In the third inning of Monday’s game, Albert Pujols stole third base with two outs. Pujols has always been an aggressive, if not always wise, baserunner, so Monday’s gambit wasn’t the first time he has gone against the grain and attempted an extra base despite the odds, nor will it be the last. So what do his career baserunning stats look like? Have his base-stealing exploits been on the whole helpful or harmful?

First, Pujols is running these last three years as much as he ever has, with 2009 and 2010 being his highest rate of attempting. But he is also succeeding: The more successful he is, the more he tries to steal, which is of course logical. And this has been the case his entire career, the exception being 2003, when he had an 83% success rate but attempted to steal relatively seldom.

But what about his attempts at stealing third base?

After not attempting more than three in any single season, Pujols went nuts in 2010, attempting to steal third seven times. To his credit, he swipes third with about the same rate of success (68%) as he steals overall (70%), though that’s not saying much (he’s essentially breaking even). Other than the excitement attendant with stealing third in the first place — and we have to admit, it’s pretty exciting — the titillating — or, depending on your bent, alarming — aspect of Pujols gunning for third Monday afternoon was that he did it with two outs. Anyone who has grown up listening to coaches or commentators knows that it’s generally frowned upon to risk being thrown out as the first or third out at third base. Of the 25 attempts at stealing third, here’s how they break down by the number of outs when Pujols ran:

So about a third of Pujols’s attempts have come with none or two outs. In our next post, we’ll look at the context of each of those attempts to see whether they were actually worth the effort — or whether they were simply Albert Being Albert on the bases.

Bases on balls may not be the most exciting element of the game, but they are an effective tactic for winning. And one of the most impressive aspects of the Cardinals’ 9-8 win over the Royals Sunday was that they drew 13 walks, led by a record five by Colby Rasmus, including the game-winning RBI.

First, Rasmus’s feat: Only 97 other players since 1919 have coaxed five free passes in a game, the single-most in one game. Three other Cardinals have tallied that many — Reggie Smith, Ted Sizemore and Solly Hemus. Rasmus himself had a four-walk game last year (8/13), and teammates Albert Pujols has had three four-walk games. Curiously, the Royals’ Alex Gordon has a quintuple-walk game to his credit.

Given the flack that Rasmus takes for striking out, we wonder how aware fans are of his propensity to walk. His walk rate this year has bubbled up to a Puma-like 14.7%, well over his career rate of 10.2, which made him the 3rd-likeliest on the team to turn the trick Sunday:

The Cardinals now lead the majors in walk rate (10.1%), no doubt a major contributor to the fact that they are the most potent offense in the majors and now lead the National League in Pythagorean Winning Percentage, a better predictor of future actual win %.

Not to take anything away from Rasmus, whose walks are helping him avoid outs (.391 OBP) better than all other major-league centerfielders save Matt Kemp (.399), but the number of five-walk games has been increasing since the 1980s.

And obviously Rasmus wasn’t the only Redbird walking Sunday. The 13 walks was the most by the team since they drew 12 back on 8/18/2000. They hadn’t drawn 13 or more since 1998, and were only three shy of the team record 16 set in 1974, when Smith had his five and Lou Brock drew four (and Keith Hernandez one, if you must know). And even if the Royals weren’t the most impressive pitching staff to walk against — they’re four-worst in BB/9 at 3.76 — the team patience isn’t a new thing, as it has been going on all season: The Cardinals are fifth-best in laying off pitches outside the strike zone, a stat that interestingly correlates to this year’s best teams (the Indians and Yankees are 1-2 in O-Swing % and Pythagorean Win %).

Chris Carpenter has some pundits and fans scratching their heads this year: How can the Cardinal ace be allowing so many hits? Why does he have such a bad ERA? What’s wrong with him?

Perhaps nothing is wrong with him (other than some minor effects of aging). True, he is yielding hits at a 10.9 per nine innings clip, easily his highest as a Cardinal in a qualifying season. But for those unfamiliar with the concept of defense-independent pitching (now celebrating its 10th anniversary!), “There is little if any difference among major-league pitchers in their ability to prevent hits on balls hit in the field of play.” Therefore, we need to be careful in ascribing too much of that hit rate to Carpenter.

Consider the level of Carp’s BABIP this year. It’s at .338, whereas his career rate (more in line with most pitchers) is .297. Two factors appear to be responsible for this.

First is the category of defense and “luck.” And in this, we see that the Cardinals as a team are below average, which affects their entire pitching staff, though it might affect some more than others. They’re 10th in the NL in Defensive-Efficiency Rate (DER), which measures the rate at which defenses convert balls in play into outs (the Cardinals were 7th and 5th, respectively, in 2010 and 2009).

Something that Carpenter does have some control over is his groundball rate, which is about 6% lower than his career rate. That 6% is being reallocated, if you will, a bit as fly balls but mostly as line drives: His line-drive rate is up 5% over his career rate. That’s undoubtedly contributing to his hits allowed.

Combine that lack of defense with Carpenter’s uptick in line-drive percentage, and that pretty well explains the hit increase. Figuring out the increase in line-drive rate is a bit more difficult. All of his swing-contact rates are nearly what they were last year. The key may be that he’s throwing harder stuff more often and his curveball less — about 6% more fastballs and sliders. So it may simply be that batters are hitting more fastballs and therefore hitting them harder and more squarely than curveballs, which is turning groundballs into liners. Our suggestion? Carpenter should mix in more curveballs. As for the rest,  pundits and fans need to realize that much of Carpenter’s performance rests on his defense, which is something that is out of his control.

In the bottom of the seventh inning of the Cardinals’ 3-1 win over the Phillies Monday night, Tony La Russa summoned starting pitcher Kyle Lohse to pinch hit for Jake Westbrook after Nick Punto reached with a leadoff single. The Cardinals had a one-run lead at the time, and a tiring Cliff Lee was still pitching.

Lohse was of course a clever choice, especially since La Russa originally had infielder Tyler Greene ready to pinch hit, before Punto’s hit presumably changed his thinking.

Normally, we admire such resourcefulness on the part of a manager. But was Lohse the best option? Assuming that La Russa wanted to use a pitcher and not burn a position player, here’s the current staff by descending order of sac-bunting proficiency:

Ah, the irony! In terms of percentage, Westbrook — the batter of record — is actually better than Lohse, at 75% to 70%. Granted, Westbrook has only eight total attempts, but he has already gone two-for-two this season. Presumably, though, Lohse’s tremendous advantage in the experience department — 50 career attempts to Westbrook’s eight — more than offsets the small percentage advantage. For the same reason — and the facts that he might’ve actually been useful as a pitcher later in the game, and that he would’ve had a platoon disadvantage against Lee — Trever Miller, who is perfect in two attempts , didn’t pinch hit. The only other real option was Chris Carpenter, who offers a similar profile as Lohse.

That’s the pitchers. If the bunt was what TLR wanted, he had no reason not to use his best bunter, which might’ve been one of his position players on the pine.

At the time, La Russa also had five position players available — Gerald Laird, Daniel Descalso, Mark Hamilton, Colby Rasmus (though perhaps not truly available due to his injury) and of course Greene. Was one of them the best option?

No. No one with experience was any better than Lohse, and even considering Descalso’s 100% record, he like Miller would’ve had a disadvantage against Lee. And you can see that Greene most certainly shouldn’t have been up there to bunt. Ah, for the days of Aaron Miles (career 73% sac-bunt success rate).

As it was, Lohse put himself in a 1-2 hole before bunting successfully and setting up the Cardinals’ third run. He and La Russa exchanged sly grins in the dugout as if they knew their stunt almost backfired. Neither may have known, but Lohse was the right man for the job.

In the Cardinals’ 6-4 win over the Cubs Tuesday, Albert Pujols did something he hasn’t done all season: Knock two hits to the opposite field.

So what’s the big deal? Well, regardless of which team Albert Pujols plays for next year — and there’s no shortage of shameless speculators — his performance this year is going to play a big part in his contract. We’ve noted in the past that the Cardinal superstar is already in decline, and, though the 2011 campaign is less than a third underway, he is continuing a trend that has been going on for a couple of years, which is lessening potency hitting to right field.

Granted, Pujols is so talented that he could be forced to hit into one field, like playground Indian Ball, and still be one of the best hitters in the game. But one of the strengths of his game has always been an ability to use all fields, and so his recent decline matters. Here’s Pujols’s annual wOBA by field location since 2002:

As you can see, he is declining in all three locations, but the decline is more pronounced to right field and center field. And if we look deeper inside those opposite-field numbers, we see that almost all of the downturn in his overall opposite-field prowess (as measured by wOBA) is due to lack of power, as his OBP has been relatively consistent:

We’re not sure what the decline portends for Pujols, if anything. He could indeed continue to produce at such high levels as a more-strictly pull hitter that he will still be among the league’s best batsmen. But if his opposite-field decline is real, then pitchers may start to exploit his relative weakness, as they may already have. Pujols is famous for his ability to adjust, so it wouldn’t necessarily spell doom. His opposite-field power is something to keep an eye on as the year progresses and the contract talk rears its head again.