Future Redbirds

Bryan Smith has been one of the best writers to come over to Baseball Prospectus in a while. His articles are “so money, he doesn’t even know it.” In his most recent piece he looked at some of the minors worst defenses and how it factors into getting a better assessment of pitching performances. Since I’m not all that original, I thought I’d run through a similar exercise and look at the full season Cardinal teams and try to see what effect their defense had on their pitching. We try and look at pitchers with their ballpark in mind, but it would be smart to consider how much the defenses either helped or hurt them. The defensive effeciency ratios come per Baseball Reference’s splendid new minor league pages.  Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) #’s  are figured by me with help from the BB ref team pages. In a nutshell, FIP is like an equivalent ERA that tells you how well a pitcher pitched, regardless of how his fielders did. It accounts for the things the pitcher has control of. (Walks, hit batsmen, K’s, homers.)

Swing of the Quad Cities

ERA 3.32
DER .651
FIP 3.55

This was a solid staff that was helped by their defense. The rotation of Herron, Hernandez and Garceau (and Walters and Degerman for a time) were adept at missing bats, and Brandon Dickson was one of the league’s best at inducing grounders at a 59% clip. The league average DER was .646, so the team was above average in the field. The bad news is there isn’t a position player that was on the team that seems truly worth following, outside of perhaps Brandon Buckman and Steve Hill. (And maybe Cruz). Buckman is considered a fine defensive 1st baseman, he was voted by managers as the best at his position while he was in the Midwest League. I don’t know much about the rest.

Palm Beach Cardinals

ERA 3.95
DER .663
FIP 3.81

This pitching staff was a little better then their defense, and their defense was quite one of the best in the league and the best of all Cardinal farm teams. (And it included about 800 innings of Allen Craig at 3rd!) Norrick and Ottavino were two of the best in their league at missing bats, but walks inflate their team FIP level. Surprisingly, despite getting knocked around, Trey Hearne had a FIP of 3.94 but had a ghastly BABIP of .372 that puffed up his ERA. He allowed a line drive rate of 16% which isn’t really that bad. Where does the fault lie? I don’t know for sure, but according to firstinning.com’s hit chart, Hearne’s foes hit .541 when they took him to left, .489 to center and .475 to right. Where they all wall bangers, or what? Rapoport, Southard can’t be that bad. Van Slyke and Church played a lot of left early in the season; maybe they should receive the blame. I have no idea what’s going on here other then perhaps dumb luck. Hearne’s BABIP was .256 in his splendid 2006 that got him noticed; now the other side of luck seems to have swatted him, I guess. Don’t be surprised if Norrick and Ottavino get a little knicked up in AA.

ERA 4.07
DER .655
FIP 4.48

The Springfield defense was a small tick below average of the rest of the league (.657), but it appears they were much more of help then a hindrance to the pitching staff. Mitch Boggs, Jaime Garcia, Cory Rauschenberger and Eric Haberer all had sizable differences in their ERA and their FIP. Considering the ballpark is a rather notorious hitter’s park, we can read into this a little bit. If their team play is a reflection of their individual play, then that makes Jarrett Hoffpauir, Colby Rasmus, Jose Martinez defense look to be at worst average, if not above. For whatever it’s worth, and it may not be worth much, Hoff had a range factor of 5.05 this season in AA. NL average is 4.38. There are ways to adjust these things, but I don’t have time to go through the math Olympic training it takes to do it. Maybe one day. Don’t expect Boggs to have an ERA below 4.00 in AAA next year, unless Memphis sees some actual defenders get signed. Martinez, Craig and Hamilton will all likely stay in AA.

Memphis Redbirds

ERA 4.82
DER .636
FIP 4.53

This team stinks, no matter how you slice it. The fielding was lousy, and I wonder how of the blame falls on Edgar Gonzalez, who’s a noted butcher at the keystone. Those who have seen Brendan Ryan can note he could use some refining, but is hardly bad. That goes for Rick Ankiel, too. Nick Stavinoha isn’t the best in the field, from what I hear. Hawksworth and Parisi were the only starting pitching prospects coming into the year, and Hawk’s FIP (5.73) was worse then his ERA (5.27). Parisi’s FIP 5.17 was a little worse (4.91). When it comes to next season, you hope when they do sign minor league vets, they help their pitchers by signing decent fielders, as opposed to the Edgar Gonzalez’s of the world.