Wednesday night’s starters, Jaime Garcia and Kevin Correia, combined for 10 walks, and yet neither allowed a run. At first glance, it seems like a mere oddity. But we didn’t realize how uncommon it is. According to Baseball-reference.com, only 28 other games (since 1952 or so) have had both starters deal at least four walks each and not allow a run:

Other notes:

• The Cardinals continue to run themselves out of scoring opportunities: In the first, their leadoff man was caught stealing and a runner was out at home to end the inning. Later, they killed a potential winning rally — first and third, no outs — with some of the worst baserunning of the season. For all of their other talents, this is a bad baserunning team. We first noted their lack of baserunning prowess nearly a month ago, when they were third-worst in baseball with a -4.3 EqBRR. The Cardinals are now 29th in MLB with -7.5 Equivalent Base Running Runs. Our eyes do not deceive us.
• Through two innings, El Gato had a strikeout, a walk, a wild pitch and a balk.
• Geoff Young of Ducksnorts had some kind words about a former Padre. Here was our exchange in the ESPN Baseball Tonight Live blog:
  

  Geoff: I’m glad to see Freese doing well in St. Louis. I always root for guys I saw play in the minors. Just wish we’d gotten something remotely useful in return.
  Fungoes: That’s gracious of you, Geoff. At the time, though, he wasn’t much more than a courtesy player in the Edmonds deal, was he?
  Geoff: No, Freese was legit. He was just blocked by Kouz and Headley. I am pretty sure Edmonds was the courtesy player in that deal.

• Speaking of Edmonds, with the Padres’ affinity for over-the-hill Cardinal centerfielders, we figure they’ll be interested in Colby Rasmus in about 15 years.
• Albert Pujols really isn’t that far off his regular self. His OBP (.420) is off slightly, and his power decline ("only" .533 SLG compared to career .625) may be due to a way-low 12.1% HR/FB rate, which will regress.
• Sorry, Matt Holliday: The 3-0 called strike in the fifth inning was indeed a courtesy call, but the 3-1 pitch was on the black.
• Entering last night’s game, Flip Lopez was third among MLB shortstops in wOBA (min. 80 PAs). He walked twice and singled last night — he’s an on-base machine!
• Rob Neyer noted that the Padres’ bullpen has been tremendous this spring. We seem to recall that their bullpen is always good. Indeed: The Padres relief corps is #1 in xFIP in MLB this year, was #4 in 2009, #15 in 2008, #1 in 2007, #3 in 2006, #1 in 2005.
• The overmanager La Russa let his righty — McClellan, in his second inning of work — pitch to the lefty Stairs. Trever Miller, not used, has struck out Stairs in all three appearances. It was curious that TLR would burn his top LOOGy on, essentially, Venable, rather than use him for Adrian Gonzalez or, of course, Stairs.
• We wondered along with Neyer whether any of the St. Louis writers were brave enough to press La Russa on it after the game. They don’t have any problem tweeting cheap shots at sabermetrics, but when it comes to confronting TLR, we wonder whether they have the courage of their parochial convictions.
• Heath Bell wasn’t going to let the upstart Rasmus repeat his ninth-inning heroics from last Aug. 16 (walkoff two-run home run).
• Bell simply gave Ludwick too many pitches in the strike zone. All five pitches were in the zone, and he might’ve gotten Ludwick, who sometimes expands his zone, to chase a pitch away.
• Speaking of former Cardinals who’ve go on to don the yellow and brown orange and blue grey, David Eckstein is the Padres’ shortest player, tied with five others who were 5′7”: Bip Roberts, Callix Crabbe, Doug Dascenzo, Jarvis Brown, Joey Cora.
• In case you were scoring at home, the foul sacrifice fly bunt in the ninth inning went, in retrosheet and MLB notation, 5/BP5F.1-2 (caught by 3B, Bunt Pop Foul, runner on first moves to 2nd). We think.
• Colby Rasmus’s stolen base attempt in the 11th was actually a worthwhile gamble.
• Geoff’s comment after the 11th-inning double play: "Thank you very much. Just when I thought the baserunning couldn’t get worse… it kicks into overdrive." That’s not the kind of play that wins games in May — and certainly not in October.
• Cardinals’ win expectancy went from around 82% to 44% in one play.
• Another zinger from Geoff: "Yeah, Mujica’s got a rubber arm… sometimes a rubber neck, too."
• Cardinal pitching allowed eight fly balls, so Hairston’s home run wasn’t necessarily bad luck, given the roughly 9.5% HR/FB rate for the league. More fly balls leads to more home runs. Comparatively, the Padres allowed only four.
• Holliday "led" all players with six outs made.
• Even very good teams go dry for periods. We grant that the strikeouts and bad baserunning are ugly baseball. The Cardinals have too much talent to continue like that, though. Certainly,they’re not helping themselves by running into outs and La Russa’s tinkering may not be a net positive. We think that merely keeping those baserunners around will lead to runs. See, they know how to get on base, they just don’t know how to stay on base, and that’s really the most important part of scoring runs, the staying on base. Anybody can just get on base.

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 11:41 am and is filed under recap. 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.