Alright Cardinals, you’ve finally broken me. I’m throwing in the towel for the 2024 season. For my sanity, it’s time to accept that this might not be our year. It seems that losing the series against the Reds was the tipping point for me, though I didn’t realize how pivotal it would be.
I’m still going to watch the games, still going to write about the team, and sure, there’s always a chance they could turn things around. But at this point, I think it might be healthier to embrace the reality that they probably won’t make the playoffs. Maybe by doing this, I can enjoy the final stretch of the season more. If they manage to surprise me and make the playoffs, I’d be thrilled to be proven wrong. But I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than continuously disappointed by clinging to unrealistic hopes.
To win me back, the Cardinals will have to do something truly unexpected. Maybe, just maybe, they could start hitting with runners in scoring position (RISP). Monday’s game was the final straw for me. We all knew what was coming when Pedro Pages stepped up to the plate with the bases loaded—it was going to be a double play. It wasn’t even surprising; we all saw it coming. And honestly, I don’t blame Pages. He’s not a strong hitter, so he has a better excuse than many others on the team.
This year feels cursed in a different way than last year, and two key factors drive that frustration: hitting with RISP and Sonny Gray’s bizarre season. Monday’s game felt like the culmination of all the bad luck. Gray had a stretch where he faced 11 batters and struck out seven of them, yet somehow still allowed three runs. Whatever strange force is affecting hitters once they reach second base seems to be impacting Gray as well.
This leads to my frustration with the narratives surrounding the team. The Cardinals aren’t a lucky team. Sure, they’re fortunate to have the record they do, given their on-field performance, but that’s not the same as being lucky. There’s a fine line here, and while the definition of luck might be a bit fuzzy, it’s clear that the Cardinals aren’t benefiting from it. If we were to play out this season with the same team a thousand times, we’d likely see better results and a much better run differential most of the time.
Sonny Gray exemplifies this perfectly. If he were performing to his Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) expectations, he would have allowed 11 fewer runs, and if he were meeting his expected FIP (xFIP), that number would be 17. The difference between those numbers means the difference between Gray being a 3 fWAR pitcher (and even higher if he pitched to his xFIP) and his current performance of a 1.7 RA9 pitcher. Gray is pitching like an ace, yet his runs allowed paint him as an average pitcher. Throughout his career, Gray has consistently had a better ERA than FIP and a better FIP than xFIP. While the differences have been minor before (less than a 10-point gap between ERA and xFIP), this season, they’re not even close. He’s played in both hitter-friendly parks (Yankee Stadium, Great American Ball Park) and pitcher-friendly parks (Oakland Coliseum) and now calls Busch Stadium home. There’s no logical reason to expect Gray to suddenly start underperforming his FIP. Sure, you might point to his expected ERA (xERA), which sits at 3.68 this year, but it was 3.66 last year and 3.67 the year before that when he posted ERAs of 2.79 and 3.08. And he’s only had an xERA better than his FIP twice in his entire career.
If the word “luck” doesn’t sit well with you, that’s fine, but there’s no reason to think Gray shouldn’t have an ERA around 3.15 given his current performance. The Cardinals’ run differential is -58, but with Gray performing as expected, that number would be -47 (with his FIP) or -41 (with his xFIP). Sure, it’s still a bad number, but not as dismal. Now let’s talk about hitting with RISP.
Believe it or not, hitting with RISP isn’t an actual skill. This has been studied extensively, and it’s mostly down to the randomness of baseball. I’d bet that with mostly the same team, we’ll see much better numbers with RISP next year, purely due to that randomness.
Some stats might help illustrate the absurdity of the Cardinals’ situation. When there’s nobody on base, the team has a 93 wRC+—that’s bad. When there’s a runner in scoring position, it drops to 78 wRC+—that’s awful. And with the bases loaded, it plummets to 46 wRC+. But here’s where it gets weird: when there are any men on base at all, not just RISP, the team has a 100 wRC+. Think about that. How does a team manage a 100 wRC+ with runners on base but only a 78 wRC+ with RISP? The answer seems to be that they’re really good when there’s just a runner on first base, and if my math is right, they have a 127 wRC+ in those situations.
So how on earth does a baseball team manage to be bad with nobody on base, great with a guy on first, and then terrible again as soon as someone reaches second? These numbers just don’t add up. If hitters struggle under the pressure of RISP, why wouldn’t they struggle with a runner on first? And conversely, why aren’t they better with nobody on base if the lack of pressure is what helps them with a runner on first?
The truth is, by the time players reach the major leagues, any issues with choking under pressure with RISP are long gone. These are not ordinary people; if someone had a tendency to choke in big moments, they wouldn’t have made it this far. It’s hard to accept, but baseball is just that random.
So how many runs has this cost the Cardinals? Quite a few, actually. There’s a stat called weighted runs above average (wRAA) that measures how many runs a player adds compared to an average player. With RISP, 21 teams have a positive wRAA, meaning that most teams are better than average with RISP this year. In fact, 20 teams have a wRC+ above 100 with RISP.
The Cardinals, however, are the second-worst team in this category, with a -29.6 wRAA. To simplify, the Cardinals “should” have roughly 30 more runs scored than they do. Adding that to Sonny Gray’s expected performance with RISP, the run differential would be around -17. Still not great, but much better than where we are now. And a big part of that remaining difference is Miles Mikolas, who, like Gray, is underperforming his FIP and xFIP.
Now, I could probably convince you about Sonny Gray’s underperformance, but Mikolas might be a tougher sell. Do I think Mikolas deserves a worse ERA than his FIP suggests? Sure. Do I think it should be as bad as it is? Not really. But I understand that’s a hard argument to make, so I won’t push too hard. The general point
