Earlier today, St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz posted a blog critiquing the way we at Fox Sports Midwest covered Ty Wigginton's run-scoring dash in the 7th inning of last night's Cardinals win.
Here are a few stats Bernie used to show the Cardinals are a below-average base running team:
The Cardinals have had 19 runners thrown out while trying to advance on the bases this season, the most in the majors.
The Cardinals rate a -4 in runs in FanGraphs base-running ratings.
Bernie blogged about these stats last week, and as always, he’s right on with his numbers. We actually ran a graphic with both of those stats (and a few others) while breaking down Allen Craig's over-aggressive base running in the 1st inning on last night's show. It wasn’t just a “Happy Talk” postgame show; we dissected the Cardinals base running flaws.
But Ty Wigginton scoring from 2nd on Matt Carpenter's infield hit turned out to be the game winning run. And despite some of the poor metrics cited by both Bernie and the Cardinals postgame show last night, the Mike Matheny's team is doing some good things on the base paths.
33% of the Cardinals base runners eventually come around to score. That is the highest percentage in the National League and the 3rd highest in the majors.
The Cardinals have also gone 1st to 3rd on a single 24 times this season, the 2nd most in the National League and 3rd most in the majors. And they've scored 36 times from 2nd base when a single is hit. That's the most in baseball.
So yes, the Cardinals certainly have some base running issues that we would like to see reduced as the season goes on. But, they are doing some good things on the base paths as well. Both of these are points we made on last night's postgame show.
As always, Shariff, we appreciate you watching, so keep on rocking the Casbah.
