Invoking the principle of the last responsible moment — “polls” close this Thursday — we present our 2011 All-Star ballot:

Some notes:

• As much as it hurt to vote for two Brewers, but Fielder and Weeks were both such clear choices that it was difficult not to (Fielder leads Joey Votto in WAR, 3.8-3.5, and Weeks leads Danny Espinosa, 3.6-3.1).
• With all due respect to Chase Headley, you know it’s a down year for NL third basemen when he leads at the position with 137 wRC+. Where have you gone, Mike Schmidt?
• For outfielders, we preferred total run production (as represented by wRC+) to defense and positional skill (as represented by WAR). In the NL, those three are the top three outfielders in the league in wRC+, and it just so happens that they play LF, CF and RF.
• True, Alex Avila is having the best half-season at AL catcher, but we still consider Carlos Santana the best in the league, especially given his unfortunate .249 BABIP.
• No, we don’t vote for designated hitters. What, this surprises you?

Another Dave Duncan reclamation project ended Wednesday when the Cardinals released veteran Miguel Batista. The 40-year-old formerly notorious in St. Louis for scrapping with Tino Martinez played a perhaps greater-than-expected role in the team’s bullpen until his release, getting the most work of any Cardinal reliever (137 batters faced).

The Cardinals’ past is littered with pitchers that they have discarded mid-season. Yet Batista, who was third-worst on the club with a 5.59 xFIP, ranks best in the obscure measure of usage per day under contract. Cardinals pitchers released in mid-season by Games/Day under contract:

Whatever his shortcomings this season — and to be clear, he had a few — let it not be said that Batista didn’t answer the bell when it rang.

In contrast, the ash heap of Cardinal history sadly includes many ill-fated signings of pitchers who never even made it to the Mound City’s mound.  In fact, eight of the last 21 midseason releasees have ended their careers with the Cardinals. That is, they never signed another contract after the Cardinals released them. It’s still too early to tell for Batista, of course, but given that he’s at least healthy, the smart money is on him returning to a major-league bullpen. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see him pitch against the Cardinals again. Let’s just hope he doesn’t plunk any of our players this time.

In Tuesday night’s bullpen implosion to end all bullpen implosions, the emotional if not actual tipping point came when Jason Motte, summoned contra platoon-advantage wisdom, hit Ryan Howard and Placido Polanco to surrender the Cardinals’ lead. The rest of the eighth inning isn’t worth revisiting.

It wasn’t the first time that a Cardinal reliever had begun a meltdown by plunking a batter. In fact, rather than exhibiting self-control under stress, the Cardinal bullpen has made a bad habit of wildness. They’re so wild, they make Mitch Williams look like Coolhand Luke. If we consider their rate of both wild pitches and hit-by-pitches, they are the worst in the National League:

They’re worst by an unhealthy margin, too. But lest you counter that the wildness is somehow catcher or ballpark related, consider that the Cardinals starters have a much lower rate of 1.3%. This is pretty clearly a bullpen problem.

And as bad at the pen is in ERA (14th in the NL) and xFIP (last), they’re probably even worse, given that those numbers don’t directly include the wildness stats.

One of the many reasons why Bruce Sutter and Mariano Rivera were so successful was control: Each had a 1.2% rate of wildness. The Cardinal bullpen needs to learn how to douse the flames of rallies like the firemen of old used to, rather than adding their own fuel to the fire in the form of wild pitches and beanings. Not everyone can be as great as Sutter and Rivera, but something a little more like league average would help.

The way that Royals’ rookie Danny Duffy started Sunday’s game, the Cardinals were fortunate to escape with a win. That’s because Duffy, who struck out an incredible nine of the 18 batters he faced, pitched one of the most dominant starts of a game of all-time; since 1919, only nine other pitchers have struck out that many of the the first 18 batters in a game:

Other notes from Sunday’s 5-4 Cardinal win:

• Although second baseman Pete Kozma threw wide to first base on Wilson Betemit’s sixth-inning groundball on which Albert Pujols injured his wrist, the injury was Pujols’s own fault. Pujols was not in good position to make the play — you might even say it was a demonstration of how not to play first base. First, he put his left leg on the base (as a righty, the correct trail leg is the right), with his toe on top of the bag, two positional no-nos. Then he reached to his left — into the baseline — and not toward the ball, which was why Betemit ran into him. It was a clean play by Betemit, who had the right to his bath path. It wasn’t the first time that Pujols has taken a non-standard approach, and honestly, it was only a matter of time before he got injured. What’s surprising is that it didn’t happen sooner.
• Coming off the bench, Skip Schumaker knocked an RBI single and of course the walk-off home run for a total win-probability added of .573, making it the second-biggest game of his career. His previous season-high game WPA was .151, and his career-high game was .632 on 6/28/10 vs. Arizona.
• As unappealing as Pujols’s stand-and-stare homerun trot was, we liked less that he didn’t join his teammates in the high-sock spirit. Even the unflamboyant Matt Holliday participated. Where’s the team spirit?
• We heard something like this line from the KMOX post-game show: “Salas blew the save but got the win.” Dave Letterman used to have a bit called “Hal Gurnee’s Network Time Killers.” KMOX is apparently carrying on the tradition.

Tyler Greene likes to run. How much? To say that he has attempted to steal more often per opportunity than any of his Cardinal teammates this season is to understate the case: He tries to pilfer a bag nearly twice as often as his closest competitor:

Not only does Greene lead the team, but he is among the league leaders in attempted-steal rate (min. 40 opportunities):

Stolen-base attempt rate is a neutral stat: It’s neither good nor bad in and of itself. What matters is how successful you are when you do attempt. And clearly, with a 100% success rate, Greene has made the most of his opportunities. In fact, he has been one of the most effective basestealers in the league (by difference between SB/Opp and CS/Opp):

Given the limited contributions in other aspects of his game, we commend Greene for accentuating the positive, at least. And that’s putting it mildly. If not for his stolen bases, he would have no offensive game at all. With his stolen bases, he has generated positive numbers in RE24 and Win-Probability Added — nearly half of what he has generated via extra-base hits:

It’s perhaps ironic that a player whom Tony La Russa and others once lauded for his power potential has defined his offense solely in terms of baserunning. But as long as he keeps stealing at 100%, we’re all for Greene running every chance he gets.