’re looking at you, Bernie), let’s codify the fielding save:

• Player cannot be a starter at the position where he finishes
• Player must be in the field for the team’s final defensive out
• Player must enter the game with a tie or lead
• Player m ust not commit an error at the new position

That should be good enough to begin. Happily, the Cardinals have had several wins already on the young season, and many more games in which they’ve taken leads or ties into the late innings; in 10 of their 13 total games, they’ve led or been tied at the start of the 7th inning. In addition to the relief pitching, the team has relied on a sturdier defense, with Brian Barden and Joe Thurston joining Schumaker as relief fielders.

So who has racked up the most?

The team has had at least one fielding save in all but two games; remember, unlike the pitching save, the team doesn’t have to actually win. It’s a fun way for TLR to keep players fresh — and to help out the struggling relief corps.

When the pitcher’s spot in the Cardinals’ order came up in the ninth inning of Tuesday’s loss to the Diamondbacks, the Cardinals’ win expectancy was around 71.3%, according to Fangraphs.com (72.6% according to Walkoffbalk). The bases were loaded with one out, and the score was tied. Given the options of Brendan Ryan and Ryan Ludwick, Tony La Russa then decided to pinch-hit with the Flyin’ Irishman.

What happened after that was of course important but not the concern of this post. Rather, we’d like to analyze the wisdom of the decision-making that went into the choice of Ryan over Ludwick, who, after all, created 8.2 runs per game last year. One of the reasons that TLR gave was that he was concerned with the batter hitting into a double play, and rightly so: "I felt good about him [Ryan] putting the ball in play, he wasn’t going to be doubled." Indeed, a GIDP would’ve killed the rally and sent the game into the bottom half of the ninth, giving the Diamondbacks a roughly 66% chance of winning.

One problem with this logic is that it was Ludwick and not Ryan who offered a better chance of avoiding a double-play grounder. While Ryan is a speedier runner, his rate of actually hitting into double plays so far in his MLB career — 1.6% — is higher than Ludwick’s — 1.1%. But it’s possible that those numbers contain some noise. After all, how many chances has each player had at grounding into a twin killing? Let’s attempt to normalize those by using their splits with runners on base in a GIDP-possible situation (runner on first, on first and second, on first and third, or bases loaded):.

This, of couse, makes sense, given that Ryan hits nearly half of his balls in play on the ground (48.9% GB rate), whereas Ludwick does so less than a third of the time (30.1 GB%).

So Ludwick, since he is less of a GIDP risk, is the clear choice, right? Not so fast. Another bad outcome, though not quite as bad, is the strikeout. In this, Ryan has the advantage, striking out only 12.3% of his PAs, whereas Ludwick is nearly twice that at 23.9%. So what is a manager to do?

Probably make a quick decision, based on a combination of intuition and anecdotal memory. After all, managers don’t have the luxury of Baseball-Reference when they’re in the dugout like we in the scribbling class do. But in his free time, he or one of his assistants might use those percentages along with win-probability numbers and try to come to a reasoned conclusion. Assuming that the chance of all other events is equal (a big assumption, granted), who is a better bet to win the game: a player who strikes out seldom but is a more likely DP candidate, or a player who is strikeout-prone but unlikely to hit into a double?

Let’s do a probability exercise. According to Fangraphs, a strikeout would result in a 53.2% win expectancy for the Cardinals, whereas a GIDP would be 35.6%. If we multiply each of those by each player’s likelihood of achieving them, then add them together with the chance of something else happening– anything other than a strikeout or GIDP — we can figure out who would’ve been the better bet. A couple of big assumptions: First, as we mentioned, we’ll set the "other" value the same for each player, and, second, we’ll set that value at 60.0%:

As Mel Allen would say, how ’bout that?! Strictly based on their rates of striking out and grounding into double plays, Ryan and Ludwick were equal chances for success in the ninth inning last night. Whether Ludwick represented a better chance at succeeding in one of those "other" events is another question, but La Russa certainly didn’t need to apologize for his decision, at least based on the concern about putting the ball in play. Moreover, the higher one estimates the WE of the "other" value, Ryan improves in comparison.

Of course, as providence would have it, Ryan — you guessed it — struck out. The lesson? Perhaps it’s that neither TLR nor the hypercritical fans and media should get too bent out of shape over it, especially without at least considering some numbers.

Not every rookie breaks into the majors as smoothly as Colby Rasmus, who had two hits and a walk, did Tuesday night. Take, for instance, the Pirates’ Donnie Veal, who walked Rasmus in the fifth inning of the Cardinals’ 9-3 win. Veal had previously in the inning served a center-cut piece of meat to the first batter he faced in the major leagues, Yadier Molina, who smoked it for a home run. But even players who enjoy successful baseball careers get off to rocky starts — the Cardinals’ own Ricky Horton surrendered a circuit clout to his first batter. What distinguished Veal last night was his knack for keeping the ball out of the realm of his fielders: None of the seven batters he faced put the ball in play, and given the stone-glove work of Bucs’ third baseman Andy LaRoche (three errors in the first two games), one could hardly blame him.

After Molina’s home run, Veal either struck out (each on a dropped third strike) or walked the rest of the batters he faced before yielding to Sean Burnett, who unwisely let his defense try to help out (for the game, the Pirates had a below-average .583 Defense-Efficiency Rate). Here’s the sequence of Veal’s fifth inning:

• Molina homered to deep center
• Thurston struck out swinging
• Lohse struck out swinging
• Schumaker walked
• Rasmus walked
• Pujols walked
• Duncan struck out looking

As impressive as Veal’s pitching three-true-outcomes was, we had no idea how rare it was. We had to go back to 2004 to find a truer three-outcome performance, which was eight batters faced by Jorge Sosa. Here are the top TTO-only performances since 2004:

*Included a caught stealing

Though some are hoping that Veal leaves on a high note, it’s possible that he can top Sosa’s effort, if he sticks with this baseball thing. After all, he’s still young, and, with the less-than-nimble Ryan Doumit behind the plate, Veal someday might even rack up eight strikeouts alone without ever even recording an out.