I got the impression last week that I wouldn't have been elected mayor of St. Louis. Not sure why. Merely a hunch.
Just got that feeling after
I wrote a piece comparing the ballyhooed rotations of those
New York Mets and
Washington Nationals -- and, apparently, didn't direct enough love at the fabulous staff of the
St. Louis Cardinals in the process.
Or at least that's the message that got delivered via the Twitterverse. Imagine that.
But for those of you who actually read what I wrote -- and I know that's a lot to ask -- I readily acknowledged that the Cardinals' rotation had outperformed both the Mets and Nationals. And I promised to make amends this week.
So here's where the amend-making begins.
No matter how you compute it, the Cardinals' rotation -- even after losing the stupendous Adam Wainwright -- is having one of the greatest seasons in the history of rotations. Heck, their whole pitching staff is having itself a year for that matter. But let's stick for now to our theme of the week -- Best Rotations in Baseball. Discuss.
We'll get to the historic stuff in a moment. But first, a word about why I devoted last week's column to the bout between the Mets and Nationals, and didn't drag the Cardinals into the ring.
The Nationals, you might recall, were supposed to be building one of the most dominant rotations of modern times. That was the narrative. Then, unfortunately for them, the season started. And it turned out they didn't even have the most dominant rotation in their own division.
It's the Mets who now own that honor. And when you look at
Matt Harvey,
Jacob deGrom,
Noah Syndergaard,
Steven Matz and
Zack Wheeler, you see five future aces who all spout 96-mile-an-hour flame. The oldest guy in the whole group (deGrom) is 27 years old.
So that, to me, was a totally different topic than: Which rotation has actually pitched the best this year -- the Mets, Nationals or Cardinals? The answer to that question is, without dispute, the Cardinals. But they do it differently than the Mets do it.
"The Mets," one NL scout said, "have that classic pure power rotation. The Cardinals are your working man's old-school rotation. Other than
[Carlos] Martinez, they don't really have those big-velocity guys. Plus they're usually out of there after five or six innings, and then a bunch of relievers go out there and finish the job. But what they do, they do better than anybody."
So there. Are we clear about why I wrote what I wrote? Excellent. Now I'm going to make my St. Louis mayoralty campaign speech by explaining just how tremendous the Cardinals have been.
Ready? Here we go:
•
The Cardinals' rotation has a 2.77 ERA at the moment. If they keep it that low, it would be the best ERA by any starting rotation in 30 years -- since Orel Hershiser's '85 Dodgers (2.71) and Dwight Gooden's '85 Mets (2.84). Over the last 30 years, we've only seen one other rotation with an ERA that good over a full season. And it was the exalted all-ace 2011 Phillies collection of Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt. They finished that season at 2.86.
• But it isn't just the ERA that makes this Cardinals group special.
These guys are also averaging 8.0 strikeouts per nine innings. And that's a lot of whiffs. If you look over the entire live-ball era, according to baseball-reference.com's amazing Play Index, just two other rotations have had a strikeout rate in that neighborhood and an ERA that low over a whole season. Here they come:
• And since this is mostly about run prevention, there's also this:
The Cardinals are on pace to allow the fewest runs (338) any rotation has ever given up during a 162-game season. The current record is 342, by Gary Peters' 1967 White Sox, in about the same number of innings per start. The National League record is 360, by those spectacular 2011 Phillies, who actually racked up about half an inning more per start.
• Finally, since the bullpen is such a vital part of this staff, we should probably mention that
these Cardinals (at 2.60) are headed for the lowest team ERA by any National League staff, in a 162-game season, since Bob Gibson's 1968 Cardinals racked up a ridiculous 2.49 ERA for an entire season. The only other NL team with a lower ERA than this group in a 162-game season: Sandy Koufax's 1966 Dodgers (2.62).
So there you go. If we were to get into a debate about who has the most aces or who spits out the highest numbers on the radar guns, the Cardinals wouldn't win that argument. But if all we care about is just getting it done, period, that's an argument that would be over faster than a Ronda Rousey fight.
The winner, and still champion, in that arena is the 2015 Cardinals. Anyone out there disagree? If you do,
you can take it up with the Twitterverse. I've been there, done that.
