When the Cardinals closed out 2009 with 91 wins (both actual and Pythagorean), they wrapped up the 27th-best 10-year period in their history by Pythagorean Win % (of 119 10-year periods, starting with the 1882 season). Within that, they featured the 14th-best five-year run (.586). How’d they do it? With some stellar players. So without further ado, we present our Cardinals all-decade team from 2000-2009, as part of the United Cardinal Bloggers‘ January project.

Catcher

The Cardinals had two of the best defensive catchers in baseball during the 2000s in Mike Matheny and Yadier Molina. Molina gets the nod for being a notch better with the leather and the lumber.

First Base

One of the team’s best players of any century, Albert Pujols also led the team in games in the 2000s with 1399 (Jim Edmonds was a distant second with 1105). We included Tino Martinez as runner-up, but there really is no runner-up here.

Second Base

Fernando Vina played a PED-aided superior second base and hit more effectively than Aaron Miles. If only Skip Schumaker had broken in at second base…

Third Base

Scott Rolen was the team’s best third baseman since Ken Boyer, and probably its best-fielding third-sacker in its history. He easily beats out the man whom the Cardinals traded for him, Placido Polanco.

Shortstop

Observers thought that the Cardinals wouldn’t be able to replace Edgar Renteria at shortstop. The team came pretty close with Eckstein, who gave the Cardinals the best three years of his career (6.4 WAR total). It’s just that Renteria’s five in the decade were better, both in fielding and in cumulative run production.

Left Fielder

Chris Duncan actually created the most runs of any Cardinal left fielder in the 2000s. But Ray Lankford, who played a year and a half at the beginning of the decade then returned for the 2004 season, bettered him in RC/G and fielding.

Center Fielder

Perhaps the centerfielder of the decade in all of baseball (only Carlos Beltran has an argument), Jim Edmonds was second only to Pujols as contributor to the team’s success in the 2000s.

Right Fielder

Tony La Russa might not want to admit it, but JD Drew was the team’s best right fielder of the aughts. As productively as Ryan Ludwick has played the last three seasons, Drew — led by a Pujols-like .432 wOBA in 2001 — outperformed him before leaving for greener pastures.

Starting Pitchers
Though we prefer a traditional four-man starting-pitching staff, we decided to go with a full five for this fantasy team (it’s not like it’s a real team, anyway, right?). To create a short list, let’s start with all the Cardinal pitchers with at least 50 starts in the decade:

Carpenter, Wainwright and Morris are locks. Carpenter was hands-down the team’s best pitcher of the decade, and Morris led in games started, batters faced and strikeouts, and his 3.81 FIP proves that he provided quality and not merely quantity. The fourth and fifth spots are a bit tougher to select, but it’s hard to argue against Woody Williams, whose 3.83 FIP is well ahead of the next-best in Joel Pineiro. Pineiro’s 4.03 FIP is so similar to Daryl Kile’s 4.06 that, given Kile’s clear superiority in games started, batters faced and strikeouts, Kile gets the nod.

Relief Pitcher
If you require a relief pitcher for this all-decade team and don’t want to simply use the sixth-best starter, let’s look at reliever expected wins added (WXRL), a reliable stat for relievers from Baseball Prospectus. We’ve converted these relief pitchers’ aggregate totals to a WXRL/9 to see who who was most effective and not merely most used in pressure situations (since WXRL is a counting stat):

Franklin makes it close, but Isringhausen has him in both cumulative and rate stats.

So the team looks like this:

So when did these players’ time with the club overlap?

2004 was indeed a magical year, and for good reason: 10 of the 13 players we picked for the all-decade team played together on that pennant-winning club.

With the biggest news these days being spring-training invitations (welcome, Rich Hill!), let’s take advantage of the lull and look back at those athletic players who resisted natural forces to move rightward along the defensive spectrum, shall we? Here, for the fourth year, are our Defensive-Spectrum Beaters.

First, let’s make sure that what we have considered to be the defensive spectrum is still indeed the correct order. Here are the major-league splits by position over the last five years (2005-2009), using Gross Production Average (GPA):

So our current spectrum is:

1B – RF – LF – 3B – CF – 2B – SS – C

The notable difference from the conventional spectrum is that RF and LF are flipped (LF has generally been considered to the left of RF). Granted, this flip is arguable, given the slight difference in GPA (.269, .268) between the two positions the last five years. The difference between centerfield and second base appears to be closing, also, but their order is unchanged.

In that context, then, let’s see which players even qualified. As an arbitrary cutoff, we’ll include all players who played at least 500 innings in 2009 at a leftward position from a position that they played at least 500 innings in 2008:

If we dig a little deeper, we can trim that list of eight down to seven. Garrett Atkins, while he did hit the 500-inning minimum at first base in 2008, also played 500 innings at third that year, so we’ll disqualify him. Denard Span broke in playing some centerfield in 2008, but he logged only 116 2/3 innings, so he stays. So, too, Alexei Ramirez played only a handful of innings (53) in 2008 at shortstop, the position where he qualified in 2009. Ditto Asdrubal Cabrera (154 2/3 innings at shortstop in 2008). Franklin Gutierrez has played some centerfield each year since debuting in 2005 but only had 97 innings there with the Indians in 2008 (and, until 2009, had played a majority of his games in right). Kosuke Fukudome played some centerfield for the Cubs in 2008 and in Japan (where he also played 11 games at shortstop in his rookie year), but not enough to be disqualified. Teahen broke in as a third baseman, logging 1068 1/3 innings there in 2005, but played only 166 innings there in 2008 after KC moved him to the outfield to make way for Alex Gordon. And, as Cardinal fans know, the only time Skip Schumaker set foot near second base prior to 2009 was when he got an extra-base hit.

So of the seven remaining candidates, which ones actually held their own at the plate (one of the criteria for being a defensive-spectrum beater)? This year, we’re going to index the positions by their respective GPAs, in an attempt to normalize players’ offensive performances (e.g., a .260 GPA as a shortstop is much better than .260 as a first baseman). Here’s what each player did while playing the position for which he is being considered:

Now let’s apply the positional averages…

… to come up with what we’ll call a position-adjusted GPA (poGPA+):

With Ramirez just missing the cut, that leaves a bumper crop of six defensive-spectrum beaters for 2009! And, since everyone but Schumaker had previously played at least a few innings at the rightward position for which he was "nominated," one might say Schumaker was the one true defensive-spectrum beater in 2009. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again, “Remember Howie Shanks!”

The 2009-2010 offseason will go down as one of the most momentous in the annals of Cardinal history. Unfortunately, rather than progressively exciting us about the upcoming season, the series of signings and events has left us wishing that we could just cancel the 2010 season.

Cardinals lose NLDS to Dodgers: Sure, the Cardinals stank during the playoffs. But we’re wise enough to know that the short series could just as easily have gone the Cardinals’ way. With most of the team’s best players returning, and a few of the duds leaving, we couldn’t wait for a few smart offseason pickups and then the start of spring training.

La Russa returns as manager, McGwire to coach: We were somewhat indifferent prior to the announcement — "LaRuncan should stay, principally out of lack of alternatives." But if getting another year of La Russa is like buying a used Camry, getting McGwire in the deal is like finding the trunk full of highly enriched uranium. Uh, on second thought…

Cardinals sign Penny: What is the record for a contract given to a player who was released the previous season? La Runcan evidently sees Penny not as the pitcher whom Boston released last August, who has pitched 200 innings only twice in his 10-year career and who apparently has a bad work ethic, but someone who will apparently solidify the rotation.

Freese arrested, charged with DWI: With the Cardinals keeping their piggy bank intact, intending to give it to Matt Holliday, they had all but given the third-base job to rookie David Freese. And what does he do? He drinks at least seven beers and gets behind the wheel of his car. The drunk-driving arrest would be disturbing by itself, but it was at least his second such cretinous decision. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggioThurston?

Holliday signs seven-year contract: Yes, it’s a point of prestige for Cardinal fans that the team signed the biggest free agent on the market. And yes, he will certainly help the team in 2010 and at least a couple of years after that (we found back in October that recent corner outfielder free-agent contracts generally start losing money in year four). But considering that the Cardinals had no clear rival bidder and that they probably ended up overpaying, it’s hard to get too excited, knowing that, come 2015, Cardinal fans are going to have forgotten all about how proud they were to have outbid the Yankees and Red Sox back in 2010. If they booed Jason Isringhausen, who gave fans several good years and made much less than Holliday, just imagine this town when this "Zito-like contract" matures.

McGwire issues statement: Easily the most depressing move of the offseason, from Bill DeWitt, Jr. to the steroided slugger himself. Our thoughts on this are well-documented.

Fans give McGwire standing ovation at winter warmup: It’s one thing for people to treat you as a rube. It’s another to open your mouth and prove that you deserve it. Everyone from DeWitt to John Mozeliak to Tony La Russa to McGwire is treating Cardinal Nation as they ought: a bunch of mindless lemmings. Seriously, it’s one thing to be ambivalent about a guy who admits to using steroids to break records and earn millions of dollars. It’s another to greet him like a conquering hero. Whitey Herzog said it best : "The people in in St. Louis give Mark McGwire a standing ovation the other day, and Jack Clark said every steroid user should be banned from baseball, and they booed him. Now, what the hell is the matter with society when that happens?"

Pujols equivocates at winter warmup: Not so long ago, regarding an extension to his $100-million contract, Albert Pujols said "It’s not about the money. I already got my money. It’s about winning and that’s it." Never mind that he said this in the midst of one of winningest periods in team history, but just weeks after the Cardinals basically sell the family farm to bring back Holliday — the single-biggest display of commitment to winning that the Cardinals could’ve done this winter — Pujols said at the Winter Warmup that although "It’s hard to even think about playing somewhere else," he added that "If I have to, I can play somewhere else" and that "My timetable is when I’m a free agent." Again, just days after the Cardinals decisively demonstrate their commitment to win, Pujols moves the fences back on the team, saying "It’s a commitment the Cardinals orgnanization will have to make." Will have to make? Pal, the Cardinal organization has made its commitment, time and time again. We had hoped that Cardinal fans had at least one remaining hero who had integrity. Now we’re not so sure.

More recently, of course, the Cardinals avoided arbitration and signed Ryan Ludwick: Great. At this point, we don’t know if any news is enough to revive our flatlined anticipation of the season. The damage has been done, but we’re open to suggestions. Can anyone help?

We wait patiently for the day when press conferences will be run without the need for in-person middle men. Until then, here are some questions for today’s press conference to re-introduce Matt Holliday that we pose into the ether of the internet.

John Mozeliak

• How sure were you of another bidder’s offer, and how did you know?
• How much did it take to beat it?
• Would you have offered this deal if Holliday hadn’t played the second half with the Cardinals?
• How much of this was driven by a need for return on losing Wallace?
• How many offers did the Cardinals put forth?
• Do you feel you had to pay a premium of sorts to get this deal done when you did, as opposed to waiting longer?

Matt Holliday

• Would you have signed this deal if you hadn’t played the second half with Cardinals?
• Given that you’re entering your age-30 season and will be playing the entirety of this contract in the decline phase of your career, how much pressure do you feel to live up to it?
• What took so long?
• How much did the Bay deal factor into yours?
• How did the Rockies’ offer that you declined factor into your thoughts this winter?
• During the negotiations, did you ever consider how your contract would affect the team’s negotiations with Albert?
• How close were you to signing with the Orioles? Why didn’t you?

Scott Boras

• Does the deferred contract, which makes the contract total appears bigger than it is, allow you to save face?
• When you said back in December at the Winter Meetings that the Cardinals were "obviously one of the top eight," what did you mean, given that at least one economist has put them at #23 in overall market size?
• When you said that "There’s nothing that prevents a successful franchise like the St. Louis Cardinals from signing two great players," were you aware of the fact that the Yankees and Mets are the only two other teams to have two $100-million contracts on the payroll?
• If the Cardinals hadn’t met your terms, what were you going to do?

Bill DeWitt, Jr.

• Albert Pujols has said in the past that his requirement for re-signing with the team is a commitment to winning. The Cardinals have made the playoffs seven of the last 10 years, second only to the Yankees, and now you’ve signed the top free-agent of the offseason. Is there anything more you can do to prove your commitment?
• Some in the local media have accused you of holding the purse strings too tightly. Does this contract, the largest of the winter for any team and in Cardinal history, speak for itself as to those accusations? What else would you say to them?

What a year it has been. For our final post of 2009, we present our top five stories of the Cardinals’ season, the final United Cardinal Bloggers’ project of the year:

1. Cardinals roll dice to acquire Holliday
   Perhaps the Cardinals’ biggest midseason trade since they brought in Scott Rolen, the ripples of the Matt Holliday-for-Brett Wallace, Clayton Mortensen and Shane Peterson trade are still being felt today as the baseball world awaits Holliday’s winter signing. John Mozeliak put his reputation on the line to acquire the slugging left fielder, and Holliday posted a 9.5 RC/G in helping lead the team to the playoffs.
2. Carpenter and Wainwright are twin Cy Young candidates
   Entering 2009, Adam Wainwright figured prominently in the team’s plans for success. Even so, few would’ve considered him as the odds-on favorite to win the Cy Young. And while Chris Carpenter had obviously been there before — he won a Cy in 2005 — chances were slim that he would even get 20 starts, let alone vie for a second award. Although neither won the Cy Young, they finished second and third in one of the closest votes ever (the 10-point margin separating the top three finishers was the second-closest in NL voting), and Wainwright actually received the most first-place votes.
3. Cardinals win division title
   Making the playoffs is the highest form of success in baseball these days, and few figured the Cardinals would top the Cubs in 2009.
4. Ryan comes of age at shortstop
   Despite another no-confidence vote to begin the season, Brendan Ryan closed the team’s revolving door at shortstop by playing the best defense in the league at the position. You know it’s big news when Tony La Russa compares his shortstop to Ozzie Smith.
5. Pujols wins third MVP
   Fans may take his dominance for granted, but winning the MVP is always noteworthy, especially when it’s a player’s third. Pujols passed Rogers Hornsby, who won two, and tied Stan Musial.

Also receiving consideration: Pineiro’s career year, the rise and fall of Wagner Mateo, Herzog inducted to Hall, team mustaches.
[Author's note: How could we leave out Skip Schumaker's bold transition to second base? Sorry, Skip.]