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Wow I’m glad I swapped it over to the Cubs game to watch Imanaga pitch instead of Mikolas. Mikolas has been a very frustrating pitcher to watch since his pitches are just so hittable. It doesn’t matter if you avoid walks if your pitches are basically batting practice.
Here is a great article about Imangaga and how he is succeeding without great velocity. It is still very analytics driven and the Cubs have been working with him to take advantage of the data. He also throws a splitter which as I have noted recently is one of the best pitches in baseball at the moment.
https://www.mlb.com/news/shota-imanaga-surprisingly-dominant-fastball
Following up to some comments with my thoughts.
I don’t think it’s all analytics….i think they have had too many holes in their lineup for about 5 years now…and they are always short on starting pitching….that is personnel decisions
Analytics drive personnel decisions and good organizations are using analytics to build quality rosters. Analytics also go into the day to day gameplans as teams can use the new data to understand hitter and pitcher matchups better than ever before.
Someone tell Kyle Gibson to quit throwing quality starts (5 in 7 starts). He doesn’t throw hard enough (FB velo 91.3) and his K/9 is too low (6.8
I certainly hope I am wrong, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that Gibson will end the season with a 4.75+ ERA. Respectable with good innings, but not nearly as good as he is doing now. Every metric indicates he has been getting lucky in batted ball data and he will regress to his prior years ERA in the 4.5 to 5.5 range. He is pitching to a little better defense this year than last with BAL, but he also is missing less bats, getting hitters to chase less, and walking more.
Why would an organization want all of their pitchers to pitch a certain way? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have some high K pitchers and some control artists to keep the opposition off balance? Why not have both? Why does there have to be an organization wide “formula”? The formula should be to know how to get outs without running up a high pitch count or blowing your arm out. Each pitcher goes about that a little differently depending on their strengths.
I agree with this in general. You don’t want everyone to pitch the same way or hit the same as varying looks is good. The problem with the Cardinals pitching philosophy and organization the last few years is we have been too much on the control artist, GB pitcher side even though those pitchers are losing effectiveness as the game evolves year to year. Mikolas is an example of this as he was great a couple of years ago, but now he gets hit hard consistently as the league is much better at hitting that type of pitcher. The Cards are certainly behind the 8 ball in terms of pitching standards though and need a philosophy change to out compete hitters still.
What it all comes down to is everyone wants to follow the herd, but you don’t get ahead following the herd, so it just goes round and round and there is nothing worse than being behind the curve.
The Cards are certainly behind the curve, but I don’t think the solution to that is to stay behind in analytics and hope you find yourself in a good spot. More information will beat less information and if you aren’t keeping up with the latest in analytics or making developments there yourself, others will be much quicker to adapt and out compete you. Now hopefully the Cards can use advanced analytics to find a new style of pitching focused on control artists that are GB machines, but that will look different in many ways than it did in the past whether it is pitch mix, location, sequencing, etc and analytics can hopefully help them find that niche.
In general, I think the trackman data has really helped orgs that are quick to adapt out compete other teams as the sheer amount of data and the quality of it is rapidly changing the game. The next wave of rapid changes will likely be from biomechanics analysis (although I bet some teams are well into this already) and we will see the game change again. Let’s hope for the average fan there are more Logan Webb or this year’s Ranger Suarez type pitchers in that future as it is simply more enjoyable to watch a pitcher go 7+ innings dominating than a bunch of random RP throwing 100+.
Realistically, other than Contreras, do we have any hitter actually deserving of a #2-#5 lineup spot? I don’t think so. Arenado is playing much better and is probably getting there, but he needs to start hitting for more power.
Regarding analytics, I do think MLB could very much use a different perspective than the Ivy league grad running the orgs. Every one of those guys have the same background and likely have the same thought patterns. Analytics are very useful, but having people learn them in an atypical manner with their own philosophy and mindset is how the Cards can try to find a new market inefficiency. Who knows, it could be targeting fast players to get more SB given the rule changes, but only time will tell where the game goes next.
My thoughts on what the team is doing wrong is probably the inverse of what many here feel. Many seem to state the team has gotten too involved with advanced analytics, but everything I have read about the team seems to indicate they are always a few years behind the game in analytics. Look at our pitching staff and how we have targeted contact oriented pitchers. Mo finally came out and said we are changing to go to a more K% focused strategy, but we are what 6+ years behind the rest of MLB on that? I believe other teams are using thew new trackman data and other advanced data quicker and more efficiently that the Cardinals to scout the Cards and find our hitters weaknesses and to target them. We don’t appear to be keeping up with understanding that data ourselves and helping our hitters to adjust.
Regarding the pitching style, I myself have only recently started to come across to the more K% approach. In 2021, I very much wanted the Cards to draft McGreevy as he was a control artist. I remember reading experts thoughts and seeing they thought it was a very Cardinals pick but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. In hindsight, unless McGreevy adds velocity or changes his pitch mix up significantly, he will not be anything more than a up down #5 type starter with maybe some good years looking like a #4. If you look at the teams that are consistently developing great pitching like Milwaukee and Seattle, they are very analytics focused and are targeting pitchers with great stuff and trying to teach them to pitch. It is much easier to teach someone to throw strikes than it is to teach someone to have big stuff that fools hitters. Cleveland is a contrarian there though and is taking guys with some stuff and control and getting them to throw harder.
There are certainly times you should take the control artist if they are overvalued for where you can draft them, but if you want to develop stars, you need guys with big stuff and tools. It is a risk/reward spectrum and Stl has very much favored the safe bet side but with a lower ceiling. Good organizations like Milwaukee and the Dodgers are doing a good job of mixing high ceiling type players with more sure bets and then doing a great job of developing them.
A specific area I really think the Cards need to improve is in the international FA market. Stl tends to take the quantity over quality approach and it quite obviously isn’t paying off well. Cleveland, Texas, New York Y, Milwaukee are swinging for the fences with IAFA and getting great players on their roster from it. It also doesn’t help we got rid of a DSL team in what I assume was a cost reduction effort. I could understand that a little more if we took the quality over quantity approach, but we are doing quantity and with that quantity we need more roster spots to have those players get experience and to develop.
@thejager, the game is constantly evolving. You say the game is the same as it was in the 80s, but it isn’t even the same as it was 10 years ago. You can go look at most stats going back the decades a steady trend of change such as HR rate and K rate. In anything that involves competition, the competitors have to continually adapt to the ever changing environment to out compete. If you aren’t willing to change, then you will lose. It isn’t that hitters don’t want to hit 300, but MLB pitchers throw so much harder with more spin today for pitches that are very difficult to hit. Defenses are much smarter too with shifts (although shifts were heavily ran back in older baseball as well and to success).
Sometimes innovation can be cyclic as the shift was really popular a while back. It just is a constant game of cat and mouse between hitters and pitchers. A decade+ ago, the down and away sinker was the best pitch in baseball as hitters swings were tailored to hit mid and upper pitches. Hitters adapted and started optimizing their swing paths to hit the low pitch much better. Look at Contreras and how he consistently smashes the low pitch for a HR now. Now the go to location for a pitcher is up to target that hole in the average hitters swing. We will probably see it change again in the coming years as well.
In general, I think people by nature have a tendency to want to watch sports the way they were in what I will call their “Golden Decade”. Many of the posters on this site were young men and women during the 80s and came to know and love the game in the style it was played then. You also had the Cardinals being an above average team then and many fans associating Whiteyball with a winning formula. I do not fault anyone for this as nostalgia is a very strong emotion and completely understand people wanting to see the game played in that way. But the reality is that sports are always changing and that style at the current time isn’t competitive as others have gamed the game to find more efficient strategies of winning. This isn’t isolated to MLB either. Look at the NFL and NBA and how drastically they have changed in the last decades.
Roycroft’s ERA has been fantastic, but I don’t have a lot of confidence in his stuff for the big league level given his K% and BB%. Definitely need a fresh arm though so the move makes sense. They will probably DFA him when someone comes back from the 60 day IL.
While I think watching small ball is really entertaining, it doesn’t win in today’s game. The overall talent level has increased in the game and if small ball still worked, there would be clubs doing it today. Unfortunately a team hitting home runs will be much better at racking up wins throughout the regular season than a small ball team. Now small ball can work in close games to up the odds of winning a single game, it just doesn’t hold up over a whole season any more.
Part of me wants to just leave Gio in there and say figure it out you already blew it, but you don’t want the game becoming unwinnable. Plus we want to conserve RP today.
What does Noot have to do to get a ball to hit a gap? He keeps hitting nice fly balls but they don’t quite make it out and are toward a fielder.
Great outing by Liberatore. I know it is the White Sox, but his stuff looked good and he was hitting his spots more than he did last year in starts.
Burly would have been my choice to trade as well as I don’t like DH only types, but I doubt he really had much value or still has much value to warrant someone trading for.
Would you have left Gorman in yesterday to finish the game Albert?
Probably, but I wouldn’t have felt very confident in him. Maybe getting another walk off would improve his confidence and he could get back on track.
Someone needs to tell Edmonds that he doesn’t have to comment on the big LF-CF gap every time. I don’t recall a single time he has mentioned it that a hitter put the ball there.
My gameplan would be to tell the hitters to take as many pitches as they can to get Crochet out of there as fast as possible.
I want to believe in the Pirates as it is nice to see an underdog team, but I am unsure of their offense long term. Jones and Skenes are really exciting, but they don’t have much promise on the offensive side and Nutting won’t spend to bring anyone in.
I’m very happy to see Fermin playing against the Lefty over Gorman as well. Gorman needs a few days off to work on his swing and Fermin deserves the platoon spot for 2B at this time.
I’m actually excited to see Carlson play again this year. Let’s see if he can bring something fresh to this team and get the team on track. Maybe he can play well enough to clearly deserve that starting CF job.
The SB will go up when Edman is back. The team also needs to get on base more and the SB rate will go up as well.
However, this isn’t the track and field, but rather a team sport. How many times last year did you see a Cardinal relief pitcher pitch effectively in garbage time, only to stink up the joint in a close contest?
Kittridge was asked to hold a lead, and he didn’t do it, and we eventually lost he game. Who cares what he does in a mop up role tomorrowI was trying to illustrate to you that you were using WAR as and end be all stat for the results. Yes team wins matter at the end of the day. He has consistently pitched well in high leverage games though and one “bad” game doesn’t make Kitty useless. If anything, the blame is incorrectly being placed on Kitty when it should be on Lynn for walking 2 batters.
It doesn’t really matter. There is 0% chance Kittredge has accumulated 0.7 WAR in 14 innings
Kittredge has allowed 1 earned run over 14 innings for an ERA of 0.64. Assume the replacement level RP has a ERA of 4.5 on average (generous estimate), and they would have allowed 7 runs in that same amount of 14 innings. That is 6 runs of difference in high leverage situations where the game is on the line.