St. Louis Cardinals vs. Milwaukee Brewers: Can the bullpens keep it up?

Entering the clubs’ third series before May Day, the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals find themselves tied for second in the National League Central race. The Pittsburgh Pirates sit atop the division standings, with a one-game lead over both the Redbirds and Brew Crew. St. Louis and Milwaukee are well positioned in the early-season standings despite bad starting pitching.

In fact, calling the performance of the two teams’ starters this young season “bad” might be a bit charitable. Their rotations have posted numbers among the worst in all of MLB. Among the 15 National League clubs, they rank at or near the bottom of the rankings in old-fashioned and advanced stats alike.

The following table contains stats through April 21, 2019, and how they rank in MLB and the NL.

Starters:  Cardinals vs. Brewers

Team	ERA	MLB	NL	FIP	MLB	NL	xFIP	MLB	NL
STL	5.06	22	13	5.62	28	15	4.55	21	14
MIL	5.62	25	14	5.49	27	14	4.54	22	15

That is an ugly collection of top-line stats, whether you prefer Earned Run Average (ERA) or Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), which is factored using innings pitched, strikeouts, walks, and homers allowed. Even when one adjusts for expected home-run rate via xFIP, it’s not pretty for the Redbirds or Brew Crew. Collectively, the starters for both teams have not done much well.

For years (maybe even a decade), I have been pining for a stat to measure strikeout and walk rates to league average, while adjusting for home park. Fangraphs has delivered. It’s a wonderful stat to get an idea of how teams compare.

If you’re familiar with other “plus” stats, you’ll know how these work. They adjust for park effects and league, with 100 being average. From the hitter’s perspective, each point above 100 is one percentage point better than average; each point below 100 is one percentage point below average.

For this exercise, I’m going to use K% and BB%. While writing at Viva El Birdos, I explained why I prefer these two stats to K/9 and BB/9 when looking at pitcher performance. I’m also going to add K/BB because it shows the interplay between the strikeouts and walks by the starters. Additionally, I’ve included HR/9 and HR/9+ because HR/9 is the stat to which Fangraphs gave the “plus” treatment.

The following table contains stats through play on April 21, 2019.

Starters’ Peripherals:  Cardinals vs. Brewers

Team	K%	K%+	BB%	BB%+	K-BB%	K-BB%+	HR/9	HR/9+
STL	20.6	86	9.4	103	11.1	84	2.06	154
MIL	23.7	99	9.7	105	9.9	94	2.14	161

The Cardinals are not striking out many batters. The Brewers are okay at it. Both are doing a decent enough job when it comes to walks. Their low strikeout numbers, even when combined with their decent walk rates, combine to drag down their K-BB% when compared to MLB overall.

Now let’s get to the main issue:  Home runs. Weirdly, it appears that HR/9 is calculated from the batter’s perspective. The Cardinals rank last in the NL in HR/9; the Brewers second-to-last. So their high HR/9+ is not good. It’s very bad.

How has this impacted the teams early? It’s put a burden on their bullpens. The following table contains stats through play on April 21, 2019.

Starter and Reliever IP:  Cardinals vs. Brewers

Team	SP IP	MLB	NL	IP/GS	MLB	NL
STL	105	23	14	5.00	23	13
MIL	113.2	15	9	4.94	24	14

This might be a bit of October philosophy bleeding into the regular season. The approach that Tony La Russa pioneered in the 2011 postseason was used by many a postseason participant in recent years. But the sprint of October is not the marathon of the 162-game regular season. Bullpenning like it’s fall in the dog days of summer might make it difficult for a team to secure a postseason berth.

Conventional wisdom has long held that starter innings are the foundation for bullpen success. Requiring fewer innings from relievers allows the manager to more effectively deploy relievers by proactively playing matchups rather than reactively trying to cover innings. What is the sweet spot between the three-times-through-the-order penalty and the need to have fresh arms with which to play matchups? It appears that the 2019 Cardinals and Brewers might very well be on a trajectory to find out.

How Does Marcell Ozuna's Home Run Binge Compare to Last Year?

The St. Louis Cardinals traded for Marcell Ozuna during the 2017–18 Hot Stove with the hope that the left fielder would fill the need for a big bat in the middle of the lineup. Ozuna hit the ball hard in 2018, but not for as much power as the club had hoped, because of a balky shoulder. His 2018 line with the Redbirds was a middle-of-the-road .280/.325/.433 (.327 wOBA, 106 wRC+).

Thankfully, Big Bear has come out of offseason hibernation roaring with an impressive power display. Ozuna’s slugging stands in stark contrast to the way he started his inaugural season in St. Louis. To illustrate, let’s compare Ozuna’s slugging in 2018 and 2019, using his seventh home run in each season as a touchstone. The following table contains stats through the game in which Ozuna hit his seventh homer of the season.

Ozuna Through Game of 8th HR:  2018 vs. 2019

Year	Date	G	PA	HR/PA	SLG	ISO
2018	6/13	62	261	32.63	.419	.133
2019	4/17	16	63	8.86	.707	.414
Diff.	-57 days	-46	-198	-23.77	+.288	+.281

Obviously, Ozuna's slugged his way to an exponentially better start this year as compared to last. Rather than months of middling hitting, he has started with a bang. Just look at how much more often he is hitting a homer. If Ozuna's homer binge this April seems vaguely familiar, that’s  because we’ve seen something similar before.

This is the second concentrated homer binge that Ozuna has slugged while wearing the birds on the bat. Big Bear heated up last June, if only for a little bit, clubbing seven dingers. The following table compares his 2018 and 2019 homer binges, from the game of the first homer of his binge through the game of his last.

Ozuna’s HR Binges:  2018 vs. 2019

Year	Dates	G	PA	K%	BB%	BA	OBP	SLG	ISO
2018	6/2–6/16	13	52	9.6	5.8	.396	.442	.875	.479
2019	4/6–4/17	10	41	19.5	7.3	.324	.390	1.027	.703

While the games spanned is similar and so is the homer total, Ozuna's hottest power streak of 2018 doesn't really compare to the one he is currently on. Eight homers in 10 games creates a slugging percentage (SLG) and Isolated Power (ISO, which is essentially SLG minus the singles) far higher than what he posted last June. If Ozuna was red hot last June, he is white hot at the moment.

The epilogue to last season’s seven-dinger binge provides a note of caution for us in the here and now. After hitting his seventh homer in 13 games on June 16, Ozuna did not hit another round-tripper until July 28. This is a sobering reminder that cold streaks can overwhelm hot ones during the 162-game campaign. This fact will have me uneasily counting the days until Ozuna next homers in 2019.

Sobering epilogues aside, this April’s dinger barrage gives us hope that in 2019 we might see the Ozuna the Cardinals sold to us entering 2018. Last season's stretch was a hot streak yet cool compared to the heat emmanating from Big Bear's bat right now. Given the fact that his injured shoulder has seemingly been repaired, his manager is not Mike Matheny, and his hitting coaches are not John Mabry and Bill Mueller, there is reason for optimism.

Was Mike Shildt's Decision to Call on Ryan Helsley a Bad One?

I originally coined the term “Mathenaging” with the intention of having it be the title of a recurring series at Viva El Birdos in which the other writers and I would analyze the decisions and statements of former St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny. The idea was to look at decisions that were good, bad, and neutral. Because Matheny was a terrible manager, the term and posts in the series came to focus on his unique brand of awfulness. Such was the exasperation caused by Matheny’s horrendous managing that the term gained wider usage.

Blogging about the Cardinals again, I intend to break down the decision-making and statements of new manager Mike Shildt on occasion in the way that I once intended to with Mathenaging. Today, we’re going to delve into Shildt’s decision-making even though I don’t have a fun word play of a title yet. (“Shildtaging” isn’t going to work.) Events merit us evaluating a recent Shildt decision.

The venerable Joe Sheehan provided an example of the half-baked nature of Twitter in response to a Shildt decision during Tuesday’s loss to the Brewers when he tweeted:

I don't want to start a Mike Shildt fight again, but is the way to introduce a rookie pitcher to the majors to bring him in against Christian Yelich in the middle of an inning with two men on?

— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) April 17, 2019

For those of you who may have missed it, right-hander Ryan Helsley made his major-league debut on Tuesday night when Shildt brought the righty in with two men on base to face Christian Yelich, the reigning National League Most Valuable Player who bats left-handed and is coming off an otherworldly second half in 2018 that has continued into 2019, at least against the Cards. Yelich, clubbed a two-run homer off the rookie in the at-bat in question, giving Milwaukee an 8-0 lead. The Brewers would go on to win 8-2.

Let’s start by recognizing truth. Of course, it’s not best to have the first batter a rookie faces in his MLB debut be Yelich. But that doesn’t mean that Shildt’s decision was not best for the Cardinals at that point in the bottom of the fifth inning of Game 17, given what happened in the lead-up to the decision.

Next, let’s look at the state of the game. The Cardinals were trailing 5-0 in the bottom of the fifth. The Fangraphs win probability chart gave the Brewers a 96.2% win expectancy. While a comeback was possible, it was not probable. The at-bat against Yelich was a low stakes one because the game had been decided. And the homer, which was the worst possible outcome, didn't hurt the Cards' win probability that significantly because Milwaukee's win probability was already so high.

With the game all but decided, what was the state of the St. Louis relief corps? Depleted.

Tuesday was the Cardinals’ fourth game in four days, with a flight from Monterrey, Mexico to Milwaukee, Wisconsin after the first two. In the three-plus games before Helsley officially made his MLB debut, here is the distribution of innings between the St. Louis starters and relievers:

Game	SP IP	RP IP
Saturday, 4/13	6	2
Sunday, 4/14	5	3
Monday, 4/15	3.2	4.1
Tuesday, 4/16	2.2	5.1
Total	17.1	14.2

The table shows that Shildt was required to use relievers because his starters did not eat many innings in the lead-up to Helsley’s debut. Moreover, this four-game stretch is part of a season-long pattern. Through play on Tuesday (thus, including the game in question), the Cardinals ranked 22nd in MLB with 83 innings (4.88 IP per game). St. Louis relievers, on the other hand, had notched the 9th most innings in MLB with 67 (3.94 IP per game). Shildt has had to lean heavily on his bullpen early in the season because the starters have not pitched well.

The following table shows individual reliever usage leading up to Helsley’s debut against Yelich. This shows each reliever’s IP total for the corresponding date. It does not show pitch count. Nor does it reflect whether or not the reliever warmed up (though we know the Cardinals track that). We also don’t know which relievers might have been unavailable for health reasons.

Cardinals RP Usage:  April 7 – April 15, 2019

RP	4/7	4/8	4/9	4/10	4/11	4/12	4/13	4/14	4/15
Jordan Hicks	1.1	1.0				Off		1.1
Andrew Miller	0.1		0.2		1.0	Off		0.1
Dominic Leone			1.0	1.0		Off		1.0	0.2
John Gant		2.0	1.0		1.2	Off		1.0
John Brebbia	1.1		1.1	1.0		Off	1.0		1.2
Tyler Webb				0.1	1.1	Off	0.0		1.1
Giovanny Gallegos					1.1	Off		0.1
Ryan Helsley						Off
Mike Mayers			0.1	0.2		Off	1.0		0.2

Here's how reliever availability appears to break down:

• Mayer was not on the roster because he was placed on the injured list, so he couldn’t be used.

• I think it’s safe to say that Leone was off limits as well, given his back-to-back appearances in the two games prior.

• Brebbia was used for 1 2/3 innings the night before and had been used on five of the previous nine days, so he was likely also not an option.

• If you assume liberal usage of Miller and Hicks in late-and-close situations over the remaining 5 1/2 months, not using either in the bottom of the fifth in a 6-0 ballgame is understandable, given the low probability of a St. Louis win.

Accepting the above relievers weren't options, Shildt’s choice boiled down to multiple choice:

(a)  Stick with Gallegos.

(b)  Call on Helsley.

(c)  Call on the lefty Webb.

Gallegos had already thrown two innings and 43 pitches. He had allowed two singles in the inning and been part of one mound visit. It’s hard to disagree removing him when Yelich came up, given the work he had already put in that game. About the only criticism of pulling Gallegos that I can think of would be thar maybe Shildt should have given him the hook a batter sooner, but that's not very consequential given the game state and doesn't mean that Helsley would not have faced Yelich anyway.

This winnows it down to a choice of who best to face Yelich between Webb and Helsley. There is no comparison between their stuff. Helsley’s is better. Helsley was conditioned to start as well. So Shildt called on the flamethrower to face Yelich first and for multiple innings thereafter. He then called on Webb to mop up the end of a blowout.

It’s hard for me to criticize the decision to call on Helsley, when Shildt did, to make his MLB debut in a game that was essentially unwinnable — even if it was to face the white-hot reigning MVP with ducks on the pond. The stakes were low because of the game state. The Cards needed multiple innings and Helsley was stretched out to provide them. Further, Helsley's pitching after the homer (2 1/3 IP, 4 SO, 0 BB, 0 H, 0 R) suggests that surrendering it didn't rattle the rookie much if at all.

Thus, the backdrop of the appearance makes criticism of the first batter Helsley faced little more than quibbling. (Hey, what is Twitter for?) Sure, asking Helsley to face Yelich as his first MLB batter was not best, but the ideal was not possible at the time. Under the circumstances, Shildt's decision wasn’t a bad one.