Chris Duncan was freed yesterday. Cardinal fans should take the opportunity to do the same for their minds. With the Cardinals trading the clubhouse-popular but fan-loathed Duncan to the Boston Red Sox for the questionable Julio Lugo, the putative best fans in baseball — or at least a not-insignificant subset of them — have lost their whipping boy. Duncan deserved to be treated better.

After spending nearly his entire minor-league career as a first baseman (he played only 47 games in the outfield), Duncan learned the challenges of left field on the job in the majors. He was constantly heckled for his defense — even in the World Series — but played better than he looked; although he never looked graceful, he got the job done through effort and hustle. True, his career -8.7 UZR/150 made him a perenially below-average fielder, but he was far from worst in the majors (see Hideki Matsui, Adam Dunn and Scott Hairston). Unfortunately, fans accustomed to the naturally gifted Rick Ankiel’s gaudy displays of arm strength never appreciated Duncan’s attempts to limit his liabilities and mistook want of talent for lack of effort. Moreover, fans’ obsession with defense distorts its importance relative to offense.

Duncan’s offensive contributions were constantly being obscured by fans’ and writers’ noisome allegiance to antiquated stats. Whereas most thinking people are now aware (and have been for several years) that on-base percentage is the primary indicator of a player’s offensive value, St. Louisans regularly referred to Duncan’s less-than-impressive batting average rather than his quite-good OBP. To be sure, they weren’t helped by the enlightened traditional media, who pride themselves on telling us what to think. To wit: In the Post-Dispatch release detailing the trade, Duncan’s obituary contains nary a reference to his OBP, yet notes his BA three times. For the record, Duncan had a .348 OBP with the Cardinals, fourth-best on the club during that period. Which brings us to a final point: Duncan’s proclivity to strike out. Strikeouts undoubtedly make for ugly baseball, but they’re really secondary to whether a player creates runs. Case in point: For his career, Duncan has struck out 316 times; during that same time, Yadier Molina has struck out only 142 times. Yet Duncan created runs at a much higher rate: 5.70 per 27 outs to 3.69 RC/27.

The trade is not only a new opportunity for Duncan, but it is a chance for Cardinal fans to start afresh, too. With so many newcomers to the Cardinals commending the fans for their warm welcomes, it’s a shame that one of the team’s own never received the support that Cardinal fans are capable of. As Derrick Goold points out, Duncan had a severe home-road split disparity — for his career, his Gross-Production Average (GPA) at home was .252; on the road, .290. Duncan’s Cardinal tenure might’ve turned out differently had he not been booed so lustily. And to think, it was due to ignorance.

The Cardinals’ worst trade since Keith Hernandez haunted them again Saturday as Dan Haren stifled their bats with eight strikeouts in 30 batters faced. It prompted manager Tony La Russa to say “That’s as good as anybody has pitched against us this year." It’s been a while since we’ve broken out FIGS — Fielding-Independent Game Score — but now seems as good a time as any. Has anyone pitched better against the Cardinals in 2009 than Haren on Saturday?

Okay, so technically, yes. All-Star Tim Lincecum dominated the Cardinals a couple of weeks before the All-Star break, and Ubaldo Jimenez and Javier Vazquez — who should’ve been All-Stars — both turned in stellar performances. So there’s no shame in losing to great pitchers — it happens.

We’ve been toying with a tweak to FIGS, namely changing the values of walks and home runs to match those of FIP (from 2 and 8 to 3 and 13, respectively):

FIGS 2.0, if you will, doesn’t change things too significantly, as the top six remain the same. The only big change is that Andrew Miller’s 6/11 performance loses rank on account of his home run allowed. Oh, and interestingly but not surprisingly, Tim Lincecum tossed the best game against the Cardinals last year, too, with a 77-FIGS (11 SO, 1 BB, 25 BF).

If you’re wondering, like we were, which Cardinal pitchers have thrown the best games this year (so far), here you go:

It’s pleasing to see old Chris Carpenter, who is slated to face Roy Oswalt on Wednesday, filling out the list again. The Cardinal ace has already started 14 games — only three fewer than our pre-season over/under of 17 — and, as is the usually the case, when he’s healthy enough to pitch, he pitches extremely well. The team’s second-half success will be predicated less perhaps on who is playing third base or left field than whether Carpenter stays healthy.

The 80th edition of the Midsummer Classic gave fans an unprecedented level of input into the game. Whereas voting was once reserved only for those fans who attended ballgames in person, MLB has now enfranchised millions of people all over the world via internet voting. And fans now decide bench players with the Sprint Final Vote and help determine the game’s most valuable player. Yet baseball needs to go further in its efforts to involve fans, who still lack full input into the game. Herein are some suggestions for improvement.

Increase the maximum number of online votes. If MLB is going to break voting records each year, as it did this year with 17.8 million online ballots, it’s not going to happen by limiting each fan to 25 votes. After smartly eschewing the democratic principle of one vote per person and enfranchising millions of foreigners, baseball just stopped at 25. Why stop at such an arbitrarily (and, quite honestly, low) number? Increment the maximum votes by one each year, with no cap.

Encourage campaigning. The Bran-Torino thing was an example of how exciting an organized campaign can be. Why not bring the great American pastime of campaign advertisements to the American pastime? Like our political elections, the All-Star Game simply didn’t get enough mediacoverage, including on the MLB.com site. If more deserving players miss out because they didn’t "get out the vote," that’s a small price to pay to experience the joy of campaign ads, especially in a non-election year. Besides, just think of the helpful attack ads we could see: Soundless images of Derek Jeter not quite getting to that ball up the middle with a menacing voice-over of "Do you really want Derek Jeter representing you? It’s time for change. Paid for Marco Scutaro."

Allow fans to not only determine who plays but how they play. Technology now allows us to fulfill Bill Veeck’s idea of allowing fans to participate in game decisions; MLB should leverage its online balloting to let fans vote on whether players should steal, bunt and play in certain spots in the field. Given enough computing power, MLB could even let fans decide which pitches a pitcher should throw and whether or not batters should swing or take. True, it would lengthen the game, but that simply means more advertising opportunities.

Expand rosters again. MLB moved in the right direction this year by expanding from 30- to 33 man-rosters, but they need to allow more in order to prevent some above-average players from being excluded. We suggest expanding each year by 10, capping the NL roster at 200 and the AL roster at 175. With each major-league team having 25 players, that means that the top 50% of players would be honored as all-stars.per side, or roughly 12 all-stars per NL team. That virtually ensures that all the above-average players are all-stars, which, after all, is the goal, right? Yes, Ryan Franklin and Zach Duke made the team this year, but if they hadn’t, Bud Selig would have had a travesty as big as the 2002 All-Star Game tie on his hands. Expanding to 200 would not have left this to chance.

Allow programmers to create automated voting scripts. Let’s face it: Regular balloting, manager picks and the venerable tradition of the 25th 30th 33rd-man Final Vote are insufficient to ensure that the voices of all constituencies are heard. How about a Hacker Vote? Once rosters expand to 200, MLB could invite programmers the world over to create automated scripts to manipulate vote totals for each team’s "201st man," or Garciaparra Man. And no holds are barred: Think of how fun the All-Star Game Selection Show Presented By Pepsi would be when viewers watch a player’s vote total not only going up, but going down, too.

Disenfranchise ballpark voters. Though at first the idea of taking the vote away from some fans would seem counterintuitive to the goal of greater fan input, fans who vote at actual ballparks tend to offset the internet and foreign vote, where MLB wants to expand. These provincial rubes who actually attend games when they could simply sit on their sofas and watch the games clearly don’t have the smarts to be electing all-star representatives, anyway. This constituency probably even stays the entire game, demonstrating that they possess an attention span that is too long for the kind of snap-judgment voting that can be assisted through web-site ads and email reminders. Abolish the ballpark vote, an idea that has obviously run its course. With the help of law-abiding voter-registration groups like ACORN, baseball should instead focus on bringing in new fans, especially underrepresented peoples who have never even seen a baseball game.

According to Joe Strauss, Vegas has the American League as the favorite to win the All-Star Game tonight. We’re not sure what numbers they’re looking at, but we thought we’d check out WAR — Wins Above Replacement — for the respective teams.

First, let’s see how the starting lineups compare:

Advantage: NL

The NL had an advantage even before Michael Young (1.4 WAR) replaced Evan Longoria (3.8) and his infected finger in the junior circuit’s lineup. NL manager Charlie Manual will be wise to stick with his starters as long as possible. Maddon’s pick of Halladay to start, while defensible, was less preferable WAR-wise than Greinke.

On the other hand, Longoria’s effective replacement, Chone Figgins (2.9), actually upgrades the AL bench, where the AL already had the upper hand:

Advantage: AL

Then we have the "relief" pitchers:

Advantage: AL

Manual clearly missed some opportunities to shore up his pitching staff, opting for lesser lights like Franklin and K-Rod rather than Javier Vazquez (4.0 WAR), whom we agree with Sky Kalkman was the biggest snub (though he would’ve have been available to pitch). Even if he had stuck with actual relief pitchers, he might’ve improved the NL with picks of Rafael Soriano (1.7), Brian Wilson (1.2) or Chad Qualls (1.0). And as for Pittsburgh’s pitching rep, Paul Maholm (2.1) should’ve received the honor rather than Duke.

Summary

Based on WAR values, the game would be decided by factors of how long Manual, with his only advantage being his starting lineup, leaves in his starters and how well Maddon, who has a deeper bench, deploys his reserves. And if Manual doesn’t have to go too deep into his bullpen, the Nationals will stand a better chance. Cardinal fans may fantasize about Ryan Franklin saving the game, but if they know what’s best for their league, they’ll hope his next outing isn’t until later this week.

Prediction: NL 4, AL 3