A couple of weeks ago, Adam Wainwright noted that he needed to change the release point in his delivery. Prior to that, he wasn’t awful, but he certainly wasn’t the Wainwright that the team or fans had become accustomed to. He was striking out 7.19 per nine innings but languishing with a middling 4.35 ERA, a ho-hum 1.09 HR/9 and an utterly unacceptable 4.57 BB/9.

Since then, however, he has been a new man, or, rather, more like his old self: In his last three games, including Tuesday’s 8-1 victory over the Brewers, Wainwright has a hefty 8.75 K/9, a minuscule 0.76 ERA, a 1.90 BB/9 and a 0.38 HR/9.

So how did he do it? Was that release-point business just some mumbo-jumbo that the coaching staff had put into Wainwright’s head, or did he really make a change to his delivery, resulting in improved pitching? Thanks to the uber-cool pitch F/X tool at Brooks Baseball, we can see whether and just how much Wainwright has changed his delivery. The following graphic shows the release points in each of Wainwright’s starts this year — pay attention to the change that occurs between his May 10 and May 16 starts:

During his first seven starts, Wainwright’s release point was inconsistent, higher (around the seven-foot mark) and more directly over his head (about a foot off-center). But beginning with his May 16 start — his first after acknowledging the change — his release point has consistently been down and to the side more — about six inches to a foot each way.

Perhaps interestingly, the release-point change isn’t resulting in much change to his curveball — the average horizontal break is 6.81 (was 7.18 prior to 5/16) and the vertical break is -9.44 (was -9.07). But check out his two-seam fastball (or what Gameday considers his two-seam fastball):

The two-seamer is moving more, sliding more, as it were: The average horizontal break runs in on righties (away from lefties) about two more inches, from -7.05 to -8.92, and the vertical change is is almost as much, going from 9.46 down to 7.55.

So the early returns indicate that Wainwright has indeed changed his release point, and for the better. It appears that it has particularly benefited his two-seam fastball. Kudos to both Wainwright and Dave Duncan. That’s more like the Adam Wainwright of old.

[Editor's note: This is the eighth inning of the United Cardinal Bloggers' progressive game blog. You can also read about the seventh inning, the ninth inning and every other inning of the game.]

Kyle Lohse picked up in the eighth inning of Saturday’s game against the Royals where he had left off in the seventh, inducing a harmless groundout to himself. The play underscored Lohse’s self-sufficiency throughout the game, as he took care of almost a third of the not-so-Royal batters (nine of 29) himself either via strikeout (six), assist (two) or putout (one). Like his friends in the Cardinal rotation this week, Lohse was also efficient with his pitches, throwing only 86 entering the eighth inning. During the five-man cycle, starting with Joel Pineiro on Tuesday, the rotation averaged a mere 3.50 pitches per plate appearance:

For a club whose pitchers already are among the majors’ most efficient, the work of this week was exemplary. Then again, mere pitch efficiency doesn’t necessarily translate into success: After all, Washington’s pitchers lead the league in P/PA but also in walks. It can, however, mean that a pitcher’s defense is more lively, and Lohse kept his fielders in the game, especially centerfielder Colby Rasmus, who traced a sinking line drive from Coco Crisp, the second batter of the inning, like an eagle plucking its prey. Lohse then froze David DeJesus with a 92-mph fastball on the low-and-inside corner, the fifth of five pitches in the at-bat in DeJesus’s coldest zone (inset shows batting average by zone):

Lohse’s control was impeccable to the last.

Lohse’s precision was a contrast to what took place in the bottom half of the inning, when erstwhile LOOGy Ron Mahay, who had entered the game in the seventh to pitch to three of four Cardinal lefties and yielded an inherited run, remained in to face Brendan Ryan (in for a fielding save) leading off the Cards’ half of the eighth. If Mahay couldn’t get the job done in platoon-favorable matchups (he is 20 Gross-Production Average points better vs. lefties), he wouldn’t fare much better against the string of righties due up. The Flyin’ Irishman slammed a double to the wall and yet the Royals’ bullpen remained quiet, manager Trey Hillman apparently content to leave Mahay to go down with the sinking ship. Yadier Molina bailed him out temporarily with a sac bunt (another in a rash of non-positive win-probability bunts this week, including Lohse’s -.008 WPA in the fourth and Tyler Greene’s -.003 in the seventh), sending Ryan to third.

After Mahay, forced to do his best 2008 Ron Villone impression, walked Brian Barden, the normally conservative Tony La Russa, perhaps a glutton for another shutout for one of his starting pitchers, sent Lohse up to the plate. At that point, the Cardinals had about a 99% chance of winning the game, and Lohse bunted at and missed the first pitch. Advancing one or even both of the runners isn’t going to do much for the team’s win probability — the game was already in the bag. TLR needed to ask himself, is the risk of my starting pitcher being injured for the sake of a few 10ths of a percent win-probability added worth it? Of course, it’s a 20-20 hindsight question, since Mahay plunked Lohse on the next pitch, and Lohse didn’t return to pitch the ninth. As he started toward first base, Lohse glared at Mahay, who perhaps was retaliating for Lohse dotting Jose Guillen with a fastball in the sixth. On the other hand, Mahay walked three batters, so he maintains plausible deniability.

Mahay walked Greene to force in the Cardinals’ fifth run but finally gathered himself and retired southpaws Skip Schumaker and Rasmus. All tallied, Hillman had hung Mahay out for 11 batters, of whom only five were lefties. Sure, Hillman’s relief corps is without the services of Joakim Soria, but exactly what part of Lefthanded One-Out Guy doesn’t the Royals’ manager understand?

In Tuesday night’s slump-breaking win over the Cubs, Cardinal centerfielder Colby Rasmus rose to the occasion with a Ruthian home run in the bottom of the fifth. The two-run blast was the game’s biggest play, boosting the home team’s win expectancy by a consequential 19% to 87%.

Earlier, Rasmus had executed a more dubious win-expectancy play, sacrifice bunting Brendan Ryan to second on the Cardinals’ second plate appearance of the game (subtracting 2% from their WE). But the two events — a home run and a sacrifice bunt — in the same game represent an achievement that we are oddly enamored of and that relatively few have been able to pull off. Since 1955, the Cardinals have had a player with both a sac bunt and a home run in the same game 75 times (a little more than one a year), including notables such as Ozzie Smith, Tom Herr (Rasmus’s uniform number-sake), Garry Templeton, Bake McBride and Darrell Porter. Of those, 15 players have turned the trick multiple times:

It’s a curious list, with five pitchers and three Hall of Famers. Being able to both go yard and bunt seems to indicate some level of bat control, and while the ability to do both in one game is a bit flukish, interestingly all of the position players played at least 10 seasons in the majors (including Yadier Molina, who is on his way). That bodes well for Rasmus, assuming he has another such game ahead.

As Mike Shannon might say, a baseball game broke out at the beanfest Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. In the Cardinals’ 7-1 loss to the Pirates, the two teams combined to hit three batters, after a homestand in which the Cardinals endured seven HBPs in four games.

Todd Wellemeyer’s arch attempt to dot Freddy Sanchez notwithstanding, Cardinal pitchers haven’t kept pace with the number of the team’s batters’ beanings. Predictably, this has led to the complaint that Tony La Russa’s teams need to do more to protect their own. Assuming that the best way to either deter or avenge plunking is to hit batters as often as one’s own batters are hit, does the data back up the claim that TLR’s Cardinal teams are soft?

Let’s look at HBP rates for the Cardinals since La Russa joined the club for the 1996 season. We’ll consider the rate at which the team’s batters have been hit compared to the rate at which its pitchers have hit opposing hitters:

With a rate of getting hit double that which they are returning (or is it initiating?) the favor, the Cardinals are definitely looking weak so far in 2009. But historically, the TLR-led team has not exhibited proclivity toward sissiness. In fact, their pitchers have often outpaced the league average and their own batters’ HBP rates. For the 13-year period (plus 2009), Cardinal pitchers hit batters at a rate of about one every 100 batters, 9% more often than the league average (0.90%) and about 8% more than their own batters have been numbered (0.91%); they’ve outplunked the league every year since 1997. Furthermore, there hasn’t been any recent trend that would suggest that the team has made a policy of backing down: since 2005, Cardinal pitchers have hit opposing batters more often than their own batters have been hit. If anything, the staff during La Russa’s tenure has been a relative band of headhunting thugs.

So it’s reasonable to expect that the team will reclaim its territory and respect by gradually cutting into its “HBP deficit.” It may not begin tonight, on account of the heightened awareness of the umpires, but look for the team’s pitchers to assert themselves this weekend. If, come the All-Star break, the team is still getting pegged twice as often as they’re dishing it out, perhaps the pitching staff needs a good talking-to — or a fresh face or two.

After hitting a home run in yesterday’s win, Albert Pujols has 11 home runs and only nine strikeouts on the 2009 season. Homering more than striking out is one of those feats that is an unheralded — perhaps owing to the fact that it’s so seldom done — but telltale sign of greatness in a hitter. After all, it’s a measure of how often a player accomplishes the best batting outcome over against how often he utterly fails. Having more home runs than strikeouts (min. 30 home runs) has occurred fewer times than hitting for the cycle, hitting 50 home runs in a season and getting six hits in a game. Seventeen of the 26 seasons in which is has happened belong to Hall of Famers. And it hasn’t been done by a player not on steroids since 1956.

All that is to say that, for all of his feats, Pujols has yet to accomplish perhaps his most monumental. Twenty-eight games into the season, Pujols still has a long way to go to join the following legendary seasons in which a player has hit as many home runs as times he struck out (min. 30 home runs):

Phat likely won’t beat the Yankee Clipper’s 2.31 ratio of home runs to strikeouts, which may be the most unreachable record in baseball these days. Still, to even make it on the list in this free-swinging era is laudable. After all, even if Pujols is something less than all-natural, PEDs don’t do much for you if you don’t make contact. Will Pujols join fellow Cardinals Stan Musial and Rogers Hornsby this year? It’s a feat worth following.