Positions where Cardinals are "below average" may surprise you

It was another miserable weekend for the St. Louis Cardinals, who dropped 2 of 3 games from the Miami Marlins in the club’s first series after the All-star game. The weekend saw many of the same issues that have plagued the Cardinals all season, which caused the unfavorable, yet all too familiar result. An ineffective Trevor Rosenthal, too many strikeouts, bad defense, below average starting pitching and yes, some questionable decisions from manager Mike Matheny were the culprits once again.

As I watched, bewildered by what I saw once more, I decided to venture over to baseball-reference.com just to thumb over some stats and see if there were any other issues besides Michael Wacha’s inability to go deep in to games consistently and Aledmys Diaz’s below-average defense at the shortstop position.

And boy did I find something interesting.

I realize many of you stat geeks rely on Fangraphs for your WAR figures, but I was on baseball-reference, so we will use their numbers. Come to find out, the Cardinals rank in the top half of the National League at every position but two.

Those two positions, where the Cardinals are not better than at least half the league, are catcher and left field. So much for Yadier Molina and Matt Holliday, who are making a combined $31 million in 2016, being “core guys” and maybe, just maybe, Jason Heyward was right when he said the team’s leadership is past its prime (paraphrased) (also, Heyward basically admitted he is not a leader).

Here is how the Cardinals rank according to bWAR in the NL at each position.

SP  4th 3.3 bWAR
RP  5th 0.4 bWAR
C    10th -0.5 bWAR
1B  6th 0.2 bWAR
2B  5th 0.4 bWAR
3B  7th 0.9 bWAR
SS 3rd 1.9 bWAR
LF  9th  -0.6 bWAR
CF  6th 0.7 bWAR
RF  1st 1.7 bWAR
PH  1st 0.4 bWAR

Here are my knee jerk reactions to this information

~ I am a bit shocked to see the Cardinals rotation ranked so highly, especially considering the only starter with an ERA below 4.00 is Carlos Martinez. Yes, I think that Michael Wacha needs to be better. A lot better. Sunday’s loss is on his shoulders.

~ The bullpen, in a relative sense, is not as bad as YOU probably think. Everyone is having bullpen issues. Which is why it is so important to get more innings from your starter. The percentage of games won by a team when the starter goes five innings or less has to be very low (sorry, no time to research this). Also, if they do figure out a way to get Trevor Rosenthal right, it would not take much to catch up to the Nationals, Dodgers, Mets and Pirates, the only teams that have better pens (according to bWAR) in the NL. Now you are going to say they have managers that are better equipped to handle the bullpen, but also realize, that you are admitting that Dusty Baker is good at something.

~ Yadier Molina needs to be more productive. Much of his value can not be measured by bWAR or fWAR or any WAR, but he has to be better.

~ John Mozeliak and Bill Dewitt have to be laughing and toasting each other as they see the club ranked with the highest bWAR in RF.

~ I am also surprised to see the Cardinals rank so high in CF. I still believe this is a glaring weakness of the club. Tommy Pham is swinging the stick pretty well right now, although I am giving him until about August 1 until he is back on the DL. But I am still not convinced there is anyone on the roster that can play the position at an above average level defensively.

~ How about those pinch hitters? Why doesn’t Matheny get more credit for choosing the right pinch hitter for the right situation?