What I did today is what I try to do every time. Throw at least seven, keep the ball down and not have as many walks. It was a good start.

– Jaime Garcia

El Gato is too modest. Wednesday’s gem was actually the best start of his major-league career by Fielding-Independent Game Score:

It was the third time that Garcia reached his goal of pitching seven innings, but it was the fifth time this season in which he faced at least 27 batters, which seems to be a less-variable measurement of endurance than innings pitched. And contrary to the Post-Dispatch game story, which held that "Seattle lefty Jason Vargas just did Garcia one better," Garcia actually outpitched his Mariner counterpart, who, outstanding as he was, scored only a 63 FIGS. Rather than attribute the "one better" to Vargas, it is more accurate to say that Seattle’s "luck" and defense were better. Indeed, Seattle’s defensive efficiency (the rate at which a defense coverts balls in play into outs) behind Vargas was .792, whereas the Cardinals’ behind Garcia was .722.
(Cardinal batters’ lack of execution undoubtedly contributed, too.) A case in point was the fourth inning: Jose Lopez reached on a meek groundball, and the forceout on which Milton Bradley scored might’ve been a double play. In neither play could or should Garcia be debited.

Garcia pitched perfect. But we didn’t give enough run support for him to win the game.

– Albert Pujols

How about changing the thinking to "for us to win the game"?

I give credit to Vargas, I am not sure why, but we were under the ball. If you are under the ball, that is tough to be productive. If we stay under the ball, we will be not productive the next time we play. For whatever reason. That is where you have to leave it.

– Tony La Russa

The Cardinals hit fly balls on 13 of their 26 balls in play. The run value for ground balls is slightly higher than for fly balls. Better still, of course, is the value of line drives.

When I hit that ball, I thought it definitely was going to go a long way. When I was on second, I was talking to Chone Figgins, and he said, ‘Man, when you hit that ball, I thought it was going to go a long way, but it didn’t.’ He made a great catch and pulled it back. Obviously, the ball was on the other side of the wall. But I was happy I got a double out of it. It could have been worse. He could have grabbed that ball and it wouldn’t have given Ludwick a chance to drive me in.

– Pujols

Credit Pujols for his glass-half-full interpretation of the event. We’re still not sure why plays like this need to be reviewed; we fear that, as with so many instances of technocracy, they review simply because they can, without any regard to whether they should — or, as is often the case, whether a simpler, non-technical solution (the horror!) might actually be better. In this case, ballparks can be designed in a way in which it is abundantly clear whether a ball is a home run. What’s the problem? It’s not that hard, people.

Well I think that is just basic baseball. You are down a run … we got five or six hits the whole game. What are our chances?

– TLR of his decision to bunt with a runner on second and none out in the eighth

Perhaps it’s time for La Russa to rethink the basics. Nowadays, we can figure out pretty close to what those chances are, and so what he considers "basic baseball" may not be true. Brendan Ryan may not be the best hitter on the team — he hits eighth or ninth for a reason — but he still has a .290 OBP. If the pitcher is batting, a bunt makes sense. But, according to Second Guesser, Ryan bunting there is a bad idea, given that the net win expectancy hitting away is 7.50, whereas sac bunting is only 6.46 (the breakeven OBP is around .246).

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 1:56 pm and is filed under quotebook. 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.