3 Things To Improve All 30 Teams — The St Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals finished the 2021 season with a record of 90–72, good enough for 2nd in the NL Central. They finished as the 2nd Wild Card team and lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Wild Card game to end their season. A 90–72 record is nothing to scoff at, but the goal of this series (for most teams) is to improve year over year. Let’s see how the Cardinals can do that.
1. Keep Jack Flaherty Healthy
Debuting on September 1, 2017 at the age of 21 for the St Louis Cardinals, Jack Flaherty has a career ERA of 3.34 with 567 strikeouts, 1.071 WHIP, 6.6 H/9, and a 121 ERA+. Jack Flaherty is good at baseball. However, Flaherty has made 30+ starts in a single season only once in 2019. That year, he led the NL in WHIP with .968 and H/9 with 6.2 over 33 starts and 196.1 innings.
Flahery is coming off a 2021 that saw him carry a 3.22 ERA with 85 strikeouts, a 1.060 WHIP, 6.5 H/9, and a 121 ERA+ over 78.1 innings and 15 starts. He is just now finishing up two weeks of not being able to throw a baseball due to a shoulder injury, and is expected to miss the first month of the season as he works back up to a starter’s workload. Once he’s back, the Cardinals need to cross their fingers and hope that he can stay on the field for the rest of the year. Should he do that, he would add 2 wins to the Cardinals total.
2. Only Play Albert Pujols Against Lefty Pitching
Albert Pujols made his Major League debut for the Cardinals way back on April 2, 2001. He spent 11 seasons there where he played 150+ games in all but 3 seasons, and in those 3 seasons the least amount of games he played was 143. As a Cardinal, he had a career line of .328/.420/.617 with 445 homeruns, 2,073 hits, and a 170 OPS+ over 7,433 plate appearances and 1,705 games. After the 2011 season, he went to the LA Angels in free agency.
His first year with the Angels was his age 32 season. In 10 seasons with the Angels, he joined the 3,000 hit club and the 600 homerun club. He steadily declined as he got older and the last full season he played in and carried an above league average OPS+ was 2016 with 113. The Angels released Pujols in the middle of the 2021 season and he eventually signed with the LA Dodgers. He played 85 games with the Dodgers and hit .254/.299/.460 with 12 homeruns and a 101 OPS+ over 204 plate appearances.
For a 41 year old, those numbers aren’t that bad. But if you take a closer look, Albert did most of his damage in 2021 against left handed pitching. When facing righties, Albert hit .180/.233/.266 with 4 homeruns over 150 plate appearances. Against lefties, he hit .294/.336/.603 with 13 homeruns over 146 plate appearances. The St. Louis Cardinals signed Albert to a 1 year, $2.5 million deal that will almost assuredly see him retire after the season as a Cardinal. If the Cardinals do have any intentions of playing him, his days of hitting right handed pitching are over and they should only use him against lefties as a DH or pinch hitter. Should they follow these trends, he would add 3 wins to their total.
3. Have More Starters Than Just Wainright Qualify For The ERA Title
In 2021, the St Louis Cardinals somehow managed to win 90 games while only having 1 starting pitcher qualify for the ERA title. That pitcher, was 39 year old Adam Wainright. The next closest pitcher was 32 year old Kwang Hyun Kim.
As the game of baseball is progressing, starting pitchers don’t pitch as deep into games as they did in days of old. No longer do we see guys having double digit complete games pitched in a single season, and it’s very rare we see a guy have even 5 complete games pitched in a single season. However, starting pitching still plays an important part in wins and losses over a 162 game season. Having more than 1 guy pitch 162+ innings can drastically help a team’s bullpen and keep those arms fresh down the stretch.
With Flaherty already set to miss at least a month, the Cardinals did bring in Steven Matz through free agency. If he was to pitch 162+ innings this season, that would be the first time he’s done so in his career. It’s starting to look like yet another season where workhorse Waino carries the load for his team. At age 40, he needs help with doing it. Should the Cardinals have at least 1 more pitcher go 162+ innings this season, it would increase their win total by 4.
Keeping Flaherty on the field once he returns, utilizing the platoon splits of Pujols, and having at least 1 more starting pitcher throw 162+ innings this season would add 9 wins to the Cardinals total. That would give them a record of 99–63. That record would have won them the NL Central in 2021.
This has been the 25th entry in our series in which we take a look at all 30 teams individually and see what we can do to help them improve year over year. Previous entries include the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Atlanta Braves, the Baltimore Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Cubs, the Cincinnati Reds, the Cleveland Guardians, the Colorado Rockies, the Detroit Tigers, the Houston Astros, the Kansas City Royals, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles, the Miami Marlins, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Minnesota Twins, the New York Yankees, the New York Mets, the Oakland Athletics, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, the San Diego Padres and the Seattle Mariners. Follow me on Twitter @TroyBrock1993 for updates and other sports musings. Next up will be the Tampa Bay Rays!
