Quick: What do the St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins have in common? Answer: They hit into a lot of double plays.

After the two teams’ weekend series, the Marlins and Cardinals are second and third, respectively, in the NL in grounded into double plays with 67 and 66. Before the establishment press discovers this, let’s dispel (again) the notion that GDPs are necessarily bad.

First, let’s review some of the factors that create double plays. As we wrote after the 2011 championship, during which the Cardinals led the league in both scoring and GDPs, double plays are a symptom of something actually very good, “something elemental to scoring: getting on base.” A couple of other factors are at play, too, such as strikeouts (which negatively correlate with GDPs) and net steals (which negatively correlate with GDPs). Let’s take each in order.

High on-base percentage (which positively correlates with GDPs): This is the most important, of course, and the Cardinals are currently tied with the Rockies for the highest OBP in the NL. And they’re third in the league in stolen-base opportunities per plate appearance, which might also be considered “double-play opportunities”:

It also might be called “scoring opportunities,” which is why the Cardinals lead the league in Runs per Game with 5.04.

Strikeouts: As was the case in 2011, the Cardinals strike out infrequently. They have the second-lowest strikeout rate in the league:

That means that they’re putting the ball into play a lot. Combined with the fact that they typically have runners on base, they’re going to hit into a fair number of double plays. But just as strikeouts typically don’t score people, one of the positive aspects of putting the ball into play is moving runners around the bases.

Stolen bases: The Cardinals have the fewest stolen bases in baseball with 18. And that of course includes AL teams. Since they’re not altogether awesome at stealing bases — they have a 67% success rate, which is slightly below average (73%) — this is a good thing. But that number is even more pronounced given the number of chances they have.

Since the Cardinals steal a base only once every 55 chances, they’re going to have runners susceptible to double plays. They’re also susceptible to scoring.

So the next time someone complains about the Cardinals hitting into a double play, just remember that you’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelette. Speaking of, it’s breakfast time here in India, so your (generally) faithful correspondent needs to wrap up. In the meantime, we’re looking forward to the next double play, since it means that the Cardinal offense is doing exactly what it needs to do, which is manifested in the bottom line: scoring runs.

As the Cardinals and Reds head to the rubber match of their three-game series, let’s look at a few story lines of the 2013 edition of the teams’ rivalry.

Phillips vs. Molina: The Brandon Phillips-Yadier Molina feud has quieted down since reaching its crescendo in 2010. Regardless of the smack talk, Phillips and Molina continue to be integral to their teams. But does playing the other team really bring out the best in one or both of the players? Let’s look at their career numbers and splits against their rivals:

Neither player exhibits a pronounced difference in performance when playing his arch enemy. If anything, both players actually get on base less often, though they tend to slug better, which may be some kind of “amped up” effect. However, despite decent samples — 444 plate appearances against the Cardinals for Phillips and 427 vs. the Reds for Molina — we’re disinclined to make much of the splits. Phillips may think that the Cardinal fans get his fire burning, but the likely reality is that both players enjoy and excel in competition. Which is to say, they’re no different from nearly all major leaguers.

Positional experiments: This season, each team is trying to optimize its offense by shifting a player rightward on the defensive spectrum. Granted, Shin-Soo Choo and Matt Carpenter aren’t exactly square pegs in round holes at centerfield and second base, respectively. But they are paying off. Despite being below average in center field, Choo sports a 2.4 WAR, 10th among NL batters. But Carpenter’s move is turning out to be roster gold: He’s playing strong defense at second and has the fourth-highest WAR in the league at 3.3. Both are non-traditional leadoff men.

A tale of two shortstops: The Reds’ Zack Cozart came up as a top-ranked prospect; he was the Reds’ #5 Baseball America prospect and the International League’s #11 prospect after the 2011 season. Despite being a former #1 draft pick, the Cardinals’ Pete Kozma has, it’s fair to say, backed into the job in St. Louis. Yet Cozart (0.5 WAR) and Kozma (0.6) are producing just about the same. Given the expectations, it feels like the Cardinals are ahead. Kozma has six total bases in the series so far.

Outscoring the Giants 15-1 in a doubleheader fails to erase the pain of the Cardinals losing last year’s NLCS. But it doesn’t hurt.

We’ll have to look it up, but we don’t think we’re too far out on a limb to claim that Shelby Miller‘s followed by Adam Wainwright‘s FIGS were the best combined pitching effort in Cardinal history, and perhaps even major-league history.

That the Cardinal starters pitched gems is getting old and is the easy headline these days. The weird and more interesting aspect of the two blowouts is how well Giant starters Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner pitched, even as they allowed seven and five “earned” runs, respectively:

So despite scores of 8-0 and 7-1, the doubleheader actually featured two outstanding pitching duels.

The gentle reader may find the inanity of that statement more owing to some mind-altered state than the reality of the games. Indeed, we had the surreal experience of watching the first Cardinals-Giants game on MLB.tv in India (one of the few places in the world without blackouts!), with colleagues from Brazil (Giants fan), Hungary (new to baseball) and Switzerland (neutral on baseball, naturally). Add to that the sight of Pete Kozma rapping two hits in a single inning off Matt Cain, and one might forgive us for seeming a bit touched. Curiously enough, even though many Americans who watch the sport on a regular basis and some of whom even write about it can’t seem to understand the concept of defense-independent pitching, our Brazilian friend did: “This is crazy, Cain has seven strikeouts and has allowed seven runs in the fourth inning!” Pass me another beer, meu amigo, and let’s chat.

Cain wound up with nine Ks on the day, more even than Miller. In the third inning, Cain’s quietus, the Cardinals stroked eight hits, but only two were for extra bases, and even then they were only doubles. (Cain achieved two of the three outs in the inning on strikeouts.) Of course, the problem (from Cain’s point-of-view, anyway) was that most of those balls in play were line drives, a fact that his tERA — which measures the effects of balls in play, which FIP does not — reflects. Though for all of the nine line drives he surrendered — the second-highest total in his career — he still managed a respectable 3.75 tERA. In large part, in the portion of the game that he mainly controlled — like Miller and Wainwright later — he did fantastically well, striking out a third of the batters he faced and walking none of them.

Other notes:

• Adam Wainwright leads all MLB pitchers with 3.5 WAR. Next closest is Anibal Sanchez, at 3.0.
• Wainwright leads all with a K/BB of 14.00. The season record is 11.00, set by Bret Saberhagen in 1994.
• Wainwright also leads all pitchers with a 1.78 FIP. Miller is now 10th with 2.61, just behind Justin Verlander (2.60). And Lance Lynn is 15th. Again, that’s in all of baseball. The Tigers may have the best rotation in the American League, but in the NL, it’s the Cardinals.
• According to the Post-Dispatch, Wainwright’s “eight wins are tied for the league lead.” But we couldn’t have read that correctly, since  we’ve been assured from a local professional journalist that no one compares pitchers on the basis of wins and losses anymore.
• According to the AP dispatch, the Cardinals have had 10 rookies debut this season. But that’s false. The Cardinals have had 10 rookies play this season, but by our count only seven have made their debuts in 2013:
  1. Keith Butler
  2. Michael Wacha
  3. Tyler Lyons
  4. Seth Maness
  5. John Gast
  6. Carlos Martinez
  7. Jermaine Curtis
• Miller, Trevor Rosenthal and Ryan Jackson are all still considered rookies, though they broke in during 2012.
• Thankfully, we didn’t have to deal with the embarrassment of any of our foreign friends asking why the Cardinals, playing at home, had “St. Louis” written on the front of their jerseys.

Dave Cameron wrote yesterday on “When Stars And Scrubs Doesn’t Work.” In it, he showed that, despite having five top-performing offensive players, the Milwaukee Brewers rank 16th-best in the majors because their “scrubs” are weak.

The Cardinals, with a 102 wRC+, are 10th in MLB. As Cameron did, we’ll provide a visual depiction of their players up and down the lineup:

Whereas the Brewers had half their players in negative WAR, all but two of the Cardinals are in positive territory. And since one of those players is David Freese, who has averaged 2.0 per year since he broke in, he likely won’t end in the red.

Cameron reminds us that

… every roster spot matters. The down-roster role players count too. Major League Baseball is not a sport where star performance wins. It is a sport where even the best single player in the game doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Cameron concludes by writing that “What separates a good team from a bad team is often not the quality at the top of the roster, but the quality at the bottom of the roster.” The Cardinals appear to have taken that to heart, and they’re separating themselves from their division foes and others around the league with the most wins in baseball. You might call them the Stars and Serviceables.

Talk about a misleading headline. The MLB.com video reads:

Marquis outduels Miller to top Cards.

That’s just short of libel, for few things could be further from the truth. Besides the “win and loss” stat, the use of which we’ve been assured from a local professional journalist is not done anymore, we can’t find anything meaningful in which the former Cardinal righty “outduled” the current and future Cardinal righty:

In reality, the duel wasn’t close to even a draw: Miller outpitched Marquis.

And looking at that batters-faced number belies the dig that Rick Hummel makes when he writes that “Miller needs to try to find a way to economize. After throwing a one-hit shutout May 10, Miller hasn’t made it through six innings in his next [sic] two starts.”

That’s a bit unfair, since when Miller leaves the game is ultimately his manager’s decision. For example, in his previous start, he struck out two batters in the six inning before Mike Matheny pulled him. Matheny probably has good reason, such as wanting to reduce the stress on his young starter. But it turns out that Miller is actually already the team’s most economical starter — he faces the fewest batters per inning of the entire rotation:

One final point about Miller: According to Jennifer Langosch, Matheny “said (last) Wednesday’s game marked the first time in which he saw legitimate reason for concern” about Miller’s ability to prevent runners from stealing. Although keeping runners from stealing is a good idea, we prefer that Matheny let Miller continue to focus on preventing them from reaching base in the first place. But how much do stolen bases matter, anyway? In Monday’s game, the Padres went 1-for-1 in SBs. But the runner failed to score or otherwise hurt Miller. On the other hand, the Cardinals went 0-for-1 in SBs; Ty Wigginton BooBed himself, more than offsetting the positive WPA gain he had made by reaching via walk. Perhaps the Cardinals should worry more about preventing their own “running game” before worrying about that of Miller’s opponents.