[For the last few days, we've been participating in the United Cardinal Bloggers fall roundtable discussion, in which a member blogger poses a question to the group each day. Today's question comes from yours truly.]

What was the most amazing, misleading, bizarre or otherwise interesting stat (team or individual player), of the Cardinals’ 2009 season, and why?

For me, I think it had to be Albert Pujols’s results with the bases loaded. 10-17, 5 HR, 35 RBI. And that’s including a late-season slump after he started off 7-7 with (I believe) 4 home runs. It got to be a disappointment when he’d hit a sac fly in those situations!

– Daniel, C70 at the Bat

The most misleading (and bizarre) basic stat would be our leader and 3rd place finisher in stolen bases last year. Albert Pujols leading the team with 16 stolen bases (80% rate) and Yadier Molina’s 3rd place finish (with 9, 75%) would lead you to believe they are fast runners. In actuality, they are probably among the slowest players on the team.

– Michael, Whiteyball

I think without a doubt the most interesting stat to come about this year was the 192.2 IP from Chris Carpenter. His contributions surpassed I think even the most optimistic of projections, and our success was due in large part to him. The 5.6 WAR he accumulated was his best since 2005.

– Kevin, Whiteyball

Joel Pineiro’s walks allowed stat fascinated me all season. Pineiro only allowed 27 walks in 214 innings pitched – something that’s now been achieved only eight times in the expansion era (1961-present). Joel was on pace for a truly historic season in walks allowed until running across a reappearance of “Bad Joel” in September and October, allowing 9 walks in 43.1 IP. You would think he’d manage better than 15-12 with the way he pitched most of the season. Just another black mark against counting wins and losses, eh Pip?

– Nick, Pitchers Hit Eighth

Just how low the Cardinals team wOBA was in 2009 surprised me, even after the Holliday trade. For the season they ranked 18th in MLB in wOBA (.325). They had a .323 wOBA in July (which does include about a week of Holliday), and a .328 in August when they were smoking hot – improvement with Holliday in the mix, but somehow I thought their on base average would have shown more of a jump. There best month was March/April (.359). Getting guys on base consistently is an area they need to improve on for 2010.

– Mike, Stan Musial’s Stance

Albert Pujols
Season: 115 BB
Before Holliday: 75 BB

Season: 44 IBB
Before Holliday: 34 IBB

Adrian Gonzalez
Season: 119 BB and 22 IBB

With only 62% of your BB’s due to plate discipline, it looks like Pujols was indeed pressing. The arrival of Holliday should have enabled Pujols to be more selective, but it should have also meant that Pujols would have seen better pitches. Thus, his IBB should decline, which it did, and his BB should slightly decline, which it did. No surprises there. But, based on "getting better pitches to hit:"

Pujols OBP
Before All-Star Game: .456
After All-Star Game: .427

As far as Pujols’ offensive stats are concerned, it doesn’t look like the addition of Holliday did much. What am I missing here?

– CJ, The Cardinal Virtue

So what stats did we find compelling? In addition to those of our sagacious fellow scribes, here are a few that we thought good, bad and ugly:

• 3.45, 3.46, 3.76: xFIP for Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter and Joel Pineiro, respectively, giving the Cardinals three starters in the league’s top 11.
• .450/.711/.380 and .433/.586/.341: Albert Pujols’s OBP/SLG/GPA numbers before and after the Matt Holliday trade. There’s little to no evidence to believe that Holliday provided any significant level of "protection" for Pujols specifically in 2009. Pujols’s performance declined after the trade.
• 15.6%: Pujols’s line-drive percentage, the lowest since 2002 (when data began) and possibly his career.
• 269: Rick Ankiel’s lifetime strikeouts, both as a batter and as a pitcher. If he leaves for greener pastures this winter, it’ll be a fun triva answer for years to come.
• 27.2 %: Leadoff man Skip Schumaker’s O-Swing% (percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone), 25th in the league.
• 73.8 %: Schumaker’s O-Contact% (percentage of times a batter makes contact with the ball when swinging at pitches thrown outside the strike zone), ninth in the league.
• 10.8: Brendan Ryan’s UZR/150, best among NL shortstops. All he needed was a little playing time.
• 70: Games in which Trever Miller pitched, despite a preseason physical that revealed damage to the labrum in his left shoulder, casting doubt on how much he’d be able to pitch in 2009. He posted the third-best FIP of his career (3.37) in the process.
• $11 million: Surplus value over Chris Carpenter’s 2009 salary. Who knew that the Cardinals would get any surplus value on this albatross of a contract, let alone $11 million?
• 28.5: Average age of Cardinal batters, the lowest of Tony La Russa’s tenure with the club.
• 3,343,252: Attendance at Busch Stadium. Fan turnout was greater than anticipated and was widely credited with giving the team the ability to take on higher-priced contracts, like Mark DeRosa and Matt Holliday, in trades.

This entry was posted by Pip on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 9:34 pm and is filed under group blogging. 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.