Season In Review - Starting Pitchers

As promised, finally getting around to review the St. Louis Cardinals players, like I did at the halfway point. Since I did that halfway review, I'm going to focus primarily on what each player did since then. To the extent I'll discuss the postseason, I'll mention those numbers separately from the regular season statistics.

Anyway, the Cardinals finished with 90, which is 4 wins better than their halfway mark pace. They made the postseason (with help from Atlanta), and went on to win the World Series. Now LaRussa's retired, and the Cardinals have to find his replacement, and at least make an attempt to resign Albert Pujols. But that's for later.

Chris Carpenter - At the halfway point, Carp was struggling, with an ERA+ of 90. At the time, it seemed the culprit was more hits, as his HR, BB, and K rates were all roughly the same as 2010's. By the end of the season, Carp had lowered the HR and BB rates, and upped the K rate. He managed to lower the hit rate a little bit, and all that combined to give him an ERA+ of 105 for the season. Looking at his season overall, he was really hampered by an unlucky May. In just under 39 innings, he allowed only 2 HRs, and had a 3.56/1 K/BB ratio. Yet his ERA was 5.12 because he somehow surrendered 56 hits that month, and his ERA could have been worse, since 4 runs that scored were counted as unearned. Opponents had an .840 OPS against him, but a lot of that is a .340 batting average, and the isolated power was only .104, which suggests death by a thousand paper cuts. He didn't have more than 1 unearned run in any other month, and his ERA was only above 4 in August (4.08).

At any rate, Carpenter ended posting the second highest innings total of his career in the regular season, behind only 2005's 241.7 innings. If you add in the postseason, however, 2011 is the highest total of his career, at 273.3 (his '05 total was 270 even). I wouldn't say Carpenter was spectacular in the postseason, but he was the steadiest presence the team had, allowing 13 runs in 36 innings, going on short rest twice (once with good results, once with bad), and pitching a heck of a closeout to the NLDS, when matched up against Roy Halladay.

Kyle Lohse - Lohse was the Cards' best pitcher in the first half, worth 3.1 wins according to Baseball-Reference. He fell off in the second half, as he was only worth 2.6 for the season, surrendering the team lead amongst pitchers to Carp, who finished with 3.7. His WHIP increased to 1.168, for the 1.027 it was at the midpoint, while his walks increased slightly (to 2/9 IP), and his HR rate remained static. He wasn't quite as reliable in the second half, which is why he finished 4th on the team in starts, with 30, though he did finish third in innings, ahead of Westbrook. He struggled a bit in the second half, posting ERAs over 5 in both July and August, before putting up a 1.37 in 4 September starts. The difference seems valid, as he K'd 7.5/9 IP (versus 5.3 for the season overall), with a K/BB of 4.4, whereas his ratios in July and August were between 1.8 and 1.9.

In the playoffs, Lohse seemed to get passed over. He made only 3 starts, less than Garcia (5), Jackson (4), and Carpenter (6). Allowing 21 baserunners and 12 runs in 12.7 innings probably had something to do with that. That doesn't change the fact he had a season that was a heck of a lot better than I expected from him, or had even hoped for, really. If he didn't pitch like a #1 starter all season, he was at least a good #2, or an excellent #3.

Jaime Garcia - Baseball-Reference doesn't care much for Jaime, as their WAR statistic says he was only worth 0.9. Which seems low for a guy with a 102 ERA+ who threw 194.7 innings. It is worth noting, though, that Garcia surrendered a lot of runs that were counted as unearned. Add those in, and his runs average would be 4.63, rather than the 3.56 ERA he posted. How many of those unearned runs should be on him, and how many are on the defense, I don't know, but that might explain some of it (Lohse only had 9 unearned runs, which is the difference between a 3.39 ERA and a 3.82 RA). Garcia has a WHIP of 1.32, mostly because he has a slightly higher hits allowed rate than Carpenter or Lohse, and a higher walk rate as well. His K rate is even with Carp's. His HR rate rose slightly, from 0.5 at the midway, to 0.7, but that just puts him in between Carp and Lohse.

Garcia had two problems I saw at the midway point. One was a difficulty holding runners. Runners had stolen successfully 9 out of 10 times by then. By the end of the season, it was 15 out of 18. Consider that only 3 people tried to steal on Lohse all year, and of the 11 who tried on Carp, 6 were thrown out. Jackson had his struggles (5 success, no caught stealings), and only 24% of the 17 guys trying to steal on Westbrook were caught, so it isn't strictly Jaime, but it's something he might want to work on before next year. The other concern was he wasn't working deep into games. In 10 of his 16 starts, he hadn't recorded even 1 out in the 7th inning. This was not a trend that reversed itself in the second half, as he made it to 6.3 innings only 5 times in 16 starts. So he was a 6 innings or less pitcher in 21 of his 32 starts. In 13 of those, he went less than 6 innings, though he only went less than 5 twice. Of course, one of those two was his lousy start in the last series of the year against Houston, when the Cardinals were fighting to get in. Poor timing, to say the least.

In the postseason, Garcia was inconsistent. He had a good start against Texas, but was hammered the next time. He cruised at times against Philly and Milwaukee, but would hit a bump and fall apart. Overall, he allowed 35 baserunners in 25.7 innings, but he did strike out 21, which isn't shabby. Besides, by the end of the postseason he was at 220 innings, so about 55 innings above his previous career high. It was a good second season for Garcia, and if he can start working deeper into games more consistently, he could really be a top-notch starter.

Jake Westbrook - At the midpoint, I was waiting for Westbrook to get his ERA under 5. He did manage it later in the season, but only as far as 4.66, which is an 83 ERA+. Also, like Garcia, he crapped the bed in his final regular season start against Houston, forcing the bullpen and offense to bail him out. B-R rates him as exactly replacement level, which is a great return on the 8 million the team sank into him this year. I'm pretty sure P.J. Walters or Lance Lynn could have managed that. In the second half, he managed to raise his K rate a little (to 5.1, from 4.7), and cut his walk rate slightly (from 3.8 to 3.6), but his K/BB is still only 1.42, and his WHIP was over 1.53. Even for a 5th starter, that's a poor showing.

Since Westie is a groundball pitcher, there's a chance poor infield defense is to blame. Which would point a finger at management for hamstringing their groundball staff with shitty infielders, but I imagine a decent portion of it was simply Westbrook not being good. He did manage two scoreless innings in two postseason appearance, even picking up the win in a World Series game, so that's something.

Edwin Jackson - Jackson was brought in to shore up the rotation, which he did, I suppose. He got McClellan out of there, anyway. He averaged around 6.3 innings a start, and had an ERA+ of 102. It would have been better, but he had that one game against the Brewers were he was left in for 7 innings so TLR could spare the bullpen. He also pitched once in relief during the Houston series, as Garcia and Westie had their dud starts back-to-back. What strikes me as strange is Jackson pitched worse for St. Louis than he did for the White Sox, even though he was in the easier league. His WHIP rose for 1.422 to 1.462. His HR rate rose, from 0.6 to 0.9, and his K rate fell, from 7.2 to 5.9. That last one's not a huge surprise, considering Duncan's philosophy, though I can't figure how Garcia and Carp could have similar K rates to AL-Edwin, but NL-Edwin couldn't.

Some of it is that Brewers' start. Take that out, and his WHIP as a Cardinal is about 1.396. His HR rate would drop to 0.5. Doesn't explain the strikeout rate, but that's probably attributable to Duncan, as I said above. Anyway, Jackson didn't fare well in the postseason, allowing 28 baserunners and 11 runs in 17.7 innings, in 4 starts. That's less than 5 innings as start. Then again, why should he be any different from any of the other non-Carpenter starting pitchers? I think it was mostly Milwaukee that did him in again, as they clubbed him in two starts, while he mostly got through his Philadelphia start OK. At this point it seems unlikely, he'll be back, as the Cards already have 5 starting pitchers under contract for next year. He'll likely be offered arbitration, decline (because he will get a better multi-year deal, count on it), and the Cards will get a draft pick. Works for me.

Kyle McClellan - The arrival of Edwin Jackson signaled McClellan's return to the 'pen. Before that happened, he made a few more starts. The results weren't too terrible. 4 starts, 25.7 innings, 26 hits, 14 runs, 6 walks, 12 Ks. Not much worse than one might get from Westbrook.

Oddly enough, once he returned to a relief role, he actually pitched worse. Opponents batting average was 12 points higher, OBP 36 points higher, slugging 71 points higher. His babip was only 5 points higher, and at .272 still well below league average. So even with good luck, he didn't pitch well. I don't know what to make of that, unless he was just gassed. He finished the year at 141 innings, which is well above anything he'd done at the major league level previously. In the playoffs, he pitched once, allowing a run in one-third of an inning. So even LaRussa didn't have much confidence in him by the end. I'm hoping he'll be let go this offseason, as the team has any number of better right-handed relief options that will cost less.

I didn't originally plan it this way, but things are taking so long, I'm going to split it into starters and relievers, so we'll hit the pen tomorrow. I'm not discussing any players that didn't pitch for the team in the second half. So no Bryan Augenstein, Miguel Batista, or Ryan Franklin. Which still leaves 14 pitchers. This could take awhile.