The Cardinals bullpen usually made headlines during the regular season for its failures. But when the playoffs began, it was a different story. Instead of being the team’s achilles heel, they became a shield of strength.

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.

Seldom does a pinch hitter have an opportunity like Ryan Theriot had against Carlos Marmol on a late Saturday afternoon late in September. With the Cardinals hanging onto their minuscule chance of a playoff berth by a talon, two games behind Atlanta with only four games left on Sept. 24, the former Cub shortstop stepped in against his old teammate with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, his team down 1-0.

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.

For all of the unlikely happy statistical stories of 2011, one disappointing story came to pass that until this year fans counted on as reliably as they counted on spring training following winter: Albert Pujols hitting .300, knocking 30 home runs and driving in 100.

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.

During the Cardinals halcyon days of the mid-2000s, their teams had a simple, consistent design: solid, but not spectacular starting pitching, yeoman relievers and a powerful, balanced offense. The 2011 edition returned to that structure, and the offense was as powerful as any of those earlier ones, leading the league in offense with a .332 wOBA for the first time since 2004.

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.

If someone had told you back in March that the Cardinals’ fourth starter, Kyle Lohse, would have as productive a season as Shaun Marcum, the man that the Brewers traded blue-chipper Brett Lawrie for, you might have replied, yeah, and the Cardinals will win the World Series, too.

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.