Split City: Albert Pujols & the Cardinals’ Agents of Victory
TOWER GROVE — The wealth of information available on Baseball-Reference.com offered an intriguing kernel yesterday when I was digging around the numbers for today’s article on St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Ryan Ludwick. The goal was to find a snapshot of his consistency in 2008 vs. what he called a “real hot-cold season” in 2009 (check that .200 average in June). Not too far away from those stats, I found this:
Ludwick in wins 2008: BA .373 … OBP .450 … SLG .736
Ludwick in losses 2008: BA .217 … OBP .289 … SLG .429
It’s obvious that the the lineup produces more in wins than it does in losses — simple math, right? — but the gulch between Ludwick’s slash-line (BA/OBP/SLG) in wins and his slash-line in losses last season struck me. He hit .156 better in wins, slugged .307 better in wins and it would seem could be pegged as a clear agent of victory when it came to production. Hey, the numbers say when Ludwick produces they won. Hardly a revolutionary indicator. Convinced the win-loss splits were probably a chicken-egg stat — which comes first? Ludwick hits? or Cardinals win? — I went looking through the whole lineup from 2009 to see if there were other obvious agents of victory.
Turns out, Ludwick’s splits aren’t close to the most revealing.
In previous blog entries, we’ve looked at the Cardinals’ record when individual players are in the lineup. This past season, for example, the Cardinals’ record with Matt Holliday in the lineup was 39-24 (.619). With Brendan Ryan it was 75-54 (.581), with Yadier Molina it was 81-59 (.579), with Rick Ankiel it was 64-58 (.525) and with Albert Pujols it was 90-70 (.562). With these records, the more a player plays the less his presence skews the team from its overall record. No duh, right? I assumed, wrongly, that the same trend would show up in individual stats. Pujols is the Human Metronome, consistently cranking out the same .330-30-110 season every summer, and it would stand to reason that his steady pulse of production wouldn’t vary much from win to loss to win to loss.
Couldn’t be more wrong.
Pujols, the presumptive National League MVP this season and for the second consecutive season, hit .401 in wins in 2008. He was a 400-hitter in the 80 games he played in 2008 that the Cardinals won. He also slugged .789 in those victories. Overall, in 2008, he hit .357 and slugged .653. Compare his ‘08 wins to his ‘08 losses and he was a +.095 with his batting average and a robust +.291 with his slugging. If it’s true for Pujols and true for Ludwick, it must be true across the board …
Until you check the splits of a three other difference-makers on playoff teams like Ryan Howard, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter. Check their win-loss splits from the 2009 season:
Rodriguez, NYY … in wins: .307/.437/.577
… in losses: .245/.327/.444
Howard, PHI … in wins: .295/.397/.635
… in losses: .258/.307/.485
Jeter, NYY … in wins: .337/.412/.476
… in losses: .330/.394/.445
Jeter, the New York Yankees shortstop, is the steady pulse, the same player, win or lose, and that would seem to imply that he’s not the barometer to judge the Yankees success. If he has the same production in a win that he does in a loss over the length of a season, then it is the players around him that determine the outcome. Howard has noticeable bump in slugging, and Rodriguez has the bump in average and slug. Not one of them, however, reaches the .200 improvement that Pujols has.
And that’s small time. Wait until you see the difference in 2009.
The Cardinals finished the season with nine usual starters at the eight positions. Taking each individuals slash line — again BA/OBP/SLG — from wins and comparing it against losses shows, of course, that all were better performers in wins. But the gap for three of the Cardinals was significant. Here are the differences between the Cardinals’ BA/OBP/SLG in wins vs. losses:
Skip Schumaker, 2B … +.156 BA … +.161 OBP … +.222 SLG
Colby Rasmus, CF … +.080 BA … +.066 OBP … +.155 SLG
Albert Pujols, 1B … +.123 BA … +.140 OBP … +.431 SLG
Matt Holliday, LF … +.128 BA … +.137 OBP … +.234 SLG*
Ryan Ludwick, RF … +.052 BA … +.049 OBP … +.039 SLG
Rick Ankiel, CF … +.059 BA … +.049 OBP … +.052 SLG
Yadier Molina, C … +.089 BA … +.106 OBP … +.086 SLG
Mark DeRosa, 3B … +.141 BA … +.136 OBP … +.261 SLG*
Brendan Ryan, SS … +.017 BA … +.041 OBP … +.043 SLG
* Includes stats from Oakland and Cleveland, respectively.
The reason this split became so interesting (revealing?) is what the Cardinals will attempt to do this offseason and have tried to do for several seasons: Protect Pujols. The lineup dynamics appear clear. In his two seasons as the Cardinals’ leadoff hitter, Schumaker hits .345 in wins and .247 in losses. Simply, he’s on base ahead of Pujols more often in wins than he is in Cardinals losses. This is a quick sketch of an argument made here often — perhaps Pujols’ protection actually precedes him.
From the Dept. of the Dept. of Obvious: If Pujols gets a chance to hit — and does — then often the Cardinals win. In his career, Pujols is a .375/.471/.738 hitter in victories. He is a .280/.366/.482 hitter in losses. He’s clearly the bell cow for the Cardinals lineup. No surprise there.
The surprise, however, is the splits have become more dramatic in the past two seasons.
It cannot be a coincidence then that in the past two seasons protecting Pujols has become more of a crusade for manager Tony La Russa, especially since the departure of Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds. Consider Pujols batting average and slugging percentage over the previous two seasons split between wins and losses:
Pujols in wins: .391 BA … .820 SLG
Pujols in losses: .282 BA … .458 SLG
Differences: +.109 BA … +.362 SLG
For context, realize that Pujols slugged .431 better in wins this season than in losses, and that difference was bigger than Chipper Jones’ total slugging percentage, Alfonso Soriano’s total slugging percentage and Jimmy Rollins’ total slugging percentage. Thirty-four of the 76 players who qualified for the batting title in the NL this season had a lower slugging percentage than the difference between Pujols’ win SLG and loss SLG.
The going theory has been if an opponent pitches around Pujols, it takes another Cardinal to win the game. These splits appear so profound that maybe the theory isn’t simple enough. Unplug Pujols, and you unplug the Cardinals. The uncanny impact he has on the lineup in wins was a .400 average one season and an .800 slugging the next. He gets so many hits that it seems almost trivial to cite the Cardinals’ record when Pujols has a hit or has an RBI. But these splits show that the Cardinals were overly reliant on Pujols. There’s no chicken-egg concern in this no-brainer. Pujols’ hitting comes first, Cardinals’ wins follow. If he doesn’t hit, the lineup isn’t built deep enough to find alternate offense.
And it’s an even bigger difference between wins and losses than you expected.
Go ahead. Ask the Los Angeles Dodgers.
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Coming Soon: The annual community prospect poll, which will culminate with the Bird Land 7.
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Interesting numbers man. Looks like getting a number two hitter that can get on base would be at the top of the want list. Two shots at having someone on protects Albert more than the 4 hole it seems to me. Not saying number 4 is not important.
I don’t know Derrick… It seems that you are inferring a lot more than your statistics indicate.
Hey Ben… I’d be interested in hearing some specifics on where you think the gaps are in DG’s logic. At his own admission, he starts with basic, “no-duh” numbers, but as the complexity grows, I think what he’s got is pretty sound and this is certainly a valid approach to building an arguement (starting simply and adding to).
I am one of the evil-stats guys that thinks the best “opinions” are those backed up with the cold, hard, facts of numbers (or the best we can do along those lines). Seems VERY reasonable to me that, as Teamred said, more men on IN FRONT of AP is significantly more terror-inducing than even the Babe with a 2×8 in his paws swingin’ for the fences.
While the intent of DGs stats weren’t SPECIFICALLY geared towards the principle of “protection”, (but rather win/loss indicators), the numbers appear to back that up as an extrapolation.
#2 hitter with high OBP please! Felipe Lopez for 3B maybe? Dero in left. That would work for me.
Follow the money ….
I mean, follow the win/loss splits.
Since pitching has an awful lot to do with what hitters stats and win & loss columns look like - which I believe is the primary take-away one should have from Derrick’s analysis - I thought the most interesting stats on the page were Jeter’s. No matter how well the other team pitches, he is going to hit you the same.
I would think that stat guys and hitting instructors would be all over that. It surely implies that Jeter’s approach to hitting, more upper body and less legs than the normal stance and swing (according to an ESPN breakdown analysis by Joe Morgan, if memory serves)is a more consistent approach.
By the way, it was Deep Throat that said ‘follow the money’, not Woodward.
Ben might be referring to the fact that across the board players hit more in wins than losses, at about the same rate that Pujols did this year. For obvious reasons this is the case. When you hit more for whatever reason you win, and everyone is likely to hit more at the same time when a crappy pitcher in on the mound.
In wins Pujols’ OPS was 118% better than his baseline OPS for the season, and for the National League as a whole their cumulative OPS was 115% better in wins than in losses (same number for the birds as a whole). That’s not all that different. He sort of does what all players do in wins but the numbers are just larger than most other players.
Obviously he carries the offense, but I don’t think it’s much more disproportional than his line would suggest. Then of course there are sample size issues and the matter of protection being debunked.
DG, these numbers are crazy. Does this make him some kind of Super MVP?
Doesn’t this underscore the Cards problems? Most of these guys weren’t around before Pujols, and when they showed up, they were used to him shouldering the load. However, guys like Jimmy Baseball and Scott Rolen were stars in their own right before putting on the Cardinal red. If these guys could step up and become stars in their own right, will we have a reliable, consistent offense that is truly feared?
ugh, I meant aginst the NL baseline (.850/.739 = 1.15).
Two possible conclusions from your data — not backed up by any analysis.
1) Albert plays way too o=much. 160 games in a season ? No wonder he tails off sometimes.
2) I wonder if Bill James might be right, and there is no such thing s “protecting” a hitter ?