***Official 2015 STL Cardinals Thread***

[BigRedChief]

2011 World Series Championship
2012 NLCS. One win from another WS appearance.
2013 World Series. Two wins from another World Series Championship
2014 NLCS. Three wins from another WS appearance

• Made the postseason 10 times in the last 14 seasons.
• Only 1 losing season since 2000.
• Reached the World Series 4 times since 2004 and won as many championships (two) the past eight seasons as it did from 1965 to 2005.
• Made the NLCS 9 times including the last 4 years 2011-2014
• Three million attendance? Take it to the bank.
• 65 post season wins since 2004. 22+ wins more than any other team.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by kcpasco

Need some good innings from Lyons tomorrow. This bullpen drastically deserves some rest.

At this point I couldn't blame them if they did blow a game. They have been terrific.

They should call someone up in case Lyons fails early.

[O.city]

Lyons is probably going 7 tomorrow, whether he's no hitting them or give up 29 runs.

[jd1020]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

You just need some pitching and you are going to be a real threat in the Central for many years.

The bullpen is just trash right now. Meanwhile, the Cubs re-signed James Russell after the Braves released him after a couple bad outings in spring training (LOL?!). Now he's sitting in the Cubs minors with 12 SO, 0 BB, and a .346 WHIP. I would love to see the Cubs release Phil Coke or someone equivalent and get Russell back on the 40 man and in the majors.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Maness is a lucky pitcher and always will be. We depend on him, we arr lucky to win.

You don't get lucky for 150 appearances.

He's a strike thrower who doesn't walk guys and gives up very few extra base hits because he stays ahead in the count, can attack the corners and avoids giving guys pitches to drive.

With a career ISO of .115 and a BB/9 of 1.4, he's a guy that makes you string 3 singles together to beat him more often than not. As you've seen from the Cardinals offense the last couple of years, that's much easier said than done.

It's not lucky, it's a set of complementary skills. Maness is wildly underrated.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

You don't get lucky for 150 appearances.

He's a strike thrower who doesn't walk guys and gives up very few extra base hits because he stays ahead in the count, can attack the corners and avoids giving guys pitches to drive.

With a career ISO of .115 and a BB/9 of 1.4, he's a guy that makes you string 3 singles together to beat him more often than not. As you've seen from the Cardinals offense the last couple of years, that's much easier said than done.

It's not lucky, it's a set of complementary skills. Maness is wildly underrated.

Maness' stuff is such that when he makes a mistake, it gets hammered. He got tattooed tonight.

He is incredibly precise, but he has the lowest margin of error of any pitcher in the pen not named Choate, and that always invite the possibility of disaster because his mistakes are the most hittable of all.

If you sort his stats by the 80 or so relievers that threw over 60IP, he falls somewhere around 30th in xFIP.

He's a perfectly reasonable bullpen piece and that's about it.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Maness' stuff is such that when he makes a mistake, it gets hammered. He got tattooed tonight.

He is incredibly precise, but he has the lowest margin of error of any pitcher in the pen not named Choate, and that always invite the possibility of disaster because his mistakes are the most hittable of all.

If you sort his stats by the 80 or so relievers that threw over 60IP, he falls somewhere around 30th in xFIP.

He's a perfectly reasonable bullpen piece and that's about it.

And yet he has a .115 career ISO.

The narrative is that he gets hard when he's off but the results don't match it.

If he were a guy that was getting roped every time he was getting hit, then his SLG% would be a hell of a lot higher than only .115 over his BA. That ISO is virtually identical to Wainwright's.

Yes, he gave up three very hard hit balls tonight but let's also remember that he's throwing for the 4th time in 5 nights (and pitched in multiple innings two nights ago). Tonight was Maness taking a bullet for the team. Matheny should make him off limits tomorrow.

Calling him nothing more than an okay reliever just perfectly illustrates why I believe he's so underrated. The guy just gets outs and it's all he's done for 2+ seasons. If he walked 4 batters/9 like Rosenthal does, his ability to keep guys limited to singles wouldn't be that useful. However, the force a team to string 3 hits together to beat you is pretty damn handy, especially when you generate enough GBs to get out of some of those jams.

He's a perfect example of complementary skill sets. There's nothing sexy about how he gets the job done but as long as he continues to approach batters like he's doing now, he'll keep getting outs quietly getting us through the 7th inning with a better chance to win than when it started.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

And yet he has a .115 career ISO.

The narrative is that he gets hard when he's off but the results don't match it.

If he were a guy that was getting roped every time he was getting hit, then his SLG% would be a hell of a lot higher than only .115 over his BA. That ISO is virtually identical to Wainwright's. He's given up only 42 extra base hits

Yes, he gave up three very hard hit balls tonight but let's also remember that he's throwing for the 4th time in 5 nights (and pitched in multiple innings two nights ago). Tonight was Maness taking a bullet for the team. Matheny should make him off limits tomorrow.

Calling him nothing more than an okay reliever just perfectly illustrates why I believe he's so underrated. The guy just gets outs and it's all he's done for 2+ seasons. If he walked 4 batters/9 like Rosenthal does, his ability to keep guys limited to singles wouldn't be that useful. However, the force a team to string 3 hits together to beat you is pretty damn handy, especially when you generate enough GBs to get out of some of those jams.

He's a perfect example of complementary skill sets. There's nothing sexy about how he gets the job done but as long as he continues to approach batters like he's doing now, he'll keep getting outs quietly getting us through the 7th inning with a better chance to win than when it started.

He was 69th of 80 relievers in inducing soft contact in 2014, 57th out of 80 in inducing medium contact, and 52nd out of 80 in inducing hard contact.

He's in the bottom third of all three. He gets hit plenty hard compared to his peers.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

He was 69th of 80 relievers in inducing soft contact in 2014, 57th out of 80 in inducing medium contact, and 52nd out of 80 in inducing hard contact.

He's in the bottom third of all three. He gets hit plenty hard compared to his peers.

A line drive single is still just a single. A hard groundball is still just a groundball.

Do you really think he's just managed to get lucky for 150 appearances? To put this in perspective, as weak a hitter as Jason Heyward has been this year, his .122 ISO has been better than what Maness gives up. Seth Maness for his career has made hitters less powerful than Jason Heyward has been this season.

You can't just ignore the fact that he has an extremely good ISO or how useful that one skill is when combined with his stingy walk rates.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

A line drive single is still just a single. A hard groundball is still just a groundball.

Do you really think he's just managed to get lucky for 150 appearances? To put this in perspective, as weak a hitter as Jason Heyward has been this year, his .122 ISO has been better than what Maness gives up. Seth Maness for his career has made hitters less powerful than Jason Heyward has been this season.

You can't just ignore the fact that he has an extremely good ISO or how useful that one skill is when combined with his stingy walk rates.

I'm not saying that he's lucky; I'm saying that you're misrepresenting how his game actually profiles.

His career HR/FB% is 12%. That is 67th out of 80 relievers who threw more than 60 IP last year and would have been 75th out of 88 qualified starters.

I'm saying what I've consistently said: when he makes mistakes they get hit hard. Very hard. And he has a lower margin for error than almost anyone else in the pen.

[O.city]

To the eye, it seems when Maness gets hit, hes usually up and gets mashed, which is basically a sinker baller in a nutshell.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

I'm not saying that he's lucky; I'm saying that you're misrepresenting how his game actually profiles.

His career HR/FB% is 12%. That is 67th out of 80 relievers who threw more than 60 IP last year and would have been 75th out of 88 qualified starters.

I'm saying what I've consistently said: when he makes mistakes they get hit hard. Very hard. And he has a lower margin for error than almost anyone else in the pen.

It's interesting that you'd cite xFIP to say that he's hit hard in one post then cite HR/FB% in another.

xFIP expressly ignores HR/FB% in this calculation. In fact, that's really the only difference it has from FIP - it normalizes HR/FB rates in the belief that they're too erratic from year to year to actually mean anything.

I don't know that I buy it, but then again, I don't know that it's terribly relevant either way. The precise reason that he's effective is because his fly ball rate is extremely low. At around 25% for his career, guys just don't lift the ball against him and even when they do it tends to be more along the lines of those hard hit line-drive singles.

I haven't misreprented his game at all - I've remained completely consistent: He's a very effective reliever because he gives up almost exclusively singles and doesn't walk guys. That's a set of skills that not a lot of pitchers can demonstrate.

At worst, you're speaking past my point by referring to his hard hit averages. Sure, he may give up a few more hard hit balls than most but you still have to look at the batted ball type at that point. Even a grounder can be called a hard hit ball. Hard hit grounders are still going to be singles 90% of the time and hard hit liners are still going to be singles 2/3 of the time. When only 1/4 of the contact he gives up even has a chance to leave the yard, the number of extra base hits he gives up will remain depressed.

That's not luck. Nor is it a throwaway skill. It's a recipe for a successful setup man. I love WPA for relievers because it's a stat that essentially measures whether or not your team was more likely to win after you left a game than when you entered it. It does a pretty nice job of measuring how often and to what extent a reliever did his job that day. Maness has been a top 20 reliever over the last 2+ years (among guys that have thrown at least 100 innings) by WPA because when he enters the game, even if he gives up a single or two, he tends to get the job done a vast majority of the time without giving up any damage and leaves the game with the team more likely to win.

[BigRedChief]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

Hey Hamas you see the 538 article on ESPN? Basically saying Molina is all washed up.

You see the article DJ?

He used all the advanced stats that you and Hamas know to make his argument that Molina is not in a slump but washed up as an elite or even average catcher and player.

He does give credit to calling the game and working with his pitchers but then proceeds to kill him on framing pitches.

[Jewish Rabbi]

Originally Posted by BigRedChief

You see the article DJ?

He used all the advanced stats that you and Hamas know to make his argument that Molina is not in a slump but washed up as an elite or even average catcher and player.

He does give credit to calling the game and working with his pitchers but then proceeds to kill him on framing pitches.

And he proceeds to not block a third strike to start the inning.

[O.city]

2 base error on a pickoff attempt. Leads to a run.

Yippeee

[O.city]

Heyward with a weak grounder to the 2nd baseman. Hohum.