Bill Batterman is the As color commentator Bill Schroeder is fond of pointing out on Brewers FSN North telecasts, you’re never as good as you think you are when things are going well and you’re never as bad as you think you are when things are going poorly.
Losers of their last four games in May and their first four in June, the Brewers on Monday were struggling to rediscover the form that helped them remain above .500 as late as May 29th, the night they lost game one of a four-game series in Pittsburgh, 14-3. Faced with a tough home series against a red-hot San Diego club that had posted the best record in baseball during May, Milwaukee promptly turned things around and took three-of-four from the Friars to get back within three games of .500.
Punctuated by a come-from-behind win and a walk-off home run by Bill Hall, whose late-inning heroics have turned him into the Brewers’ version of Derek Jeter or David Ortiz, the team’s solid play against the Padres demonstrated irrefutably that Milwaukee is not as bad as they appeared during their eight-game losing streak. While poor defense and inconsistent pitching are likely to stay with the club all season, the Brewers’ offense awoke after a brief siesta and looks poised to return to its slugging ways. Dave Bush and Doug Davis have supplied the team with much-needed quality starts behind acting ace Chris Capuano and youngsters Jorge De La Rosa and Zach Jackson have added a small measure of stability to the backend of the rotation.
In other words, things don’t look nearly as bleak as they did five days ago.
Enter the Cardinals. The class of the division, St. Louis entered 2006 the odds-on favorite to win the National League Central and the preponderance of prognosticators picked the Redbirds to represent the NL in the World Series. Those predictions have looked dead-on, but recently the mighty Cardinals have fallen on hard times. After going 17-8 in April and 17-11 in May, St. Louis has only one win in six tries since the calendar turned to June. A three-game sweep in their new ballpark at the hands of the Reds has dropped the Cardinals a half-game behind the Cincinnati nine, unfamiliar territory for the team that has won the last two NL Central crowns.
The big story, of course, is the absence of greatest-player-on-Earth Albert Pujols, whose right oblique didn’t cooperate with the slugger’s attempt to track down a foul pop in the second inning of Saturday’s game against the Cubs. Sidelined indefinitely and not expected back for up to six weeks, the absence of the Cardinals’ superstar leaves a gigantic hole in the team’s lineup. According to Baseball Prospectus’s Positional Marginal Lineup Value statistic—it measures the number of runs per game that a player contributes at the plate beyond that of an average player at his position—Pujols adds .651 runs to the Cardinals’ offense every game compared to what an average first-baseman (like Lyle Overbay in 2006) would contribute. No one else is even close to that level of productivity, and the gap between Pujols and the players forced into action in his absence is stunning. With Jim Edmonds moving to first-base, the man slated to receive the bulk of Pujols’ at-bats is So Taguchi, whose career batting line of .289/.332/.413 makes him almost exactly average offensively as a center-fielder. With Pujols out, however, he will be measured by the much higher standard applied to first-basemen, who are averaging a .273/.358/.478 line in 2006.
In other words, the Cardinals are almost sure to lose the entirety of Pujols’ .651 runs per game during his time on the disabled list—plus whatever deficit Taguchi and the other replacements rack up in center-field. Even a very optimistic projection would see Taguchi et al. costing St. Louis .100 runs per game, about the level of production provided by the likes of Doug Mientkiewicz, Adrian Gonzalez, and Kevin Millar. All told, that’s .751 runs less per game for the Cardinals with Pujols out of the lineup.
To put that number in context, St. Louis has scored 296 runs in their first 59 games, an average of just over five runs per contest. Without Pujols, the Cards run-per-game average would fall to just under 4.3, better than only the Rockies and Cubs among all National League squads. Quite simply, the loss of Pujols threatens to turn the Cardinals from an above-average offensive club to one of the least potent in the entire league.
Adding to the Redbirds’ woes has been the complete lack of production from their corner outfielders. The team ranks last in the National League in OPS from their left-fielders (623) and their right-fielders haven’t fared much better, ranking only 12th (726). In fact, only Pujols, Scott Rolen (969), and reserve Scott Spiezio (884) have posted OPSes above 800 while the likes of Juan Encarnacion (723), Aaron Miles (706), and Yadier Molina (518) continue to receive regular playing time despite a complete lack of production at the plate.
The team’s saving grace has been their stellar pitching staff, second-best in the NL with a 3.96 ERA despite a league-worst 5.47 strikeouts per nine. The key? Redbirds hurlers have pounded the strike zone and kept the ball on the ground, issuing the fourth-fewest walks in the league while inducing 1.49 ground-outs for every out recorded in the air, good for third in the NL. In so doing, the St. Louis staff has taken advantage of the team’s excellent defense, which ranks second in the league in defensive efficiency (the percentage of balls-in-play converted into outs).
Undoubtedly still a force to be reckoned with, even the Pujols-less Cardinals are not to be taken lightly. Still, the Brewers are catching their division rivals at the best possible time and will have a chance to make up some ground as they host the three-game weekend series at Miller Park. With their eight game losing streak now in the rearview mirror, taking two-of-three from the Cardinals no longer seems like an irrational fantasy.