TOWER GROVE • Left in the game to get himself out of the trouble that he got into with bad luck and his pitching, St. Louis Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter did enough Tuesday night at Wrigley Field to buy time for his teammates to reward him with the first win of his season.
His seven innings and four runs allowed was enough for a victory.
But it’s not enough for a Gibby.
The Cardinals rank fifth in the National League with 21 quality starts from the rotation this season, five behind NL-leading Philadelphia and its 26 quality starts. Last year, disillusioned by the quality start stat and the 4.50 ERA it implies, we set out to establish a different standard, a harder standard, a more revealing standard for pitchers. With help from friends, we setup the Quality Start Plus (QS+), or The Gibby. The Gibby, named after Cardinals Hall of Famer Bob Gibson because it sounded cool, takes the quality start definition and cranks it up an inning. Any starter who goes at least seven innings and allows no more than three earned runs is credited with a Gibby. The Cardinals have 12 Gibbys this season.
Entering Tuesday’s games, Cardinals starter Kyle Lohse led the team with five Gibbys, or just as many as the Cincinnati Reds had total. The Cardinals’ totals:
Kyle Lohse … 5
Chris Carpenter … 3
Kyle McClellan … 2
Jaime Garcia … 2
The only Cardinals starter without a Gibby this season is tonight’s starter, righty Jake Westbrook.
Onward into today’s 10 spot.
1. The goal of beefing up the quality start stat was to find one more reflective of the quality of a team and its rotation. Through Tuesday’s games, there were 14 teams that had at least 10 Gibbys this season, and 10 of them had winning records. The division-leading team in five of the majors’ six divisions also led the division in Gibbys. On Tuesday, the top two teams in the NL East had dueling Gibbys with both Roy Halladay and Josh Johnson pitching at least seven innings and allowing no more than three earned runs. Here are the team rankings:
1. Philadelphia … 18
2. Cleveland, White Sox … 15
4. Tampa Bay, LA Angels, Oakland … 14
7. Florida, 13
8. Cardinals, Atlanta, LA Dodgers, Texas … 12
The pimple that stands out there is the White Sox, who have struggled in the standings despite their haul of Gibbys. Halladay’s start on Tuesday was his sixth QS+ of the season, putting him into a tie for the major-league lead with three other pitchers, including teammate Cole Hamels, Tampa Bay’s James Shields and Cleveland’s Fausto Carmona. Lohse is tied with five other pitchers for second-most in the majors with five Gibbys.
2. With two more RBIs last night in the eighth inning, Cardinals utility infielder Daniel Descalso vaulted into the major-league lead in clutch. Seriously. Clutch is quantifiable. Book it. Descalso has 12 RBIs this season, and in his previous 10 at-bats with runners in scoring position he has five hits and 11 RBIs. Seven of his
RBIs have come in the seventh inning or later and either given the Cardinals the lead or tied the game. That’s clutch, Clutchy McClutcherson clutch. Here are the major-league leaders in RBIs that tie or lead the game in the seventh or later:
Daniel Descalso, STL … 7
Mike Stanton, FLA … 5
Josh Willingham, OAK … 5
Bobby Abreu, LAA … 5
Cliff Pennington, OAK … 5
Greg Dobbs, FLA … 5
Jose Bautista, TOR … 4
Ryan Ludwick, SD … 4
Lance Berkman, STL … 4
Matt Kemp, LAD … 4
Eight others tied with … 4
3. Manager Tony La Russa will miss the entirety of this road trip, and in comments to the media Tuesday night general manager John Mozeliak implied the skipper will return to St. Louis by Monday. Still, he’s out indefinitely and that inspires today’s poll on what the Cardinals should do with the manager position if La Russa’s absence extends beyond the road trip. The poll is above this paragraph and below that picture. Click away.
4. The importance of pitcher wins and pitchers’ records has taken a hit in recent years, with even voting for the Cy Young Award showing a paradigm shift in how reporters and fans use pitching statistics. Carpenter got his first win of the season Tuesday night, but most people knew that his record was not reflective of how he pitched. He wasn’t a 0-2 pitcher and the urgency for his first win was covered differently than it would have been, say, 15 years ago. For how different a win is viewed these days in the clubhouse, consider what Kyle McClellan said Sunday after improving to 5-0 this season.
“Being 5-0 doesn’t really have a lot to do with me,” the righty said. “The offense is putting up runs for me. The defense is making plays behind me. I might be the one with the record, but it doesn’t mean a whole lot to me.”
And a dozen sabermetricians have a new favorite pitcher.
5. Albert Pujols had his first four-game of the season and hit a double in back-to-back games for the first time this year. His average soared from.248 to .268, and .300 may not be that far away at all. Consider what Pujols will have to hit in his next x-number of at-bats to reach .300 …
… in the next 7 ABs … 7 hits … equals .303
… in the next 10 ABs … 8 hits … equals .304
… in the next 20 ABs … 11 hits … .equals 304
… in the next 25 ABs … 12 hits … equals .301
… in the next 30 ABs … 14 hits … equals .304
… in the next 40 ABs … 17 hits … equals .303
… in the next 50 ABs … 20 hits …equals .303
6. So Pujols and Cubs general manager Jim Hendry hugged it out at Wrigley Field on Tuesday. This is not the first hug the two men have shared through the years, and Hendry is known for keeping up and keeping relationships with players – opposing ones, too. (He has candidly told Mark DeRosa that it was a mistake to trade him back in 2008. I believe there was also a hug involved.) The coverage of The Baby Bear Hug sent Chicago a-Twitter:
– The hug with Hendry and the handshake with Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts got the most attention during batting practice, writes Gordon Wittenmyer in the Chicago Sun-Times.
– Paul Sullivan, Mizzou alum and Cubs beat writer for The Chicago Tribune, wonders if the hug and Pujols’ four hits were part of the recruitment process. Hendry stressed they were “exchanging pleasantries, not dollar figures,” per Sullivan.
– Sullivan snapped a picture of the moment for his official Facebook page.
– Spencer Fordin gets Hendry’s reaction out there for Cubs.com.
– Pujols could “bring the buzz back for Cubs,” writes Bruce Levine for ESPN Chicago.
All of this is fun, and all of this is noteworthy, and all of it is so much background noise to a more compelling Pujols-related headline that’s worth noticing this week. The Sports Business Journal reported that Pujols’ agent, Dan Lozano, has added a new client for baseball-related business: Alex Rodriguez. An official with Lozano’s office confirmed Rodriguez’s move to The Post-Dispatch. The New York Yankees third baseman left his previous agent, Scott Boras, late last season. Lozano left Beverly Hills Sports Council but has maintained a strong stable of clients, headlined Pujols who is in line to pursue a contract only eclipsed by Rodriguez’s. Last winter, we looked at how the creative clauses in A-Rod’s contract could apply to Pujols.
7. Carpenter scattered a career-high 13 hits allowed in his victory Tuesday. All 13 were singles. In his career, Carpenter has had five other games when he allowed 12 hits in a single start, but not one since 2006 until Tuesday night. Of his 303 career starts, only 32 have included at least 10 hits allowed. What that usually means for his chances of winning:
>= 10 hits allowed … 32 games … 7-15 record
>= 11 hits allowed … 14 games … 4-6 record
>= 12 hits allowed … six games… 2-3 record
>= 13 hits allowed … Tuesday night … 1-0 record
8. FARM REPORT: The Cardinals’ four full-season affiliates all won on Tuesday. … Infielders Niko Vasquez and Jose Garcia hit solo home runs in Class AA Springfield’s 3-1 victory. … LHP Sam Freeman had a scoreless inning in relief for Class AA, now that he’s back in that bullpen after a year absence to recover from Tommy John surgery. … CF Tommy Pham, the subject of Sunday’s minor league insider, went 1-for-4 with a three strikeouts. … SS Ryan Jackson hit his 11th double of the season. … RHP Mike Blazek improved to 3-1 with a six inning out. He allowed one run on seven hits and a walk. … Class AAA Memphis won, 10-8. OF James Rapoport went 3-for-5 with an RBI, and 3B Matt Carpenter powered much of the offense with two doubles and four RBIs. He’s raised his average to .307. He has 16 RBIs this season. … RHP P. J. Walters received a no decision after allowing seven runs on 10 hits and three walks through five innings. Walters has a 6.64 ERA through this season. … RHP Victor Marte cinched his fourth save for Memphis since coming to the Cardinals’ organization via a trade with Kansas City. Through 11 games with Memphis, Marte has a 0.66 ERA and 14 strikeouts to five walks in 13 2/3 innings. … Former Cardinals’ farmhand Shane Peterson had a home run and four RBIs in the game. Peterson was part of the 2009 trade that brought Matt Holliday to the Cardinals. … 3B Zack Cox returned to the High-A lineup after a bout with the flu. He went 2-for-5 in a 5-1 win. … LHP John Gast faced a Clearwater lineup that included rehabbing 2B Chase Utley, and he allowed one run through seven innings. He gave up four hits and struck out four. … OF Oscar Taveras went 3-for-3 to raise his average to an absurd .500. He has scored 10 runs in 14 games and driven in nine. He has 18 hits in his previous 10 games and his slugging percentage overall is .692. Oh, and he’s 18 years old.
9. HIT THE LINKS: The Trib’s Dave van Dyck writes how Ryan Theriot has found himself caught between two fan bases irked by his comments. … A Kansas City Star blogger wrote that a Royal should have been hit by a pitch for the good of a team. So the Royals challenged him to put his ribs where his mouth is, and the writer accepted. Here’s video of several players enjoying themselves too much at a writer’s expense. … ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick has a detailed and must-read look at the number of DUIs in baseball so far this year. …
And, La Russa is apparently using some of his rest time to familiarize himself with Twitter. Already today he has commented on last night’s game and replied to a school project about his favorite flavor of ice cream.
10. Outfielder Jon Jay’s diving catch in right field during the eighth inning Tuesday was the extreme example of a stat especially created for La Russa’s Cardinals: the defensive save. No, it’s not a real stat, but it’s an interesting one to track through the year. The press box irregulars invented the stat in 2009 to reward the fielders who, for example, handled late-inning duties at second base in tight games. Same applies this year for the gloves that will come in at third base or right field to literally close out games. Replacement fielders are credited with a defensive save when he comes in during what would be defined as a “save situation” for a relief pitcher.
The debate has always been whether that fielder has to make a play to merit the “defensive save” the way a closer, for example, usually has to make a pitch to collect a save.
Jay earned one either way.
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