Chris Carpenter turned in a strong but not superior 57-FIGS start Friday in the Cardinals’ 6-4 win over the arch rival Oakland Athletics. Actually, as far as lame interleague matchups go, this one isn’t that bad: The two teams have at least a rich trade history, one whose recent advantage probably rests with the A’s. Other than the fairly neutral Matt Holliday trade last year, the Cardinals have received the short stick when dealing with Billy Beane the last couple times, including one transaction whose memory was revisited this week in Mark Mulder’s unofficial retirement. One of the key parts of what was the Cardinals’ worst trade since Keith Hernandez for Neil Allen and Rick Owenby, Daric Barton was featured in Friday’s game, though A’s manager Bob Geren kneecapped him (or perhaps Barton did it to himself) in the first inning by trying to have him sac bunt. Inane bunting has been the word of the week, and, while somewhat understandable with Chris Carpenter on the mound, it was still poor strategy. Apparently, this was not an isolated incident for Barton, as Fangraphs’ Matt Klaassen explained Thursday. It’s just sad when a team’s best hitter (Barton leads the A’s with a .360 wOBA) debases himself with a first-inning bunt. And of course, Tony La Russa couldn’t bear to be out-overmanaged, so he had Skip Schumaker bunt in the seventh inning. How depressing.

Other notes:

• Speaking of Beane, he did a clever job of buying low on Conor Jackson.
• Jackson previously had only a walk in seven plate appearances against Carpenter, but hit five balls into play. Friday, he hit Carpenter hard, with two of three balls in play going for hits. A BABIP regression, perhaps?
• With runners on second and third and none out in the second inning, pitcher Vin Mazzaro needs to be swinging on the first pitch. It was likely to be the most hittable one he’d get, and indeed it was.
• If Barton is bunting in the first, why wouldn’t Mazzaro be bunting in the second?
• Former Athletic Holliday couldn’t track down a foul fly in the second inning. On the next pitch, Kurt Suzuki ripped an RBI single. Billy Beane famously downplayed defense in player acquisition; did the Cardinals take the same stance with Holliday?
• Speaking of defense, Yadier Molina incurred a tough error on the Suzuki play, chucking the ball into centerfield when no one covered second base. We’re in favor of freeing the scorer to give that error to the deserving party, in this case Brendan Ryan.
• The pressbox lineup sheet listed Jack Cust as "Zack Cust." To make matters worse, the official scorer announced him when he pinch hit as "Zack." Double fail.
• Whatever happened to the concept of LOOGys? Understandably, Geren brought Cedrick Bowers in to pitch to Colby Rasmus with runners on and the A’s down just two runs in the seventh. But after Bowers dispatched Rasmus, Geren left him in to face four righties, one of whom, David Freese, nearly made him pay. Look, you undo whatever platoon advantage you get when you surrender that advantage four-fold. If you’re letting your best hitter bunt in the first inning, don’t undermanage your pitching.
• Holliday, of course, compensated for his missed catch with a home run in the first with a man on. Wait, we thought he lacks the skill of hitting with runners in scoring position! He must have changed something in his swing to be able to pull that off now. Right?
• The A’s have some cool warmup jerseys. It’s just too bad that they wear them during the game.

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).

If life is like a box of chocolates, Jeff Suppan is like a birthday check from your grandmother: It’s not much, but you always know what you’re going to get.

Suppan was his old self — and when we say old!… — turning in a below-average 43 FIGS. He looked vintage through the first couple of innings, with seven of the first 10 batters putting the ball in play. He issued an unintentional intentional walk, as he is wont to do, to Bradley, which made sense, given that Bradley’s "protection" is Josh Wilson (career .285 wOBA). But then Suppan dialed his fastball up to 86 mph on a swinging strike to Ichiro, 88 on a called strike three to Chone Figgins and swinging to Franklin Gutierrez, striking out three in a row (four if you count the foul bunt to Ryan Rowland-Smith). But don’t get too excited. Though Suppan struck out four, one was to the pitcher bunting, and he yielded a homer and two walks. And remember, Ian Snell struck out the side Monday night, and we all know what became of him.

Speaking of Mariner misfortunes, with some listless moves (and non-moves), Don Wakamatsu must’ve pulled a Ken Griffey Jr. during the game. He instructed (or allowed) pitcher Ryan Rowland-Smith to bunt with one out and a runner on second in the second inning and continued the hairbrained idea even with two strikes.To make matters worse, Rowland-Smith actually looked like he could handle the bat; he put the ball in play in his other at-bat. Later, with a pinch-hitter, Ryan, Schumaker and Holliday due up, he brought in lefty Garrett Olson to relieve. His team was down only three runs with three innings left, and yet he appeared to be either giving up or asleep at the wheel. By the end of the game, with his team still down only three, he let the on-base-averse Rob Johnson (career .285 wOBA) lead off. If Seattle has anything going for it other than its top two starting pitchers, it’s pinch hitters. Why not use one there?

Other notes:

• With Suppan only going four innings, the official scorer granted the win to Blake Hawksworth. He had .081 WPA, barely beating out Kyle McClellan, who had .080. So Give the OS a win, too, for getting it right. (Suppan had only .062)
• How great might Ichiro Suzuki have been if he didn’t step in the bucket? Guess that’s like asking the same question about Mel Ott’s hitch…
• When the sidewheeling lefty Trever Miller entered the game to face Ichiro, we expected some severe bucket-stepping. But to Ichiro’s credit, he didn’t appear to do it any worse than usual (he flied out weakly).
• Skip Schumaker may never win a Gold Glove, but he protected the win by saving a run when he dove to keep Jose Lopez’s grounder up the middle to an infield hit and Ichiro at third.
• Hawksworth performed effectively, pitching around some bad luck in the fifth and taking a page from Suppan’s book to avoid Bradley with a four-pitch walk.
• We’re not sure how he played earlier in the year, but Bradley has played with heart this series. He slid hard into second both times he was forced out, nearly arriving safely, and, when he wasn’t drawing walks, stung the ball at the plate. And that’s what made his eighth-inning bunt attempt so strange, though he ran hard and ultimately slid into first unnecessarily, compounding the erroroneous judgment by going feet first.
• We had the pleasure of meeting Brian Walton, one of the best writers covering the Cardinals today and, as far as we know, the only one whose beat is truly the entire Cardinal organization.
• 

  Until Casey Kotchman actually faced Suppan in the second inning, we were sure that the two players were the same person.

• Given TLR’s reluctance to play Skip Schumaker at all, much less at leadoff, against lefties, it was a bit odd that the lefty got the start there against the southpaw Rowland-Smith. By the same token, then, it was queer that TLR pinch-hit for him against a lefty in the sixth with Felipe Lopez. Perhaps we missed something — can anyone help?
• Speaking of Schumaker and TLR, what’s the deal with bunting in the third inning (as Jerry Seinfeld might say)? "Second leadoff man" Brendan Ryan led off with a single, and after he stole second, TLR took the bat out of Schumaker’s hands in order to sac Ryan to third. Look, Jeff Suppan wasn’t pitching that well. If you play for one run, that’s what you’ll get. Sometimes, as was the case in the third inning, you won’t even get that.
• Speaking of the second leadoff man, made possible by the pitcher hitting eighth, Ryan has reached safely in five of his eight plate appearances ahead of the big boys in this series. We hope La Russa stops tinkering with the lineup and keeps it as is. This might be his best.
• We haven’t looked at the Post-Dispatch site yet, but we’re willing to bet a lot of money that there’s at least one reference to Holliday’s failure to hit with a runner in scoring position (but nary a mention of his walk in the first with a runner on). Similarly, Albert Pujols grounded out twice with runners in scoring position, yet he hit his home run with the bases empty — clearly a sign that he, like Holliday, morphs into a different hitter when runners are on (we’re joking about that last part, of course).
• Like Reggie Jackson, Daryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Andruw Jones and Chipper Jones (et al), Milton Bradley is surely one of the players whom you hate when he plays for opponents but love when he plays for yours. Or is he? Do Mariners’ fans even like him?
• Speaking of Hernandez, it pains us that his old Cardinal number keeps getting recycled for journeymen like Todd Wellemeyer and Suppan. Is this really the best way to honor the Greatest Fielding First Baseman of All-Time?
• Perhaps after gradually realizing that Bradley is the Mariners’ most fearsome hitter, Cardinal fans booed him even more lustily Tuesday. But sorry, Cardinal fans: By cheering the likes of Ryan Franklin, Rick Ankiel and Mark McGwire (this year), you’ve lost any moral authority on which to boo players like Bradley for disrespecting the game.
• Is this week’s slate of interleague matchups the worst ever?
• After one game of lame at-bat music, David Freese is back to Pearl Jam. He had three total bases. Coincidence? We think not.
• Tuesday’s game featured a matchup of two of the best baseball names in the majors today: Brandon League pitching to Randy Winn. Does it get any better than that? (Did Bob Walk ever face Champ Summers?) Update: Yes, he did.

So the Cardinals broke out of their slump Monday against the Mariners, cracking 12 hits, including two home runs, for 20 total bases (they averaged only 12 on their recent west-coast trip). Some will no doubt attribute the breakout to Tony La Russa’s latest lineup tinkering, with Matt Holliday batting second. Perhaps. Just as it was likely that they weren’t as bad as they looked over the last week, they probably weren’t as good as they looked Monday. For example, Seattle’s starter, Luke French, brought a career 5.48 xFIP into the game and lasted only four innings. They also found the gaps, hitting with a .333 BABIP. But a win is a win, and it’s a happy start to the Cardinals’ belated participation in interleague play. Other notes:

• The Cardinals started as if they weren’t prepared for the early first-pitch time of 6:11pm. In the top of the first, lazy defense led to an unnecessary run: Felipe Lopez displayed one of his patented hiccups on Chone Figgins’s grounder, trying an ill-advised backhand flip to Albert Pujols. Then David Freese absentmindedly threw out the next batter with Figgins making like Ty Cobb and racing first to third on the groundout (he was running on the play). Pujols then made an uncharacteristically halfhearted attempt on Milton Bradley’s grounder down the line.
• Lopez hit into some tough luck, twice flying out deep and once lining out to the shortstop.
• Holliday and Pujols, the team’s leaders in career slugging %, were content to merely reach base and let other drive them in. Between them, they had three walks and five singles.
• In the third inning, Pujols got caught in another foolish baserunning gambit, getting into a pickle after a flyball single. We hope he is duly chastened by it.
• After striking out a lot on their road trip, the Cardinals Ked only three times Monday — all when Ian Snell struck out the side in the sixth.
• When the Mariners knocked Adam Wainwright out of the game in the eighth by putting runners on second and third with none out, TLR summoned Jason Motte. We liked the call, since the occasion called for a strikeout, and Motte leads the team in K/9.
• Pujols walked in both plate appearances against former division rival Ian Snell. Since Snell hasn’t been with the Pirates for a couple of years, fans may have forgotten the history between the pitcher and batter: Entering the game, Pujols had an absolutely terrorizing .524 OBP and .914 SLG against the righthander in 42 PAs, one of his best lines against a pitcher. We don’t blame you for wanting to have nothing to do with him, Ian.
• When Pujols scored on Freese’s fielder’s choice in the fifth, the official scorer originally ruled no RBI for Freese on the basis that Pujols would’ve been dead to rights at home had the throw from Jose Lopez not cranked him on the back on the head. But there’s the rub: For Lopez to have made a successful throw, he would had to have stepped to his left or right and made a more difficult throw than the one he made. We concurred, therefore, with the ultimate ruling that gave Freese an RBI, which apparently drew ridicule from ESPN’s Aaron Boone.
• One more scoring tidbit: The game had two fielding errors on plays in which a runner could’ve been forced out — Josh Wilson’s foible on Felipe Lopez’s grounder with Wainwright on first in the fourth, and Freese’s nonchalant mishandle of Franklin Gutierrez’s grounder with a runner on first in the sixth. The question of whether the fielder would’ve gotten the lead runner or the batter is of such niggling consequence that most people don’t care. Yet it matters because a runner who scores may or may not be unearned.
• David Freese has begun eschewing the Pearl Jam Even Flow for some inferior at-bat music. If it starts negatively affecting his hitting, we’ll consider it one of the worst double plays of the season.

Loyal reader and pal DaveBug noted that in Friday’s game against the Cardinals the Diamondbacks left 16 runners on base. He wondered about the record for a nine-inning game, since Arizona was relatively close to the maximum-possible 27.

According to The Sporting News Baseball Record Book and Baseball-Reference.com, the record for a regulation game is 20, set in 1956 by the Yankees. As we’ve noted previously, runners left on base isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it actually has a positive correlation with runs scored. To wit: the 1956 Yankees led the league in runs and were fifth in LOB en route to winning the pennant.

As for the record irrespective of game length, the record is 27, set by Atlanta (vs. Philadelphia, May 4, 1973), in 20 innings. Other LOB records:

• Most runners left on base, individual player in a game:
  12—Glenn Beckert, Chicago, Sept 16, 1972, and Todd Helton, Colorado, Apr 11, 1998
• Most left on base, season:
  1,334—St. Louis Browns, 157 G, 1941
• Fewest left on base, season:
  925—Kansas City, 154 G, 1957

Lest we be accused of overlooking a rival’s accomplishments, we should also mention that the Chicago Cubs hold the NL record for fewest left on base in a season, with 964 set in 1924. Given what we know about runners left on base, we’re sure they are proud of themselves..