The Beer List: Cardinal Weakness Edition

This is The Beer List. It’s an opportunity, once every two weeks, for the staff here at BP Wrigleyville to get together (virtually, of course) and respond briefly to one small, usually quite open-ended, question. Despite the strenuous efforts of certain members of the writing crew to make it so, it has nothing to do with beer and is therefore agnostic between, for random example, Miller Light and Daisy Cutter. This week’s question is this: What is the Cardinals’ biggest weakness going into this NLDS?

(1) Starting pitching. The Cardinals’ starting pitching, while great for the majority of the season, slowed down a bit in the final month or so. After losing Adam Wainwright for the vast majority of the season (before he came back last week as a one-inning reliever), the Cardinals played most of the season with veteran John Lackey, the two young kids, Michael Wacha and Carlos Martinez, Lance Lynn, and oft-injured Jaime Garcia.

The group overachieved, as the Cardinals always seem to do in one way or another. The group posted a collective ERA under 3.00 for the entire season, but from September 1st through the end of the year they put up a 4.01 ERA. Starters, such as Lynn and Wacha, were getting hit hard on a consistent basis. All of a sudden, their bullpen had to come in earlier in games more and more frequently, which caused them to post their worst month of the season as well (4.47 ERA).

Since August 1st, Lynn started 12 games and recorded a 3.66 ERA in 59 innings. Wacha had a 7.88 ERA in his final five starts and allowed 16 earned runs in 21 innings against the Cubs this season. Martinez had to be shut down with shoulder issues, which leaves him unavailable for the postseason. The Cubs have the best pitcher in the series in Jake Arrieta, and possibly the second-best in Jon Lester. This is a massive weakness that the Cubs should be able to exploit. —Ryan Davis

(2) Their defense. By any measure, the St. Louis Cardinals are not a great defensive team. In fact, there is no way to make the case that they are even a good team defensively. By the most basic measures (errors committed and fielding percentage), the Cardinals are below average, ranking 20th in fielding percentage and committing the eighth-most errors in baseball during the regular season. If we dig deeper into the numbers, though, using a more advanced methodology, Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency (PADE), it appears that defense is the Achilles Heel of this Cardinals team, and is trending in the wrong direction for them as the postseason begins in earnest, as evidenced in the chart below.

Simply put, PADE measures the effectiveness of a team’s defense with an adjustment to reflect that some parks make it easier to record an out than others. To evaluate the results, think about a figure of zero as being league average team defense. Any positive figure is above-average efficiency, any negative number is below average. A figure of 2.0 is very good, and -2.0 is very bad. Several things stand out in this chart—first, the Cardinals’ best month defensively was April (which is logical since injuries hadn’t taken their toll). Second, since the end of July, the Cards have been bad defensively. In September, they were really bad—only four teams in MLB were worse by this metric. The final takeaway from this chart is that the Cubs were nearly off-the-charts good defensively in September—far and away the best team in MLB by this metric. The next-closest team (Toronto) posted a 5.135. laying bad defense in September is probably not a part of “The Cardinal Way”. It appears to be a weakness that the Cubs will benefit from in a best of five games series. —Jeff Lamb

(3) Mike Matheny. I wrote Tuesday about what we might expect from Manager of the Year candidate Joe Maddon, and here I’ll write briefly about his counterpart in the NLDS, Mike Matheny. In his four seasons at the helm in St. Louis, Matheny has compiled an impressive .513 playoff winning percentage and won one NL pennant, but he’s been damned by faint praise since he’s taken over for Hall of Famer Tony La Russa. In short, he’s been blessed with exceptional personnel and player development, a great organization masking his average ability.

Matheny won 16 of 31 challenges this season, which put him right around league average. But his tactical management will be pitted against the savvy Maddon, who had a fine showing in the Wild Card game. Certain circles of Cardinals’ Internet have grown frustrated by Matheny’s long leash on his starting pitchers, a factor that will be of great importance with Carlos Martinez, arguably their best starter, out for the postseason. He’s also been reluctant to use Trevor Rosenthal outside of save situations, whereas Maddon uses Hector Rondon frequently before the ninth. Matheny is probably a middle-of-the-road manager, but in a five-game series guaranteed to be close and stressful, his calls to the pen, defensive subs, and pinch-hitters will have an outsized effect, and I am skeptical of his ability to best Maddon. —Zack Moser

(4) Their injuries. It’s a double-edged issue for the Redbirds: the greatest contributor to their brilliant 100-win season—fortitude in the face of extensive injuries—is also their biggest question mark heading into the NLDS. Can longtime Cub-killer Yadier Molina contribute despite not testing his balky thumb until Tuesday? Will Adam Wainwright channel his 2006 self and dominate out of the bullpen with just three innings pitched since April? Can the bullpen sustain the loss of setup man Jordan Walden? Will the rotation keep them in games into the late innings without breakout All-Star Carlos Martinez? Will Matt Holliday be able to provide offense in a meaningful way, after posting an OPS of just .536 in his September return from injury? It’s difficult to imagine all of these unknowns being answered in a positive way for St. Louis, but it would be in the best interests of the Cubs to assume they’ll find a way to get past it. After all, they did manage the best record in baseball despite all of the injuries… what’s three more wins to them? —Isaac Bennett

(5) Their lack of power. Though injuries and age have softened the Cardinals as the season has worn on, they still do some things well. They draw walks; they hit singles. This has always been the equation for success in St. Louis. That equation has generally had a catalyst, though, in the form of two or three guys who could go deep at any given moment. That might no longer be true. The Cardinals rank 24th in isolated power and 22nd in Guillen Number (our clever name for the percentage of a team’s runs scored on homers). Matt Carpenter has achieved an impressive evolution into a power threat this year, but unless you believe a whole lot in Randal Grichuk, there’s no second guy whom Cubs fans will have to fear very much if they come to bat as the tying run with two outs. —Matt Trueblood