Today, the SF Chronicle’s John Shea suggests the NL manager of the year award is a two-man race, between the Rockies’ Jim Tracy and the Giants’ Bruce Bochy.

Here’s his thinking:

Given voters’ tendencies, let’s cross out Lou Piniella (last year’s winner) and Charlie Manuel (no one has won the award after appearing in the previous year’s World Series). It’s also possible to eliminate La Russa and Joe Torre, whose Cardinals and Dodgers are faring as expected.

The Cardinals are faring as expected? Really?

Back in March, ESPN’s experts, all 21 of them, made predictions for the 2009 season. Only 4 of them picked the Cardinals to win the NL Central, and the rest picked the Cubs. Only two picked the Cards to win the Wild Card. In other words, an overwhelming majority thought St. Louis, which is currently 10.5 games up in the Central, would miss the playoffs in 2009.

Of course, those were ESPN’s baseball people. What did the real experts predict?

Here at Umpbump, nobody picked the Cardinals to win the Central, and I was the only one who picked St. Louis to win the Wild Card.

If you’re a fan of number crunching, the PECOTA nerds projected the Cardinals to win 80 games and finish in third place, behind the Cubs and the Brewers.

So as you can see, the Cardinals were never the popular choice to make the playoffs in 2009, which is why it’s silly to eliminate La Russa as a manager of the year candidate.

In fact, I’m going to throw my support behind Big T right now. Because, you know, his ego could use a little stroking.

At Coley’s request, here is the WAR pie for the St. Louis Cardinals:

As you can see, the Cardinals are ridiculously dependent on just four players. Albert Pujols and the three aces, Chris Carpenter, Joel Pineiro, and Adam Wainwright, have accounted for more than 58 percent of the Cardinals wins above replacement.

We can also see how well the Cards did at the trading deadline, as pickups Mark DeRosa, Julio Lugo, and Matt Holliday have already combined to add more than 3 wins of value in just about one month’s time. That is some pretty good trading right there.

And finally, if we look at the pie broken down by position players and pitchers, we can see that overall the Cardinals have a very balanced team, with pitchers and position players each contributing 50 percent of the wins, but we can also see that Albert Pujols alone is contributing nearly 20 percent of overall wins and astonishingly, nearly FORTY percent of the team’s offensive wins…

You may not have noticed, but Cardinals starting pitcher Joel Pineiro is having himself one heck of a year: 12 wins already, outstanding 1.12 WHIP, sparkling 3.22 ERA, and even more sparkling 2.94 FIP.

But if you dig beneath the surface a bit, you’ll find one of the strangest seasons by a starting pitcher ever. Basically all of Pineiro’s peripheral stats are on the extreme margins, in different directions.

First of all, Pineiro is one of the worst pitchers in baseball at striking people out this season: his 4.07 K/9 is the third worst in the entire major leagues, among qualified starters, behind only Nick Blackburn and John Lannan. In fact, he has racked up a mere 67 strikeouts in almost 150 innings of work.

But at the same time, Pineiro is leading all major league starting pitchers in fewest walks allowed, with an insanely low 0.94 BB/9. Yes, it’s true, Joel Pineiro has somehow only walked 15 batters all season.  In 148.1 innings. Only 15.

Add the lack of strikeouts and the lack of walks together, and you actually get a pitcher with an incredible K/BB ratio of 4.17 (anything over 4 is amazing).  This puts Pineiro right up there with flame-throwing strikeout gods like Tim Lincecum, Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, and Jon Lester.

But perhaps the most amazing stat of all is Pineiro’s HR/9, which is a positively microscopic 0.24, which is easily the best in baseball, and it’s not even close. How is such a tiny number even possible???

Well, the obvious answer would be that Pineiro doesn’t allow many flyballs, and this is absolutely true. In fact, Pineiro leads all starting pitchers with the fewest flyballs allowed, at 23.2 percent, and also leads all starters in most groundballs allowed, at a whopping 60.9 percent.  This is even better than Derek Lowe. In fact, far better. Lowe is second place, but more than five percentage points back, at “only” 55.6 percent.

As for line drives, basically nobody ever hits line drives off of Joel Pineiro.  He’s fourth best in baseball at limiting line drives.

But even Pineiro’s incredible ability to get ground balls and avoid flyballs is not enough explain his microscopic home runs allowed numbers. Because on top of leading the majors by far in home runs allowed, Pineiro also leads the majors in fewest home runs per flyball, at an insanely tiny 3.5 percent.  Once again, Lowe is second, but he yields homers at almost twice the rate of Pineiro, at a full 6 percent HR/FB. So basically, even when a hitter manages to hit it in the air against Pineiro, the ball doesn’t go anywhere.

Now just to throw one more extreme number into the mix, Joel Pineiro has also been incredibly unlucky this year with his strand rate. Pineiro is fourth worst in all of baseball this year with a 65.3 LOB%, so basically the few runners that do manage to make it to first base of Pineiro are highly likely to score.  This rate of 65.3% is far off of Pineiro’s career rate coming into the season of 71%

So what exactly is going on here? Are all of these extreme outlier numbers just random flukes?

Well, to some extent, certainly, but maybe not entirely.

Looking at Pineiro’s pitch breakdown, we notice something very odd.  Suddenly this year, in contrast to the rest of his career, he has started throwing an incredibly high number of fastballs. So something has definitely changed about Pineiro’s approach.

In fact, Pineiro’s fastball percentage of 71 percent is way, way above his previously long established career norm of a much more normal 59 percent, and is in fact is ninth-most in baseball among starting pitchers. But what makes this even weirder is that out of the top 15 guys on the list of highest fastball percentage, Pineiro’s fastball is by far the slowest. The rest of the top 15 pretty much all sling it up there in the mid-90s, so they can afford to get by with a lot of heaters, but Pineiro basically tops out at 88 or 89.

Most of the other pitchers in the top 15 are also basically two-pitch pitchers, which both explains their high percentage of fastballs and also means they set up the fastball with a strong secondary pitch.

But what is odd about Pineiro is that he no longer even has a secondary pitch. When he started out in the majors, Pineiro used to be a four-pitch pitcher, mixing in a slider, curveball, and change.  This season, he still throws all three of those pitches once in a blue moon, but all three have become mere “show-me” pitches; Pineiro throws all three of them only about 10 percent of the time or less, and all three are at or approaching career lows, percentage-wise.

Basically, it seems like Pineiro has discovered some sort of magical, all-powerful 88-mph sinking fastball that can get just about anyone out, and he therefore throws it pretty much all the time.  We are talking near-Mariano-Rivera-type single-pitch effectiveness here.

While the pitch doesn’t really fool anyone in that it is quite easy to make contact with, Pineiro can fearlessly pound the strike zone with it, because the pitch is immune to home runs or even line drives.  The result is a pitcher who walks nobody, strikes nobody out, but also doesn’t give up any home runs. Batters get lots of singles against Pineiro, because just about every pitch is in play, but that’s about it.

Jon Heyman Tweets:

halladay preferences (according to pal): 1. win. 2. quiet. 3. spring in fla.; thinks he’d OK Phil, Stl, NY, Bos, etc. #MLB

Doc wants to go someplace quiet and his four candidates include New York, Boston and Philly? That makes sense.

My brother, a hard-nosed Cardinals fan, wanted to check his bank account, so he tried BOA.com thinking it would take him to Bank of America. He was wrong…

Update: Arg, whoever runs boa.com changed the picture, now a pair of creepy green eyes stare you down. Before the change, the site featured a large aereal view of old Busch Stadium in St. Louis adjacent to a snow-covered lot, and nothing more. Written in the snow in giant letters was the phrase: “CUBS SUCK.”

I was able to salvage this thumbnail:

With the season one-third gone now, it’s become pretty clear which players were only slumping and which players actually just suck at baseball. And yet on every team there is at least one player which for foolish reasons, whether it be an over-developed sense of loyalty, a case of GM-player man-love, a reputation for grit and hustle, or a bloated contract, the team just hasn’t been able to pull the plug on yet. In this post, we have a look at each team in the National League with an eye for the one player who really needs to be cut as soon as possible.

Dodgers – RP Guillermo Mota: This guy looks permanently broken: he gives up too many hits, he doesn’t strike enough guys out, and he walks too many batters. His WHIP is an appalling 1.79 and he needs to be shelved somewhere.

Giants – 1B Travis Ishikawa: The main job of a first baseman is to hit, so when your first baseman is the worst hitter on your team, you are doing something wrong.

Diamondbacks – CF Chris Young: Chris Young was supposed to be one of those guys whose power and speed would somehow make of for his complete lack of any ability to get on base.  Well, now you have a guy whose power and speed have fallen off, but who is even less able to get on base.  It is unbelievable that Young is still on pace for well over 500 at bats this season despite his .220 OBP. He needs to be working out his suckiness in the minor leagues.

Rockies – 3B Garret Atkins: I’ve been advocating that the Rockies trade Atkins for two years now, while there was still some perception that he was a good player, but they waited too long, and now he’s basically untradeable. Few players have benefited more from Coors Field than Atkins, and Atkins also had the benefit of his personal peak coinciding with the Rockies high profile Series run in 2007. But he was always an extremely inadequate defender at third, and now his bat has disappeared as well, even at home.

Padres – 2B David Eckstein: GM Kevin Towers calls David Eckstein the MVP of the team so far this year. He couldn’t be more wrong. Eckstein was only barely adequate defensively and offensively when he was at his peak about 5 or 6 years ago, and now at age 34, he’s pretty much got nothing left.

Cardinals – SP Todd Wellemeyer: Todd Wellemeyer shows that maybe there are limits to what pitching coach Dave Duncan can do. Kind of. Actually, it’s pretty amazing that the Cardinals have gotten as much out of Wellemeyer as they have, considering he was nobody’s idea of good starting pitcher material. But with Mitchell Boggs waiting in the wings, there’s really no reason to keep Wellemeyer around.

Brewers – 3B Bill Hall: Bill Hall couldn’t hit his way out of a paper bag right now. Sure, he hit 35 homers back in 2006, but he’s done nothing at all since then, and he still has no real position defensively. For some reason, Hall still has the image of a youngster who is still developing, but when you actually go look at his age you find out he is already 29 years old, and what you see, which right now is total suckage, is probably what he really is.

Cubs – RP Aaron Heilman: Heilman was once a highly touted prospect, and did manage to throw up a few good seasons, but it’s becoming more and more clear that he’s just not all that good. Nothing about his peripherals suggests that anything is particularly wrong. His velocity is the same as ever, as are his FB/GB rates, his home run rate, his K/9 rate etc., and his BABIP is a very modest .299. Heilman simply walks too many batters, posting an unsightly 6.26 BB/9, and until that changes (if ever), he needs to be in AAA somewhere until he can learn better control.

Reds – SS Alex Gonzalez: Gonzalez was once an elite defender at shortstop, which meant that his extremely weak bat could be somewhat justified, but now he is no longer anywhere near that class, and his bat seems weaker than ever at .209/.250/.302. He needs to be cut.

Erstad is still playing?

Astros – OF Darin Erstad: Yeah, I know, Erstad is supposed to be this super-gritty former football player (except he was only a kicker), but we are a decade removed now from his last actually good season in 2000, and I’m almost surprised to see that he is actually still on a major league roster. He’s hitting .137/.211/.196.  Why is this man still anywhere near a baseball diamond?

Pirates – OF Brandon Moss: Lots of people have mentioned how one good side of trading away Nate McLouth was that it has “cleared playing time for blocked prospect Andrew McCutchen.”  But hardly anyone mentions that one of the players who was allegedly “blocking” McCutchen is Brandon Moss, a corner outfielder who has been playing every day this season despite posting a .310 OBP and only a single home run.

Marlins – 3B Emilio Bonifacio: The fact that Emilio Bonifacio, who has no business being in a major league lineup at all, is actually batting leadoff for the Marlins, despite his .294 OBP, is an indictment of the entire Marlins coaching staff and front office.

Bonifacio whiffs again

Mets – C Omir Santos: It’s a joke that the Mets actually traded away Ramon Castro to clear a spot on the roster for this guy. It’s going to be fun watching as the numbers left over from his fluky hot start rapidly sink toward the Mendoza line.

Braves – OF Garrett Anderson: I laughed out loud when I heard that the Braves signed Anderson in the offseason, and I pretty much haven’t stopped laughing since.  The poor old guy has a .289 OBP to go along with a -15 UZR/150 in left field. At this point you could probably drag Bernie Williams out of the recording studio and run him out there for better production.

Nationals – CL Joel Hanrahan: You can anoint a guy your closer, sing the praises of his “live arm,” and run him out there in save situations as much as you want, but that doesn’t mean he is going to pitch like a closer, just because you really really want him to. In what may be the worst bullpen of all time, no reliever has done more damage in more high leverage situations than Hanrahan. His 1.90 WHIP (for an alleged closer!) pretty much says it all.

Phillies – P Chan Ho Park: Park has looked finished for years now, at least when you look at his peripherals. He managed to reinvent himself as a serviceable reliever in the pitcher-friendly NL West last season, fooling the Phillies into taking him on, but it’s kind of an understatement to say that his game does not play well in Citizen’s Bank Ballpark. The Park-as-starter experiment was basically doomed from the get-go, but ironically, Park has pitched even more poorly this year as a reliever than he did as a starter. This man should be enjoying his retirement somewhere, not getting thrown to the wolves every other night.

The St. Louis Cardinals have had a pretty quiet offseason. I asked one of their most verbose fans, Deadspin emeritus and “God Save the Fan” author Will Leitch, what he thought of the team’s inactivity and here’s what he had to say:

Honestly? I have no problem with what they’ve done so far. A lot of fans are angry, but I don’t want them to make a move just to make a move. There are still bargains out there. I see no problem with waiting. Now, do I wish Troy Glaus wasn’t so dumb as to not notice a shoulder problem until about a week ago? Yes. But David Freese will be just fine.

Of course, Leitch is right — the Cardinals are going to be fine in 2009. When you’ve got Albert Pujols on your team, the glass is always half full.

But the problem is the Cardinals were fine in 2008, finishing 10 games over .500, and it wasn’t nearly enough. The team ended its season in fourth place.

So what has St. Louis done this offseason to improve? They traded for Padres SS Khalil Greene, who hit 27 HR in 2007 but only 10 last year to go along with a .250 OBP. The Cardinals are gambling that Greene will return to his 2007 form, but don’t put any money on that. Of course, it’s not like teams expect a ton of offensive production from the shortstop position, but Greene doesn’t offer much defense either. In 2008, he prevented 8.9 fewer runs than the average shortstop.

The Cards tried to trade for Yankees’ 2B Robinson Cano, but the Bombers’ asking price was prohibitively high. So Adam Kennedy and his declining skills will most likely live to see another season.

Some young kids might get a shot at everyday action in St. Louis in 2009. Outfield prospect Colby Rasmus is said to be a candidate to start in center, even though he had a tough 2008 in the minors. Here’s what ESPN’s Keith Law had to say about Rasmus in his annual rankings of the top 100 prospects (Rasmus was #12):

Don’t hurt yourselves jumping off the Colby Rasmus bandwagon, OK? Rasmus played his entire injury-plagued 2008 season in Triple-A at age 21, and by the time he made a few adjustments and started hitting, he hit the disabled list twice and played just five more games before the season ended. (After an 0-for-22 stretch in mid-May, Rasmus hit .336/.444/.517 over 171 plate appearances until he hurt his groin on July 1.) The scouting report on Rasmus hasn’t changed: He still has quick hands and gets the bat to the ball quickly, projects to have plus power, is an above-average runner, plays a solid center field, has the arm to play right, and shows a generally advanced feel for the game given his age. He also has a history of good plate discipline and solid contact rates. So, please, before you send him off in endless trade proposals, remind me again what’s not to like here?

Rasmus isn’t the only rookie looking at a shot at the bigs. Troy Glaus is out until mid-April and in his place David Freese will man the hot corner. Freese hit .306 with 26 HR in 105 AAA games last year. Like Leitch says, he’ll be fine (and if he’s not it’s only a couple of weeks).

On the pitching front, the Cardinals brought back SP Kyle Lohse, signing him to a four-year $41MM contract. Lohse is a useful pitcher who threw 200 innings last year. Fan Graphs valued him at $14MM in 2008, $9.9MM in 2007 and $5.9MM in 2006, so this was a pretty fair price. There’s also still a chance that St. Louis will land Randy Wolf or bring back Braden Looper, who threw 200 innings for St. Louis last year. Another reliable arm would go a long way towards stabilizing a rotation that currently leans a little too heavily on Joel Pineiro and prospect Jaime Garcia.

Now to the bullpen, where the Cardinals will look in-house for a closer. This year La Russa will be choosing from veterans Ryan Franklin and Trever Miller, two prospects (Chris Perez and Jason Motte), second-year righty Kyle McClellan and Josh Kinney, who has seven Major League appearances since the 2006 World Series. Oh, and there are some who think injured ace Chris Carpenter should be the closer. I won’t pretend to know who should close for the Cardinals. But I do know that Jason Isringhausen, Franklin, McClellan and Perez blew 24 saves last season. In save situations, opposing teams had a .813 OPS against St. Louis’ bullpen. That’s gotta be some kind of a record.

Offseason grade: C

Additions: Khalil Greene, Trever Miller, Royce Ring.

Losses: Mark Worrell, Jason Isringhausen, Mark Mulder, Cesar Izturis, Braden Looper.

Projected lineup, rotation and closer:

C Yavier Molina
1B Albert Pujols
2B Adam Kennedy
SS Khalil Greene
3B Troy Glaus
LF Ryan Ludwick
CF Colby Rasmus/Skip Schumaker
RF Rick Ankiel

SP Adam Wainwright
SP Kyle Lohse
SP Todd Wellemeyer
SP Joel Pineiro
SP Jamie Garcia

CL Chris Perez/Somebody else

It’s worth noting that the Cards seem set up to swoop in at the last minute and grab a free agent bargain. Wolf would be a good fit. Bringing back Looper wouldn’t be the worst move ever, assuming the team could sign him to a one-year deal. The Cardinals have also been rumored to be in on Craig Counsell, who would be a decent utility man. Even if the Cards don’t make any more moves, the good news for the fans is that, while St. Louis hasn’t gotten much better this offseason, two of the teams that finished ahead of them in 2008 (the Brewers and Astros) have gotten noticeably worse. The Cubs seem all but untouchable, but the Cards should have a realistic shot at the wild card.

- Hot Offseason Index-

Now that CC Sabathia has signed, the competition for AJ Burnett is heating up. Burnett has said previously that he wants to be within driving distance of his house near Baltimore. This week we’ve learned that the Red Sox had extensive talks with the hurler and his agent, that the Braves remain in hot pursuit (and have reportedly offered in the neighborhood of 5 years, $80MM), and that the Yankees are making a concerted push as well (Thursday update: reportedly offering $85MM, five years). Ken Rosenthal has named the Cardinals as another interested team, and the Phillies are rumored to be in the mix too (Thursday update: via MLBTR, the AJC says Larry “Chipper” Jones talked to Burnett and the only NL team he would be interested in is Atlanta). The Jays have not been officially eliminated, but they are not expected to meet AJ’s asking price. (Um, ultimate update: Burnett signed with New York. He is condemned to one of the worst commutes ever!)

Our question for this afternoon: how far would AJ’s commute be from these six teams? Let’s look in the order of his likelihood of signing with each team, as we know it today:

Atlanta: 11 hours, 4 minutes

Atlanta is rumored to be pushing extremely hard for Burnett. But at first blush, that 11-hour drive is a doozy. Fortunately, this drive is (or can be) reasonably scenic. Though Google Maps wants to route AJ through Richmond on The Dread 95, it’s not that much longer just to take scenic state highway 29 through Virginia (through Danville and Charlottesville, skirting the Shenandoah Valley and the Monongahela National Forest). G-Maps puts that route just 19 minutes longer at 11 hours, 23 minutes. In fact, the scenic route may even be the quicker route if there’s nasty traffic on 95. And if AJ’s really got some extra time, there’s always the gorgeous Blue Ridge Parkway.

Score: 6 out of 10. What this route lacks in brevity, it makes up for in beauty. And if you take 29, you don’t have to worry about traffic. Plus, there almost no tolls at all — maybe one when you get to DC.

New York: 3 hours, 18 minutes

New York’s goal heading into the offseason was to score two of the these three free agent starting pitchers: Sabathia (check), Burnett, and Derek Lowe. They’re also supposedly kicking the tires on Manny Ramirez. (Clearly, there are no financial restrictions after an embarrassing season in which they failed to make the playoffs.) Anyway, in terms of commuting distance, NY-to-Baltimore is one of AJ’s shorter options. However, I’m hard-pressed to think of a more depressing drive than this. First, this drive takes you through the rusty heart of New Jersey — a dreary drive even on the cheeriest of days. Driving through New Jersey not only presents you with a bleak landscape to look at, you’re not even allowed to pump your own gas at the rest stops on the turnpike. And traffic? The whole state is a giant traffic jam. Throw in the getting-out-of-New York traffic, the getting-past-Philadelphia-traffic, and another nice little jam outside of Baltimore, and you’re looking at soul-sucking gridlock almost the entire way. Oh, and tolls. Lots and lots of tolls. Especially in Delaware. Ugh.

And I’m not even going to mention New Jersey State Troopers.

Score: 3 out of 10. This drive may look short as the crow flies, but what you save in miles you will pay dearly in soul.

Boston: 7 hours, 0 minutes

This is essentially the same drive as above, only with all the mind-numbing hours of Connecticut thrown in. Again, G-Maps wants AJ to take 95, but again, it makes more sense not to. If AJ sticks to the parkways (Route 15, essentially), he can skip a lot of traffic and construction, avoid having to deal with any trucks and buses, and enjoy some leafy scenery and beautiful 1930s bridges to boot. But he’ll have to deal with even more tolls in MA and CT.

Score: 2 of 7. A seven-hour drive in the best of circs, and AJ still has to tackle the soul-sucking NY-to-Baltimore leg of the journey.

Philadelphia: 1 hour, 53 minutes

Jackpot! This isn’t even a two-hour drive. Though the Phillies are rumored to be more interested in Derek Lowe, if they do make a run at Burnett, they can use this quick cruise as a selling point. Though G-Maps again wants Burnett to put up with the Delaware tolls, he can easily circumvent them by taking Route 1 through bucolic suburban Pennsylvania instead. Yes, it will increase his drive time by about half an hour (assuming he doesn’t run into traffic on The Dread 95, which is not an assumption I would ever make), but when you’re only talking about a 2 hour 20 minute drive, max, what difference does it make?

Score: 9 of 10. Hop, skip, and a jump.

St. Louis: 13 hours, 14 minutes

Deadly. While the St. Louis-to-Indianapolis stretch is hardly the decaying sprawl that is the New Jersey turnpike, it’s not even close to the rural beauty of Virginia. Plainly put, this is a boring drive. And because of the length involved — this is, by a couple of hours, AJ’s longest commute — you don’t really want to start taking scenic detours here or there. Now, once he gets into Pennsylvania he can choose between reasonably scenic I-68/Route 40 or not unpleasant I-70/I-76. But of course, by then, he’ll be totally fried. In my experience, once you hit that 12-hour mark, the drive stops being a fun adventure and just becomes a slog. This is basically your old-fashioned put-the-pedal-down-and-make-some-time ass-haul. Also, Columbus is ugly.

Score: 1 out of 10.

Toronto: 8 hours, 19 minutes

The Jays are not expected to be able to re-sign Burnett, but let’s consider the commute AJ has now, just for the sake of completeness. Though facing this drive is likely one of the reasons that AJ has stated his preference for a team closer to home, this is actually one of the pleasanter options on the table right now. Shorter than the commutes from Atlanta and St. Louis according to G-Maps, this is likely even shorter than the drive from Boston, for the simple reason that you don’t have to find a way around New York City. Indeed, after Buffalo, the only major city you pass through is Harrisburg. Certainly, Harrisburg is a depressing husk of post-industrial American urbana, but no one would hold a gun to AJ’s head and make him pull off the highway there. And the rest of the trip really isn’t too shabby — in fact, I would imagine this is a pretty interesting drive. (I’ve been through NY and PA pretty extensively, but I’ve never gone the North-South route, come to think of it….maybe I’ll try this drive!)

Score: 5 of 10. Not great, but not terrible either.

Now, assuming he’s going to get a pile of money no matter where he signs…

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