Much recent debate has centered on the Cardinals’ need for an infusion of offensive firepower, particular in the infield. But until the teams brings in (or up) a new player, how can the team optimize the players it currently has?

Today we’ll focus on the Cardinal infield, sans Albert Pujols, whom we’ll pen in as the lone constant in the lineup. The principle players and their splits by handedness are as follows:

For the purposes of our analysis, we rated the various combinations without regard to defense, which admittedly is no small concern. Another not-insignificant note: We used players’ to-date stats; therefore, some sample size (see Joe Thurston’s split v. LHP) concern is in order. We used David Pinto’s inimitable lineup-analysis tool to run some OBP and SLG numbers for the various combinations of the team’s current infielders to see how many runs above or below league average they would generate. We used the following NL figures (as of 6/15):

So which is the best infield combination to play against righthanded pitchers?

Sadly, the best the Cardinals can do with their current group is 10 runs below average (for the season), or about one win. Clearly, the Schumaker-Ryan-Barden group is the best and should be playing every day against righties. After that, the difference is fairly neligible until you start including Khalil Greene in the equation, at which point any combination with K-Greene is bad. Why anyone is considering the bizarro Ozzie Smith for a move to the hot corner is beyond us.

So that’s a theoretical look. In practice, Tony La Russa has employed the Schumaker-Ryan-Barden combination three times (4/23, 5/22 and 5/30), including against one lefty. The Cardinals won all three of those games.

Okay, so what about the platoon against lefties?

Here the Cardinals seem to have a competitive advantage, to the tune of eight wins above average. However, it’s based largely on that dubious platoon split from Thurston. He’s only had 34 plate appearance vs. southpaws this season and 44 in his major-league career (in which he has an even more impressive .442/.568 line). Yet even in his minor-league career, in which he had 528 ABs against portsiders, he didn’t exhibit much of a platoon differential (.345 OBP vs. LHP, .358 vs. RHP), so it’s not entirely a farce this year. At any rate, for all their troubles against lefties this year — they are 14th in the league in OBP against them — the Cardinals can mitigate that with a correctly configured infield, which is to say, an infield that routinely includes Tyler Greene and Brendan Ryan. Though it goes against platoon-advantage precepts, righties Brian Barden and Khalil Greene have not done well against lefties and shouldn’t be part of the rotation (unless Barden is facing Sean Marshall).

In case you’re wondering, TLR has yet to use the Ryan-TGreene-Thurston trio this season, despite trying 49 different defensive arrangements (not including pitchers) in 64 games so far. So perhaps he hasn’t alighted on the magic combo yet but will.

Speaking of conjury, if the Cardinals were to magically land Mark DeRosa from the Indians (the trade object du jour), how would he impact each scenario? Versus RHP, he or Barden could play shortstop and with Schumaker would produce -0.031 R/G and -5.022 on the season, so DeRosa (.329/.404) doesn’t really offer much of an upgrade over Ryan (.320/.392). But against LHP (.417/.704), he’d be a real boon, combining with Ryan and Thurston to theoretically produce .958 runs above average per game and 155.2 per season (again, based on Thurston’s unlikely numbers). But first things first: TLR needs to make the most of the players he has, starting with the infield.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 5:18 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.