In the Cardinals’ thrilling victory in Pennsylvania, a Cardinal batter stepped to the plate in the heat of a tense scoreless tie game with the potential winning run on second and gave himself up to bring that crucial runner 90 feet closer to the plate. No, this wasn’t a Mendoza-line-toeing pitcher bunting in the ninth inning against Roy Halladay; it was the Cardinals’ fourth-best hitter, Jon Jay, in the first inning of last Wednesday’s game against the Pirates and Charlie Morton.

With all due respect to Morton, no one is going to confuse him with Halladay. And yes, we said first inning. With one of the club’s best hitters. And, we should add, it’s 2011, not 1911. So what’s going on?

If it were a once-in-a-career jack-in-the-box kind of a surprise play, one might forgive Tony La Russa for putting it on. But unfortunately for the Cardinals in an disappointing season, the boneheaded sacrifice bunt has become all too common. Of the team’s 93 sac bunt attempts so far this season, eight of them have come in the first inning (about 9%) and more than a third have come in the first three innings:
Anyone familiar with win expectancy knows that bunting in the first inning is already the worst time to attempt what amounts to a very dubious-in-general strategy like sacrifice bunting. Not only is the opportunity cost highest in the first inning (the opportunity to score more than the one run that bunting limits a team to), but it almost always means that someone who should not be bunting — that is, a decent hitter — is doing it.

And that’s exactly what happened Wednesday. If you don’t believe it, even when the bunt “succeeded,” the Cardinals lost 0.02 win probability. Let us repeat: The strategy went as well as planned, and it hurt the team’s chance of winning the game. (To make it worse, Jay, a left-handed batter, was facing Morton, about whom we wrote earlier in the week has a tremendous disadvantage against lefties, of which Jay is one.)

And that has been the story all season: The team has a net -1.75 WPA in all of its sacrifice bunt attempts, most of which were executed according to plan. To contextualize that, it has taken all of Yadier Molina’s efforts this season (and then some) just to nullify the win-expectancy damage that sac bunting has done. Even without the group of pitchers (for whom a case can be made that bunting is a better alternative) who have bunted, the team has a net -0.70 on the season.

For all the lament about how many double plays the team has hit into this season, we’ve heard nary a peep about a demonstrably negative strategy that the team willingly (or at least its manager) undertakes. For a manager who prides himself on knowing all the angles and doing whatever it takes to win, this is a shockingly frustrating and recurring self-inflicted wound. Doesn’t St. Louis deserve better?

Cardinals INF Daniel Descalso started at third base in place ofDavid Freese for a second straight game but La Russa said the slumping Freese will return to the lineup Friday night for the start of a four-game series at Philadelphia. La Russa played Descalso on Wednesday because left-handed batters were hitting .370 against Morton coming in.

After posting fairly neutral splits last year, Morton has one of the largest gaps of any pitcher in baseball this year … He’s turning opposing right-handed batters into something like a mediocre hitting pitcher while left-handed batters are teeing off on him at a rate that would put them on the All-Star team.

So the Cardinals reportedly extended free-agent-to-be Chris Carpenter’s contract. One can argue whether it’s a wise decision, but one thing is clear: It’s business as usual for the Mozeliak administration.

Sometimes “business as usual” is good, such as during the Cardinals’ peak years in the first half of the oughts (though it wasn’t a sustainable model, as the last few years have shown). And sometimes “business as usual” is simply that: Uncreative, same-old, same-old solutions to new problems.

It’s not that the Carpenter contract is that bad, though for various reasons, it’s not great:

• Given Carp’s health history, the Cardinals have been living on borrowed time as it was the last couple of years. Two more years only increases the risk of him breaking down at some point.
• It’s better to pay market price for one season than it is slightly below market for one and above-market for two. If the team figures Carpenter to stay healthy one of the two years, they already had in in the 2012 option year without adding to their exposure.
• Re-signing Carpenter seems to nullify the Edwin Jackson acquisition, given that they traded a top young player in Colby Rasmus to rent a player who now is superfluous.
• It’s not savings. Only someone conversant in today’s government doublespeak could claim that this is in any way a  “savings” for the Cardinals. Before the deal, the Cardinals maximum commitment to Carpenter beyond this season was $1, the cost of the option buyout. They have now apparently committed to $21 million. This is not a savings but additional cost, even factoring in replacement cost.

That said, it’s not horrible, either:

• Carpenter proved in 2011 that if he’s healthy, he’s still a top-10% starter. Those guys don’t grow on trees, so the Cardinals figure they may as well tack on an extra year while they could.
• The two years is a kind of diversification of Carpenter’s injury risk. If he gets hurt in 2012, it’s not a total loss. Theoretically.
• He’s an insurance policy with the fan base. In the perceived Armageddon-like case they don’t sign Albert Pujols, they’ll have at least one legacy member from the glory days that they can market.

And that brings us to the underlying feeling that the deal leaves us with: It’s safe. It’s blase. It’s unimaginative. It’s more of the same failed approach that has been insufficient for reestablishing dominance. And it also likely means a continuation of the La Runcan stranglehold on the team’s future, which too may have passed its expiration date. It smacks of a “cover-your-ass,” reactive approach to the fans, as will overpaying for Pujols, if and when that happens this winter. Given Mozeliak’s comments in the wake of the Jim Edmonds trade — “something that was very difficult for the St. Louis Cardinals and me personally” – it also may involve an inability to objectively detach from business decisions. Contrast that approach with Whitey Herzog, for example. When the White Rat called the shots as GM, he was bold and creative. He had a vision for his team, and he went out and fulfilled it, let the chips fall where they may.

What might Mozeliak have done? A wiser move would’ve been to decline Carpenter’s option and offer arbitration, which would’ve either brought a more palatable one-year contract or two top draft picks. Maybe even in the same winter, he could’ve parlayed those picks into a different starter or restocked the system, presaging a trade of some other young player. In any case, passing on Carpenter — a courageous move in itself — would’ve opened up a brave new world of chances for Mozeliak, which he seemed unwilling to take.

And even as safe as the move he made seems, it might actually prove ugly. Mozeliak’s predecessor, Walt Jocketty, did something similar with Edmonds at the end of the 2006 season. Edmonds had a $10-million team option with $3-million buyout, and Jocketty converted it into a two-year deal for $19 million ($11 million in 2007, $8 million in 2008). That clearly backfired, as Edmonds was a less-than-one WAR player in 2007 and then the team had to pay the Padres $1.5 million to take the contract for 2008. The Cardinals got a bit lucky in getting David Freese in the return, but at the time, Edmonds was a white elephant, and few today could make a case that Jocketty extending his contract was wise.

The move isn’t going to condemn the Cardinals to two losing seasons. It’s likely going to allow them to continue doing business as usual. Unfortunately, however, that hasn’t meant going to the playoffs, either.

It’s that time of year when, our team all but technically eliminated from playoff contention, the accumulated little things start to pile up in our baseball psyche and threaten to embitter us. You know, stuff like Yadier Molina unnecessarily diving headfirst into first base, Molina getting thrown out at second trying to advance on a ball in the dirt, the Busch Stadium scoreboard displaying BA with RISP every time someone advances to second and the concession stands advertising “Cardinal’s nachos.” It’s almost enough to convert a man into an NFL fan.

So we’ll opt for something decidedly less meaningful, such as the height of leadoff batters. In today’s game, the Cardinal no.-1 man was Rafael Furcal, who stands a Tony La Russa-approved 5′8″. For the Brewers, the honor of batting first went to Corey Hart, who towers above just about any player on the diamond at 6′6″. Hart has been leading off since mid-July, though he had led off at various times in his career, going all the way back to 2005.

Naturally, we wondered if Hart is the tallest ever to strike first. Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com, we now know — the tallest leadoff men since 1911:

On the strength of one game back in 1969, Frank Howard, who had two of the coolest nicknames ever (“Hondo” and “The Capitol Punisher”), quite literally inches Hart out. In fairness, though, Corey Hart could be considered the tallest “regular” leadoff man in history. As for the Cardinals, as long as TLR is running the show, don’t expect anyone much taller than Furcal height* to start games.

*The tallest leadoff batter that Tony La Russa has used with the Cardinals was 6′1″ Miguel Cairo.