Do you ever run across a simply appalling use of a statistic (perhaps even in this blog!) and wish you could be compensated for the few seconds of your life spent wallowing in ignorance that you wish you had back? Well, now you can! Enter our first, possibly annual, Lamest Stat of the Year competition and you might win a pair of tickets to the May 17 Cardinals game, courtesy of the Cardinals and Social-Media Night.

To play, simply post a comment to this post with the quoted stat in context, the source and date (from 2011). You can optionally explain why you think it’s so lame, though most speak for themselves. Here’s an example:

“In his previous nine at-bats with runners in scoring position, Descalso had four hits. He had also reached base via an intentional walk, a hit by pitch, and a straight walk in recent plate appearances with RISP.”

Source: Post-Dispatch, May 10, 2011

To be clear, the lameness of the stat is not in how it reflects on the player or team (such as how high Trever Miller’s xFIP is) but how badly used it is in the article or post. In the interest of equanimity and fair play, you can even submit something from this blog or our network affiliate, ESPN. Goodness knows we’ve given you some opportunities!

The crack team at Fungoes will review the submissions and reward the lamest with two tickets to the game. All submissions must be date-stamped by Sunday, May 15 at midnight. Feel free to weigh in on others’ submissions and stump for your own. And may the lamest stat win!

[Special thanks to the Cardinals for providing the prize tickets.]

[Fellow ESPN SweetSpot blogger Joe Aiello at View from the Bleachers invited us to preview the upcoming Cardinals-Cubs tilt in Chicago. Here's our take on the series.]

Who’s Hot: When it comes to the Cardinal offense — the most en feugo in the National League — who isn’t hot? Lance Berkman continues his resurgent season, with an OBP last week of .444 and a SLG of .667. Colby Rasmus and Matt Holliday also have been on-base machines.

Who’s Not: Former Cub Ryan Theriot has struggled lately, pulling a .241 OBP and .185 SLG over the last week. His lackluster play has led to increased playing time for backup shortstop Tyler Greene, who isn’t faring much better.

News and notes: The Cubs will have to face second-year starter Jaime Garcia, who is coming off a stellar performance in which he no-hit the Brewers for seven innings Friday night. The Cardinal lefty is sixth in the league with a 2.60 xFIP … Matt Holliday is tied with Joey Votto for the league lead in WAR, with 2.4. Lance Berkman is third, and Colby Rasmus is eighth … The Cardinals and Cubs both suffer from middling bullpens, with xFIPs of 4.01 and 4.00, respectively … The Cardinals’ starting staff is making pitching coach Dave Duncan proud, leading the NL in groundball rate at 51.7%.

Prediction for the series: The Cardinals have their top two pitchers lined up (for games one and three, respectively) in the series, so they’ll have the pitching edge. The Cubs’ Matt Garza leads the majors in xFIP, so as hot as the Cardinal offense is, they’ll have to settle for two out of three in the friendly confines.

[The following is a part of the United Cardinal Bloggers' progressive-game blog, in which several bloggers covered the Cardinals-Brewers May 7 game, each writer taking one inning of the game.]

Facing the bottom of the Brewers’ lineup, Kyle Lohse continued to pitch to contact, keeping the ball in the strike zone — nine strikes to one ball (he finished the game with 67% strikes) — but not getting a single swinging strike in the fourth. After Mark Kotsay and Jonathan Lucroy found gloves on their balls hit into play, the always-spazzing Carlos Gomez reached Lohse for a two-out double. Though rightfielder Lance Berkman had some fielding problems later, Gomez would’ve been on second regardless of whether Berkman or Jon Jay were fielding. Gomez actually hit a pretty good pitch, low and outside, which may’ve been out of zone (the Brewer centerfielder has a relatively poor contact rate on balls outside of the zone, with a career O-Contact rate of 59.9%)

That brought up Yovani Gallardo, himself a decent-hitting pitcher — he’s third among active pitchers in career home runs:

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used

Perhaps because Lohse was in the zone so much, Gallardo offered at the first pitch — very similar to the 85-mph slider on which Gomez had doubled — and popped out to end the threat.

For some reason, Nick Punto — with a .322 career OBP — was batting leadoff for the Cardinals Saturday and got his second chance of the young game to start an inning. Unfortunately for the home team, he was as feckless in his second attempt, striking out looking to the form-regaining Gallardo after working a full count. Gallardo received called strikes on the inside and outside edges of the plate, then tried to get Punto to fish for a couple of curveballs low and away, then pounded a fastball up and in for strike three. Gallardo moved on to work over Colby Rasmus, freezing him on a 94-mph fastball over the inside half, on the heels of the same pitch just a few inches inside.

Thus emboldened, Gallardo got a charitable strike call on a high slider to start off Albert Pujols, who in 21 plate appearances boasted a .476 OBP and .625 SLG vs. the Milwaukee righty. But Pujols, in a replay of his first-inning at-bat, grounded out to shortstop trying to pull an outside offspeed pitch. That seems to be the Cardinal slugger’s problem this year, continuing an alarming trend from 2010 in which he literally hit only half his career wOBA to the opposite field. This year isn’t much better, as he is at only .239, compared to his career mark of .335. Pujols would later take an outside pitch the opposite way but ground out feebly to Prince Fielder at first base.

Francisco Liriano broke out of his slump yesterday with a no-hitter. Not that it will or should matter to him, but it was one of the worst no-hitters in history.

To be sure, the concept of a bad no-hitter is relative, as it is seemingly a contradiction in terms. How inept can you be if you utterly prevent the opposing lineup from scratching out even the most meager base hit?

And yet, not all no-hitters are created equal. As many thinking fans understand these days, hits are only a part of a pitcher’s tale, and not even the part over which he has the most say. Plenty of pitchers have thrown more dominant games than some who have tossed no-hitters. Just because you — and some combination of “luck” and defense — prevent a hit doesn’t mean you pitched particularly well.

Which brings us to Liriano. Since 1919, 184 pitchers have pitched complete-game no-hitters. By FIGS — Fielding-Independent Game Score, which considers largely pitcher-dependent stats like walks, strikeouts and home runs — Liriano’s performance Tuesday ranks seventh-worst:

Perhaps the oddest aspect of the no-hitter was that the often-nasty Liriano struck out only two of the 30 batters he faced. Of those 184 no-hitters in history, only seven that went nine innings had fewer Ks, and none since 1970. Liriano walked six batters, recalling the more-recent hitless work of AJ Burnett (nine in 2001) and Edwin Jackson (eight in 2010), who, in a double irony, was both Liriano’s opponent Tuesday and pitched as well as he did (from a FIGS standpoint). Liriano’s was the third-worst no-hitter on record by K/BB (0.33).

If you’re not convinced that defense and “luck” played at least a part in Liriano’s “gem,” consider that he benefited from three double plays, the most in a no-hitter on record. Yes, he technically “induced” the grounders, but when you figure that he gave up more fly balls than ground balls, it wasn’t as though he was consistently getting batters to pound the ball into the dirt. And speaking of fly balls, of the 10 outfield flies that he allowed, none went out of the park, a particularly fortunate outcome given the ballpark. Don’t just take FIGS’s word for it: His xFIP for the game was an unsightly 5.96.

Again, Liriano deserves his moment of fame for a well-pitched game. When it comes to no-hitters, though, this one was far from perfect.

With starting third baseman David Freese hitting the disabled list with a broken hand, the Cardinals suffered their sixth disabling injury of the season and their second everyday player to go down.

The Cardinal offense has been carrying the team lately — they boasted a .373 OBP over the last week — and they lead the majors in wOBA. Since Freese was one of their top guns — third among regulars with a .382 wOBA — the DL stint figures to hit the team hard. One of the team’s shortcomings in 2010 was its inability to effectively deal with injuries, so let’s look around the diamond to see which positions at which the team can least afford to lose time. Biggest differences by percentage between starter wOBA (ZiPS rest-of-season projection) and likely bench replacement:

Fortunately for the Cardinals, the offensive difference between what Freese projects to hit from here on out and what Daniel Descalso should do is rather small Descalso provides 95.8% of Freese’s production — the smallest dropoff of all among the starting positions. That’s if Tony La Russa replaces Freese with Descalso, of course. He has other options, which could increase the gap. Here’s a worst-case scenario at all the positions — third base becomes a bit more concerning:

Then again, TLR could play his best options:

This makes Allen Craig’s recent callup a bit more reassuring, since he would be the best backup in either corner outfield spot. There’s also the slightly awkward reality that Descalso is actually a better option than Skip Schumaker, despite being the “backup.”

So as unwanted as Freese’s injury is, it’s probably not as bad as it could be from an offensive-loss standpoint, compared to other positions. Again, this assessment doesn’t include defense, which is no small consideration. But hopefully John Mozeliak won’t have to repeat his mistake of last season, replacing David Freese with Pedro Feliz after internal candidate Felipe Lopez failed as a backup, instead of turning to Descalso.