For all of Mike Matheny‘s sacrifice bunting (and browbeating Shelby Miller over his inability to hold runners) and Matt Carpenter‘s ill-advised base-running bungles (he is second on the team in outs on the bases) both men deserve credit for one important thing this season: Carpenter is an outstanding leadoff man.

Back on Apr. 18, Matheny broke conventional wisdom and replaced outfielder Jon Jay in the no.-1 spot with Carpenter, a 6’3″ third baseman turned second baseman. Over the ensuring two weeks, the two players traded time atop the lineup, but now it appears that Carpenter, who has started the last nine games as the team’s leadoff hitter, has the role for the time being. And he deserves it.

Matheny deserves some praise, too, for going against the grain and putting forward Carpenter, certainly not a prototypical leadoff guy. Of course, it’s 2013, and everyone by now should know — though they obviously don’t — what Bill James told us all in 1988: The largest variable determining how many runs a team will score is how many times they get their leadoff man on base. Carpenter is rather tall for a leadoff man — think Corey Hart — and hits for power, or at least he did last year. As a former third baseman-outfielder, Carpenter is more in the mold of notorious mold-breaker Brian Downing, who as a designated hitter was an unlikely leadoff man, though it’s where he hit most of his career.

As with Downing, another attribute that makes Carpenter an unlikely leadoff man is his lack of speed. It’s not that Carpenter is slow, of course. But he has attempted only two stolen bases (a restraint that belies his carelessness on the bases otherwise this season) in his brief career and has a career 0.0 Baserunning score. That lack of swiftness runs counter to what we’ve come to know about our table setters in St. Louis, which has seen legendary base stealers like Lou Brock and Vince Coleman, not to mention Lonnie Smith and Ozzie Smith, race around the bases. To put Carpenter’s disinterest in swiping into perspective, of the 15 players in the NL who have at least 75 plate appearances at leadoff, only one other player besides Carpenter hasn’t tried to steal a base this season — his teammate and the team’s erstwhile leadoff man, Jay.

But it’s not for lack of chances, which is what makes Carpenter such a smart choice as leadoff man. He’s third in the league in OBP as a leadoff batter, the most important asset that a leadoff man can have:

If Carpenter keeps it up — not totally out of the realm of possibility, given his .365 OBP last year — he’ll be the team’s best leadoff man since the juice-enabled Fernando Vina. Recent Cardinal leadoff men:

Even if he merely repeats what he did last year, Carpenter will have been a success as a non-traditional leadoff man. For all of his feckless conventional moves, Matheny deserves credit for this inspiring unconventional one.

As if Shelby Miller weren’t already enjoying one of the best beginnings among the league’s pitchers — not to mention rookies — the precocious 22-year-old went out Friday night and threw one of the top starts in the majors this season, shutting out the Rockies with 13 strikeouts.

Miller’s performance ranks third in MLB so far this season in Fielding Independent Game Score (FIGS):

But that’s understating it (talk about burying the lede). Miller quietly pitched one of the greatest games in Cardinal history, if not the greatest. He matched the legendary Bob Gibson‘s 85-FIGS team record:

With Miller taking his place alongside the names of some of the club’s most dominating hurlers, like Gibson, Dizzy Dean and Chris Carpenter — and so young — fans may not recognize the true import of the game until later.

Miller’s gem overshadows another noteworthy accomplishment from this season: Adam Wainwright’s 12-strikeout beaut of a start against Milwaukee about a month ago. The staff is already well on its way to breaking the club record in strikeouts, but with two individual game performances that arguably rank in the top 10 of the Cardinals’ all-time starts, the 2013 pitching staff may yet be the best in team history. After all, when your fifth starter tosses a game like Miller did, it’s a real possibility.

The Cardinals return home today sitting on a three-game lead in the NL Central and a 21-12 record. Rick Hummel attributes the Cardinals’ strong start to an unlikely source — their defense:

But, perhaps lost in the analyses of the aforementioned areas has been the steadiness of the Cardinals’ defense…

With just 14 errors, second lowest total in the league to Arizona’s seven, the Cardinals are on pace for just 69 errors for the season, which would be down markedly from last year’s total of 105 or the 116 committed when the Cardinals won the World Series in 2011.

The team’s error total is inarguable, of course (unless one were to take issue with the subjectivity of the official scorers). But a paucity of errors doesn’t necessarily indicate a good defense. For instance, range has a lot to do with how helpful a defense is. Ultimate Zone Rating, an advanced metric that uses play-by-play data to estimate each fielder’s defensive contribution in runs above or below an average fielder, shows how error totals are an insufficient means of assessing fielding. And the Cardinals rank among the league’s worst in UZR/150 (UZR per 150 games):

Considering a few of the team’s players — those who are either older or have had nagging injuries (or both) — it makes sense that some players could both avoid making errors but make relatively few plays. David Freese, who started the season on the DL with back problems, has a -2.4 UZR and -26.8 UZR/150. Carlos Beltran plays conservatively enough to avoid errors (he has only one) but hasn’t been as effective as he was earlier in his career (he was notably sloppy in the Cubs’ series). Freese has been an above-average fielder in his career, but his injuries may prevent him from returning to form in 2013.  Beltran has been on the decline since 2009 and despite an uptick in UZR last year will likely be below average in 2013. It’s possible that the team is due for some regression, but don’t count on much. After all, they were 23rd in all of baseball last year in UZR.

The team clearly can contend despite their subpar defense, as their record and lead attest. One reason is that the pitching staff is relying on strikeouts more than they ever have. Their 7.84 K/9 rate is the highest in team history, so fewer balls are being put into play. But when balls are put into play, they’re most likely to be grounders — the team leads the majors with a 51.9 BG%. So they can’t simply ignore their defense. Like their base running negligence, their defense — far from being a strength — might be the difference between them being a merely good team and a great one in 2013.

Well that didn’t take long. We noted last weekend that, while the team’s offense may be good enough to cover their manifold baserunning sins, it won’t always be so. They illustrated it in Tuesday’s 2-1 loss to the Cubs, courtesy of Yadier Molina getting picked off trying to steal third base, with two outs, down a run, in the eighth inning.

The company line was that Molina advancing was supposed to make it easier for him to score. But at what cost? Let’s check the risk-reward table:

You can make a case that Molina’s lack of speed does indeed make it more difficult for him to score on a hit. But that same lack of speed makes it more difficult for him to steal third base, too. The reward wasn’t even close to being worth the risk.

Considering the pitcher, Carlos Marmol, the play was probably even worse. Marmol, who had just walked Jon Jay, isn’t exactly Mariano Rivera: He has a 6.16 xFIP this season on a 8.36 BB/9. Lest you think that’s due to regress much, his career BB/9 is 6.09.

Not only are the Cardinals clueless about risk-reward situations, they can’t even agree on who is clueless. To hear Yadier Molina, he is the one (as quoted by Derrick Goold):

“I was trying to be aggressive,” Molina said. “I was trying to make something happen. That’s the way I play. It was off Marmol. He’s slow to the plate and I was thinking I could get to third base. With my speed, if we hit a base hit it’s going to be tough for me to score from second (base). It didn’t work.

But Goold also writes:

Matheny said the call came from the dugout for both players to attempt a steal … “It’s on me,” he [Matheny] said.

So which is it? If Matheny and/or Molina think that Molina can continue to hoodwink his way to stolen bases like he did last year at an 80% clip, they’d better think again. The Cubs may be be bad, but they’re not stupid: They’ve done enough scouting and stat-reading to be wary. In manager Dale Sveum’s words, “We know the tendencies of Molina. He likes to sneak-and-steal when nobody’s paying attention, and we took advantage of his aggressiveness in those situations.” Besides, for all of his guile in 2011, Molina has a shouldn’t-be-trying career SB rate of 62%.

In any case, it was, in baseball parlance, a horse%^&# call.  One cheer for the Cardinals for taking responsibility (multiple people, in this case!). But who’s actually going to fix it?

[The following is a part of the United Cardinal Bloggers' progressive game blog for May 4, 2013, focusing on the seventh inning of the Mets-Brewers game. For more posts, including the sixth and eighth innings, please visit the main entry.]

After the Cardinals surrendered their lead in the previous inning, Mike Matheny thought ahead to the seventh inning when he double-switched Daniel Descalso into the game in the pitcher’s spot in the order, due up third. But now with two of the first three batters due up for the Cardinals being left-handed, Brewer manager Ron Roenicke had the opportunity to relieve starter Yovani Gallardo with southpaw Tom Gorzelanny, against whom left-handed batters have hit .291 wOBA in his career.

Gorzelanny failed in his first assignment, though, walking Jon Jay on four straight. Credit Matheny for not ordering the next batter, Pete Kozma, to sacrifice bunt. Trailing 5-4 in Milwaukee, perhaps Matheny was following the adage “play for the win on the road, and the tie at home,” but we’ll take the outcome, regardless of the reasoning. Thus freed, Kozma followed with a looping single to right. But for the second consecutive game, Jay ran into a careless, unnecessary out, blindly running to third with his head down as he crossed second.

As we noted Saturday, the Cardinals lead the league in outs on the bases, and Jay’s boner cost the team significantly. Instead of none out, runners on first and second, including the tying run in scoring position, and a 47% win expectancy, the Cardinals had merely a runner on first with one out and a win expectancy of 30%.

With right-handed batters Ty Wigginton, Shane Robinson, Tony Cruz and Jermaine Curtis on the bench, Matheny left Descalso in to hit against the lefty, who has a career .344 wOBA against facing righties. Thankfully for Matheny and Jay, and the rest of the team, Descalso came through, socking a two-run home run to right to put the Cardinals ahead again, 6-5. The lost run would come back to haunt the team.

In the bottom half, Joe Kelly, on in relief of Adam Wainwright in the sixth, returned to the mound to face Ryan Braun, whom he had struck out five times in 10 previous plate appearances. But the Brewer left fielder ripped a leadoff single. Kelly quickly erased him by inducing a double play from first baseman shortstop third baseman Yuniesky Betancourt. Kelly, whose scoreless outing belied a 5.25 FIP (and expected FIP), got into more trouble, walking Rickie Weeks, before Matheny pulled him. Rather than call for his most-reliable reliever, Edward Mujica, with the tying run on base and a 1.83 leverage index, Matheny opted for Fernando Salas. Salas retired Spaz Gomez to end the threat.

(Continue to the eighth inning)