The Cardinals led the NL in avoiding strikeouts for the second year in a row with a 15.7% strikeout rate. That may seem strange for the team, especially considering that their hitting coach is Mark McGwire, who had a career 20.8% rate. But the Cardinals have actually been among the most contact-happy NL teams in recent years, suggesting that McGwire hasn’t had an impact one way or the other:

Though Jim Albert found that strikeouts have the smallest impact on run scoring among walk rates, home-run rate and BABIP, it’s curious that in 2011, the two World Series teams led their respective leagues in not striking out. The Rangers were actually even less K-prone than the Cardinals, with a 14.9% rate.

The Cardinals’ low strikeout rate is also one of the reasons that they set the record for double plays, which we’ll discuss later.

Yet that’s just what happened in 2011, as the Cardinals — well, featured perhaps isn’t the right word — trotted out — the oldest pitching staff in the National League, with an average age of 30.2. Although series winners tend to have older staffs, the previous winner with the oldest staff in the league was the 2000 New York Yankees. (The last time the Cardinals won the series, in 2006, they had the fifth-youngest staff, at 28.6.)

Speaking of the perennially aged staff of the Yankees, the Cardinals had the third-oldest staff in the majors, behind only the Yankees (31.0) and Red Sox (30.3), raising a curious tie to payroll. The most veteran pitchers typically command the biggest contracts. Stacking up those three teams’ top-five starters, here are the total salaries of their rotations:

Sure enough, the Cardinal rotation’s salary was roughly equivalent to that of baseball’s biggest spenders (the Cardinals didn’t pay all of Edwin Jackson’s $8.5 million salary). Of the three, the Yankees got the most out of their staff in 2011, with 16.7 WAR, with the Cardinals and Bosox nearly tied at 13.1 and 12.6, respectively.

It was the highest league rank for the team since 2006-2008, when they were also 11th. For comparison, the Los Angeles Angels were fourth in payroll in 2011 and third in market size.

In doing so, Berkman unseated erstwhile first baseman Albert Pujols as the team’s reigning leader in win-probability added. Since Pujols broke in with the club in 2001, no other Cardinal batter but Pujols has led the team in WPA — until this season. Berkman’s 5.40 WPA bettered Pujols’s 4.34 in the regular season.

And in the playoffs, Berkman outshone Pujols even more brightly, doubling his WPA with 1.353 (to Pujols’s .637). His coup de grace was in Game 6 of the World Series, when he registered the fourth-greatest game by WPA in playoff history with a .854 WPA on the strength of a home run and his game-tying two-run single in the bottom of the 10th inning.

For all of the warmth that characterized Cardinal fans’ and the organization’s relationship with Albert Pujols over the last 11 years, the contract negotiations were decidedly cold. Yet the news Thursday that Pujols had flown was as stunning as the team’s victory in the World Series, if not as unlikely. After the Marlins cleared out of the bidding, the Cardinals, the team with whom Pujols often claimed he wanted to retire, appeared to be the favorite with an offer believed to be around $210 million and 10 years. That was before the Angels showered him with cash, which allowed the proud Pujols to soak in his own material self-worth. Apparently, Pujols regarded the love and admiration that he earned from Cardinal fans over the last decade less meaningfully than the recognition from the men who run and participate in the business in which he works. In the end, Pujols needed his ego stroked not by the many who pay for his entertainment but by the few who redistribute it.

As it turned out, the contract did not become a distraction this season as many worried, perhaps because by the time it might’ve begun rearing its head — in late August, when the wheels appeared to have come off the Cardinals’ season — the unthinkable happened, and the team rallied. It effectively short-circuited any kind of concern with Pujols’s future and focused everyone on the possibility of the team’s present. The World Series victory allowed everyone to push the reality of the Pujols contract out of mind for a brief time. Then the resumed contract talks returned to the tension between paying to keep a team icon and saving enough to keep the team competitive long-term, the opposing forces of mollifying an individual against stewarding a team.

The problem, of course that one party in the negotiations was dealing in relative, representative money — that is, a kind of commodity that connotes status — while the other was dealing in absolute, real money. For Bill DeWitt and John Mozeliak, they have a very real limit on the kind they must deal in, in the form of a budget. So the contract produced a winner and a loser, and they’re not who you might think.

We have to admit that we didn’t know if general manager John Mozeliak had it in him to face down Pujols. GMs are like  politicians in that they are incentivized to make decisions that pay in the short-term over those that have long-term benefits. But by showing that he was strong enough to resist the temptation to take the easy way out and put the demands of one player above the organization, Mozeliak can hold his head high. In the end, he showed that he and Bill DeWitt, rather than the team’s longtime star, are the trustworthy stewards of the organization. Ironically, if Mozeliak had somehow shelled out enough money to keep Pujols, he would’ve found his job difficult and probably in jeopardy in a few years. But by putting the club first, he has done the tough but wise thing, which increases the chances of him remaining GM, though he’ll take some heat now. As in congress, it isn’t always popular, but someone needs to be the adult.

By leaving, Pujols is the loser, though certainly not by society’s standards or by financial standards. But he has thrown away something that could have made him unique and that he’ll never be able to buy at any price, which is his integrity and legacy as a Cardinal. We certainly do not begrudge a man for trying to maximize his earnings nor for wanting the respect and appreciation that material compensation represents. But Pujols’s critical mistake was making what we now know to have been dishonest comments about what was most important to him:

Do I want to be in St. Louis forever? Of course. Because that city has opened the door to me and my family like no other city is ever going to do … People from other teams want to play in St. Louis and they’re jealous that we’re in St. Louis because the fans are unbelievable … It’s not about the money. I already got my money. It’s about winning and that’s it. It’s about accomplishing my goal and my goal is to try to win. If this organization shifts the other way then I have to go the other way … It’s about being in a place to win and being in a position to win. If the Cardinals are willing to do that and put a team every year like they have, I’m going to try to work everything out to stay in this town. But if they’re not on the same page of bringing championship caliber to play every year, then it’s time for me to go somewhere else. Where? Somewhere else that I can win.

Thus, Pujols in no uncertain terms made clear that his priorities were, in order, winning and being in St. Louis, with money third, if not a distant third.  His refusing the Cardinals’ offer, which when it had come to his actual paycheck would’ve been virtually indistinguishable from his Angels’ paycheck, represented a particular chutzpah coming as it did on the heels of the Cardinals’ World Championship. Had he been honest and forthright like his erstwhile teammate Lance Berkman earlier this season and admitted that money — and we suspect, pride — were primary motivators for his next contract, fans would have understood. But he was duplicitous. We’ve long argued that Pujols, despite many works of generosity over the years, falls short of the hero status often accorded him, in large part because of his insincerity and unwillingness to stand behind his words (in addition to this latest improbity, Pujols also once ingenuously said that MLB could test him “every day if they want” and failed to do anything to show that he was sincere). As Bernie Miklasz noted, “If Pujols’ true goal was to be a lifetime Cardinal, the franchise gave him that chance. He declined.”

Since it’s so unfathomable for most of us, we forget how much a $210 million contract is, including for a 32-year-old player, and we fall into the same line of relative thinking that Pujols likely did. At some point, it probably isn’t about the money, but instead what the money represents. To Pujols, who indeed does already have his money, the dollar figure might as well be a quantity of bananas — as long as that quantity is more than the next player’s. So for someone who rightly views himself in the same class (at minimum) as Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Howard and Adrian Gonzalez, what mattered was that, if those guys were getting at least 22 bananas a year, well, why shouldn’t he?

And that is the reason that Albert Pujols has disappointed fans of the game. For 11 years, people saw in Pujols a reincarnated Stan Musial, another modern-day night who seduced us into believing sport’s promise that heroes who live by a different and higher standard do exist and are worthy of our adulation. But in the end Pujols turned out to be just like any other player, certainly not in his ability on the field, of course, in which he has few betters, but in his inability in the realm of human temptation. Heroes do indeed still exist, but though his talents warrant him any number of accolades as a player, Albert Pujols falls short of that title.

Most notably, the bullpen rose to the fore by pitching more than half of the team’s innings in the National League Championship Series, an uncanny 54% (24 1/3 starter innings to 28 2/3 reliever innings). That was an even heavier workload than the Cincinnati Reds’ bullpen had (52%) in the three-game 2010 NLDS (which was also a much smaller sample).

Not only did the bullpen put in a lot of long hours, they performed masterfully. In their 28 2/3 inning pitched in the NLCS, they yielded only seven runs (2.25 RA) and posted a 3.0 K/BB rate. Jason Motte, the team’s most reliable and effective reliever, averaged 1.765 leverage index against the batters he faced, striking out three of his four batters with 12 strikes in 16 pitches.

The bullpen figured less effectively but more notoriously in the World Series, of course, due to the “bullpen-phone” debacle. But it was in the NLDS that the bullpen was most dominant, striking out 13 in 13 2/3 innings and walking only one with no home runs.

The playoff performance marked a tremendous contrast from the regular season, during which the ‘pen was the fifth-worst in baseball (worth only 1.2 wins above replacement). By October, it was a different group from what the team broke camp with:

It was quite an overhaul for one season. But the once-maligned bullpen had the last laugh, and the team’s most-vulnerable component became one of it’s most valuable when the season was all said and done.

The at-bat represented an incredible 10.72 leverage index, which measures how pressure-packed a situation is (1.0 is average). It was by far the highest-pressure pinch-hit appearance of the season for the Cardinals:

And it was the second-biggest in baseball, by a fraction: Florida’s Brett Hayes bettered Theriot with a 10.76 -LI appearance on June 3. Theriot’s at-bat ranks as the sixth-most pressurized pinch-hit opportunity on record for St. Louis:

The best part, of course, was that Theriot seized the opportunity. He worked the count full, then perhaps aware of the lanky righty’s proclivity for wildness, took an 83-mph slider that home-plate ump Lance Barksdale could’ve called either way:

Theriot, who walked at a rate of only 6% in 2011 — the lowest of his career and second-lowest among the club’s regulars in 2011  — drew the base on balls, forcing in the tying run, and just two pitches later Adron Chambers scampered home on a wild pitch to win the game. A further irony is that the man for whom Theriot hit — Corey Patterson — was 1-for-3 in his career against Marmol. Theriot (whose birthday is tomorrow) might’ve underperformed and lost his regular duty at short, but at least for one plate appearance, he was the right man for the job.

As expected as the Clydesdales leading the opening-day circuit through Busch Stadium, Pujols reaching the time-honored trifecta was notable in 2011 precisely because it didn’t happen. In 2010, Pujols set the record with 10 consecutive seasons with such productivity. But in 2011, beset by injury and the encroaching effects of age, he missed by the slimmest of margins, ending at .299, 37 and 99. Even so, Pujols has the most total seasons of 30-.300-100 of any player in the PED era, tied with Manny Ramirez and Lou Gehrig (10), and is second only to Babe Ruth (12) all-time.

Fans’ preoccupation (this one included) with even, round numbers is a longstanding tradition, of course. In reality, the difference between Pujols hitting “only” 37 home runs and 42, as he did in 2010, or driving in 99 and 118, as he did in 2010, is less significant than the dropoffs in those stats from 2006-2007, when he went from 49 home runs and 137 RBIs to 32 and 103, respectively. Moreover, although batting average and RBIs loom larger in fans’ historic memories, they are less meaningful indicators of a player’s true contribution, dependent as they are on “luck” (in the first case) and a player’s lineup and hitting context in the second. As for home runs, they tell only part of the story of a player’s slugging prowess, as other extra-base hits help to do.

So as much as Pujols’s subpar season indicates a kind of “end of era,” the mindful fan might see his production in a different light. After all, Pujols continued his streak of 300+ total bases and 100+ runs created. He did fall short of a ninth-consecutive season of .400+ on-base percentage, but he is still among the all-time best in total season with at least .400 OBP, 100 RC and 300 total bases.

And if you’re concerned about that .300-30-100 record, take heart: He maintained his average in those categories — .328-42-126.

Led by their own “MV3″, the triumvirate of Albert Pujols (.385 wOBA), Matt Holliday (.393) and Lance Berkman (.402) echoed the high-on-base, high-slugging qualities of Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen in 2004. But the team also had help from their supporting cast, including Allen Craig (.399 wOBA), Yadier Molina (.349), David Freese (.348), Jon Jay (.333) and Colby Rasmus (.330).

The Cardinals led the league in both on-base percentage and slugging, in addition to wOBA. Their foes in the World Series, the Texas Rangers, were one of the offensive juggernauts of the AL (second in wOBA), setting up a compelling fall classic matchup that had its share of run scoring.

The lean toward offense was an intentional decision that the team made last offseason, consciously opting for offense at the cost of defense. Most notably, the team signed Berkman to play right field, a position he hadn’t played in years. Ryan Theriot was below-average in the middle infield, and the starting lineup ranged from merely average defensively (Pujols, David Freese, Holliday) to bad (Berkman, Rasmus). Understandably, they were dead last in the NL in fielding, with -30.8 Fielding Runs, a fact that has gone overlooked in light of the club’s offensive prowess. But the tradeoff obviously paid off in the end, surely a key backstory in the Cardinals’ ultimate success in 2011.

Of course, both unlikely stories came to pass in 2011. A few weeks ago, we voted Lohse as our surprise player of the year because of his utterly improbable season. Not only did he beat all projections, he did so in style, posting the best season of his career.

ZiPS projected a worse-than-average 4.62 ERA and only 122 innings (not to mention a pathetic 1.90 K/BB). Heck, before the season began, Bryan Augenstein projected to have a better campaign. But no one told Lohse (or maybe someone did). However inspired, he tossed career bests in FIP (3.67) and xFIP (4.04) and finished with a 2.64 K/BB, his second-highest ever. Given consecutive ballooning-FIP seasons from 2008-2010, no one — not even pitching coach Dave Duncan, who back in spring training noted “He’s pitching like he was when he won a bunch of games for us” – could’ve expected Lohse’s best campaign of his career at age 32.

Even after a brilliant April, in which we named him our most-pleasant surprise, we were bearish on him continuing his success. But after looking like a certain bust over the last two seasons, with sub-1.0 WARs, the Cardinals’ #4 starter was a key contributor to the staff in 2011, putting up 2.5 WAR. He even matched Roy Halladay for five innings in the opener of the NLDS before offering up an ill-advised 3-2 fat pitch to Ryan Howard. And, perhaps lost in the adulation of David Freese’s gargantuan Game 6 of the World Series, it was Lohse’s pinch sacrifice bunt that set up Lance Berkman’s game-tying single in the bottom of the 10th inning.