Looking at the current St. Louis Cardinals rotation, there’s no one that truly stands out as an ace. Most contending teams have a guy (or two) who is the rock of their rotation. It’s basically a necessity for a team with World Series aspirations to have an ace they can look to every fifth day. Those aces are usually must-watch TV with electric stuff and lots of strikeouts. The Cardinals simply don’t have that guy right now.
Here’s a list of pitchers who have started more than one game for the Cardinals this year: Miles Mikolas, Dakota Hudson, Adam Wainwright, Steven Matz, Jordan Hicks, Matthew Liberatore, Andre Pallante, and Jack Flaherty. While some of them have previously held ace statuses such as Wainwright and Flaherty, no one is currently there. In terms of pure stuff, Cardinals pitchers aren’t exactly passing the eye test either. Just three of them (Hicks, Matz, and Pallante) throw fastballs harder than the major league average of 93mph. Hicks and Matz have been on the IL for over a month now and Pallante is only starting due to the injuries of the aforementioned pitchers.
Despite the injuries and the lack of a truly exciting arm, the Cardinals starting rotation has the 12th-best ERA in baseball and the 5th-best in the National League. Even more importantly, their three most-used (and most healthy) arms all have a sub-3.85 ERA. It’s easy to point to the Cardinals’ “devil magic” for always finding success regardless of the situation, but there’s a method to their madness that keeps them in playoff contention.
Defense, Defense, and more Defense
The saying “defense wins championships” is one seldom used in baseball. It’s harder to see a lockdown defense at work in baseball compared to other sports, but the Cardinals are finding a way to do that. It’s become somewhat common knowledge that the Cardinals significantly benefit from good defense with the likes of Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Arenado, Tommy Edman, and Harrison Bader, but the whole team is defense-oriented and it makes a difference. And it doesn’t hurt that there are incredibly heads-up plays from those elite defenders that are game-changing, such as this double play turned against the Mets last year:
Incredible double play turned by Paul Goldschmidt and the Cardinals to stop the Mets from walking it off pic.twitter.com/2zkkR6WQW0
— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) September 15, 2021
As of June 27th, the Cardinals rank 4th in baseball with a .989 fielding percentage. Since 2018, they have only ranked 10th in baseball with a .985 fielding percentage. As this iteration of the Cardinals has developed, their front office has bought more and more into the defense. The ability to make the easy plays makes a significant difference in overall run prevention and there’s a clear way to see that effect.
Looking at runs minus earned runs can identify how many extra runs have been scored due to errors. This is not an advanced insight and doesn’t encapsulate true defensive ability, but it does show how many runs have been directly given up due to poor defense.
| Team | R-ER | Win Pct |
|---|---|---|
| NYY | 8 | 0.726 |
| STL | 13 | 0.547 |
| NYM | 17 | 0.635 |
| CIN | 17 | 0.347 |
| MIN | 21 | 0.554 |
The Cardinals ranking second is a direct effect of their ability to make the routine plays. Their defense isn’t extending innings and putting games out of reach through unnecessary runs crossing the plate. Naturally, the rest of the top five in R-ER are mostly competing teams. Overall, the top half of the league in R-ER has a .509 winning percentage while the bottom half has a .491 winning percentage. The Reds are an outlier here, but it is easier to put together a good fielding team while rebuilding compared to a good hitting team. However, the top half of the league has more sub-.400 win percentage teams than the bottom half.
Defense can be the easiest way to improve a rebuilding team’s pitching staff, which is why some of the worst teams have a similar defense to contending teams. R-ER isn’t directly correlated to fielding percentage because unearned run totals over a season can be attributed to when errors occur in an inning, which is mostly luck, but there is a strong connection between the two. Given that the Cardinals make the routine plays, it’s also beneficial that they post strong numbers across the board for zone rating. Zone rating quantifies a player’s overall defensive performance by looking at their defensive runs saved, and quantifies defense one step further than fielding percentage. Going position by position, there’s a clear weak spot despite the Cardinals’ strong defense:
| Position | UZR | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1B | 0.7 | 8th |
| 2B | 1.6 | 8th |
| 3B | 2.0 | 8th |
| SS | 4.9 | 3rd |
| LF | -1.4 | 22nd |
| CF | 0.8 | 9th |
| RF | -3.1 | 24th |
| Overall | 5.6 | 9th |
There’s a clear step back in defense in the outfield, which is holding the overall team defense back. 9th in center field UZR is unusual with Harrison Bader playing every day; he ranked 2nd in UZR at the position last year. He recently went on the IL with plantar fasciitis, which is the likely culprit of his lessened mobility. The corner outfield spots can be explained through positional flexibility, where the Cardinals have made defensive sacrifices to put the likes of Brendan Donovan and Juan Yepez in the lineup frequently.
Zone rating also doesn’t apply to catchers, but the impact that Yadier Molina has behind the plate is unquantifiable. His game-calling skills make him an elite backstop despite the decreasing ability as he ages, which is another factor to why Cardinals pitchers are overperforming. Even as he plays less, his successor, Iván Herrera, is projected to be an above-average defender as well.
Shifting Isn’t Always the Answer
Additionally, the Cardinals combat the new school philosophy of extreme shifting and employ the shift more situationally than other teams. While their manager Oli Marmol is a “new school” manager, they don’t have to use the shift as much because their defensive stars can cover more ground than average defenders. The team ranks 23rd in baseball with a 27.8% shift percentage. They’re significantly closer to the bottom (the Yankees at 22.4%) than the top (the Blue Jays at 62.0%).
As for situational positioning, the Cardinals are 16th in shift percentage for right-handed hitters (19.3%) and 29th in shift percentage for left-handed hitters (39.0%). They don’t need to shift as much against LHH when Tommy Edman is playing 2B; he leads baseball in defensive bWAR. There is no available data to see if they are shifting more when Gorman is playing 2B, but he’s a significant step back from Edman.
Shifting more could potentially bring greater value to the already great defense too. The infield is playing up to its potential, but per UZR, the outfield could use some improvement. Looking solely at positional heatmaps, the Cardinals are stagnant in how they position their outfielders.
By comparing the Cardinals to some of the highest shifted teams, a difference can be distinctly identified.
Making a change like this could make the defense even more lethal as Bader and Tyler O’Neill recover from injuries and could turn the entire field of play into a no-fly zone. Regardless, their bread and butter is infield defense, so it is acceptable if the corner outfielders are more offensive players.
Engaging the Defense
The main reason that Cardinals starters succeed is through playing to that defense. It’s not simply that they have a good defense behind them as they pitch, but they actively use it in their approach to get outs. It’s not flashy by any means and often makes us wary about their future output, but it’s clearly a concerted effort from the Cardinals’ coaching staff and front office to get starters who produce weak contact and ground balls. Not everyone has to do both, but pitchers who can either get ground balls or weak contact will succeed with the defense in St. Louis.
As an entire staff, the Cardinals rank last in baseball in K-BB% at 10.2%. K-BB% is one of the strongest predictive stats for pitcher ability, yet the Cardinals are making it work without strikeouts and without control. They’re getting their desired outcomes in weak contact, which is opposite to the general consensus of aiming for strikeouts. This is focused solely within the rotation as well, the Cardinals bullpen features two filthy arms in Ryan Helsley and Giovanny Gallegos.
Using the defense can be identified through their three primary starters so far this year: Wainwright, Mikolas, and Hudson. These three are their only pitchers to eclipse 50 IP so far and have been the Cardinals’ only consistent starters throughout 2022. All three pitchers throw sinkers, which is essential for creating ground balls, but it isn’t the only requirement for success. All guys do things a little bit differently outside of being sinkerballers, but they all hunt for desirable balls in play.
First, Wainwright throws his sinker, curveball, and cutter all at similar usage rates. While he used to throw his curveball as a primary pitch, Wainwright has dialed it back in 2022 to have a general increase in all his other pitches.
This change allows Wainwright to put more pitches in the zone and challenge hitters, which works to his advantage. His 91.9% Z-Contact% — how often pitches thrown in the zone are hit — is a career-high and well above the MLB average of 84.2%. Wainwright’s hiLoc% — how often he throws a high pitch, regardless of location — is 26.4%, below the MLB average of 30.4%. He’s keeping the ball down and letting hitters do the work for him.
Wainwright’s ground ball rate isn’t spectacular, a 45.0% is actually above the 44.3% league average for starters, but he keeps the ball low to the ground generally. The line drive rate has increased in 2022 compared to his career line, but the resulting fly ball rate decrease has included a smaller HR/FB%. An 8.4% HR/FB% is good for 17th in baseball among qualified starters.
This approach and batted ball data yields a 24.1 HardContact%, which is three percent better than the league average. His 3.07 ERA is not at all backed up by his ERA peripherals, which believe he is pitching more to the level of a 3.80 ERA guy. Wainwright trusts his defense and the impact is clear.
Next, Mikolas shows the best command of the group, as his 5.1% BB% is 11th best in baseball among qualified starters and is key to keeping up the 2.57 ERA. Mikolas’ grasp of the strike zone helps get weak contact, but not how one might assume.
His primary pitch is a slider, which he throws 27% of the time, that isn’t great at getting weak contact or whiffs. The slider is exclusively thrown glove side and Mikolas does a good job of keeping it out of the middle of the plate. With a high volume of sliders thrown, it’s clear he lives on the black with the slider.
He uses the well-located slider to set up the sinker and 4-seam fastball, which are thrown high in the zone for pitches that are 92.6mph and 93.3mph, respectively.
Because the slider is commanded so well, the harder pitches can be thrown seemingly over the middle of the plate to get weak contact. Of respective pitch types thrown 300 or more times, the sinker ranks 7th with a 25.2% HardContact% and the fastball ranks 16th with a 22.9% HardContact%. Due to their high location, they are both not great at getting ground balls.
However, opposite to Wainwright, Mikolas utilizes the curveball as his ground ball pitch. Thrown 20% of the time, it has an exceptional 55.3% ground ball rate and is great for getting out of difficult situations. When the curveball is put in play, it’s pulled 74% of the time — 7th highest value among starters. Resultantly, the Cardinals’ defense shifts more on RHH when Mikolas is pitching than when they normally do.
ERA estimators have Mikolas around a 3.50 ERA, still a good pitcher but about a full run behind the current 2.57 mark.
Dakota Hudson is the most enigmatic pitcher of the group and probably the most unique pitcher in baseball by output compared to ability. By all accounts, Hudson is not a good pitcher by himself. Here is how he stands among the 72 qualified starters in key pitching peripherals:
| Stat | Value | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| WHIP | 1.35 | 57th |
| FIP | 4.60 | 58th |
| SIERA | 5.14 | 72nd |
| K%-BB% | 1.9% | 72nd |
| HardContact% | 32.9% | 71st |
All of these stats are not exactly encouraging. Without knowing his ERA, one would likely guess that he’s one of the worst in baseball. Despite the peripherals, Hudson currently has a respectable 3.83 ERA. How does Hudson pull it off?
Hudson is the “true” sinkerballer of the group, throwing the pitch 39% of the time and getting ground balls from the pitch 61.1% of the time. However, the sinker isn’t actually what is keeping Hudson afloat this season. The sinker has been crushed for a .399 wOBA , 40% HardContact%, and has a +6 run value. It’s Hudson’s primary pitch but it flat out doesn’t work.
Meanwhile, the slider and 4-seamer have -5 and -3 run values, respectively. This is because both pitches are adept at getting ground balls too. Notably, the fastball ranks 11th out of 274 fastballs thrown 150 times or more with a 55.6% GB%. One of the fastballs ahead of his is emerging Cardinals starter Andre Pallante, whose 71.6% GB% ranks second.
Hudson’s whole arsenal is geared toward getting ground balls. Every single pitch in his arsenal gets a ground ball more than 50% of the time it is put in play. He ranks third in overall GB% at 56.1%, but even the two pitchers (Framber Valdez and Logan Webb) above him have pitches that don’t get ground balls. Hudson is a unicorn in the sense that everything he has can produce a ground ball. Even with his poor HardContact%, a lot of the balls put in play are getting eaten up by the defense behind him. It’s a fascinating instance where one can actually see how good a “bad” pitcher can be with a good defense behind him.
How Sustainable is it?
Every peripheral and advanced stat will indicate that none of these pitchers will keep it up. Conventional wisdom says that the Cardinals’ pitchers will regress as the season goes on, but we’re approaching July and it’s consistent across the board. If these pitchers, and the rest of the rotation when they get healthy, continue to have the same defense behind them, then there’s no reason we should expect a significant step back. Flaherty is still overcoming shoulder problems but has the highest upside of the group, Pallante has an elite ground-ball-inducing fastball, and Steven Matz has weirdly been the only Cardinals’ starter to have poor batted ball luck. Hicks is more of worry due to the pitch count, but the rest of the staff can deliver despite appearing non-intimidating at the surface level.
Cardinals’ pitchers can’t even point to park factors being helpful, but that’s not to say it’s unsustainable. Since every stadium adopted humidors, Busch Stadium has become a hitter-friendly park. It has a 101 park factor, which ranks 11th highest in baseball. This is a massive swing from previous years when Busch Stadium was one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in baseball. The change can be recognized by singling out home-run park factors. Busch Stadium went from 27th in home-run park factors last year to 6th this year. Cardinals’ pitching is relatively unaffected though; they had a 0.97 HR/9 in 2021 and currently have a 0.98 HR/9 this year. This emphasizes the point that it’s truly the effect of a strong defense.
It’s understandable to sell high on Cardinals’ pitching because their stats seem more volatile than they actually are, but their fantasy value is unmatched in 2022. Only two teams boast three starters with 14 starts, 5+ wins, and a sub-4.00 ERA: the Cardinals and the Yankees. Yes, wins aren’t a true measure of a pitcher’s ability, and projecting them for the future is near impossible, but it isn’t a coincidence that the Cardinals’ rotation has elite company. The defense works hard to make sure innings don’t go long and starters can work deep into games. With a competent offense on the other side, it gives Cardinals starters as good of a chance as anyone to get elusive wins alongside a solid ERA for fantasy.
Photos Icon Sportswire | Adapted by Doug Carlin (@Bdougals on Twitter)