I’m going to break the concept–already?–because the next-most-durable Cardinal saddens me that much. After Pujols and Eckstein, the player with the most plate appearances was Aaron Miles. Here’s the thing about Aaron Miles: he’s not a good baseball player, but this is the second year in a row he’s played more than 130 games and picked up more than 400 at-bats. Miles’s 2006 and 2007 seasons are a good example of the trouble with using batting average to value a player’s offense:

  G   AB    H  2B  3B  HR  BB   K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO
135  426  112  20   5   2  38  42 .263 .324 .347 .084
133  414  120  16   1   2  25  40 .290 .328 .348 .058

Miles’s power dropped from low–but a career high–to shockingly low. Among players with at least 400 plate appearances he was second most-punchless in the league, behind Whiteyballin’ Angels rookie Reggie Willits. Since 2000 it was the nineteenth most-punchless such season (which David Eckstein actually topped twice, in 2004 and 2006.) In any case, despite his much-ballyhooed batting average, he had the same not-a-starter season he had in 2006. Combine that with his utter lack of range on defense–ZiPS has him at average at 2B and poor at shortstop, and he doesn’t exactly help his case with his, uh, smooth subjectively-observed play–and he’s an average utility infielder at best. And utility infielders shouldn’t be getting 400 at-bats.

But you can’t blame the Cardinals, because the second Bad Second Baseman, Adam Kennedy, was supposed to keep Miles out of the lineup in the first place. An average bat and an above-average glove, he was going to approximate David Eckstein’s value, and do it, approximately, on David Eckstein’s old contract. Instead he had an OPS of .572 and eventually got hurt.

Altogether the Cardinals’ second basemen–in addition to Miles and Kennedy there was some Brendan Ryan and cameos of awful courtesy Miguel Cairo and Brian Barden–hit .265/.325/.340, barely managing 30 extra-base hits in 597 at-bats. The average NL second baseman–starters and backups–hit .272/.339/.419. As best I can figure it, the Cardinals’ second basemen cost them 22 runs, and that’s just on offense, and just compared to an average performer.

As for next year, the Cardinals have the pleasure of paying for two more years of Adam Kennedy, whether they use them or not, and while average thirtysomething second basemen are just about the worst bets imaginable for a bounceback he was a solidly average second baseman as recently as 2006. David Eckstein’s free agent status hangs over this part of the middle infield, too–it’s a guarantee that Brendan Ryan is going to see some significant playing time somewhere, and if Eck is resigned he’ll probably play a lot of second. (Which doesn’t make much sense, seeing as Ryan’s probably a better shortstop than Eck.) Jarrett Hoffpauir, the last man standing from the 2004 Draft-aster, came back from a mediocre season in 2006 to become a real prospect, hitting .323/.407/.473 between AA and AAA last year. Already 25, in baseball years, he won’t get much better than he already is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up being the Cardinals’ best second baseman by the end of the year. Faint praise, but praise nevertheless.

For completion’s sake, Junior Spivey hit his way onto the Pawtucket Red Sox and back into organized baseball with the Bridgeport Bluefish, hitting .333 and throwing up a .440 on-base percentage in the independent Atlantic League. If that’s not a signal that Adam Kennedy will hit .280 next year, I don’t know what is.

That’s right, after Albert Pujols the player with the next most plate appearances on the Cardinals is… David Eckstein, who played 117 games and missed a solid month right in the middle of June and July.

Like Albert, Eck’s season has an odd shape to it. On May 12 his season to date looked like this:

      G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO
     34  111  23   3   0   0   7  2 .207 .282 .234 .027

(Another two strikeout split? Really, baseball gods?) You can’t look much more done than that, as a Scrappy Hustler type; even less power than usual, declining range on defense, and no batting average. (He was, however, hit by five pitches.) Then he did this:

      G  AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO
     21  81  37   5   0   2   1  5 .457 .470 .593 .136

By that point his line–.312/.357/.385–was vintage David Eckstein, to say the least, but after going 2-3 on June 13 he went down with back spasms, a victim of the Cardinals’ apparent inability to keep something going well longer than a few weeks. Back in the lineup in the middle of July, he… proceeded to pretty much have the exact same season he was having:

              G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB   K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO
pre-injury   52  192  60   8   0   2   8   7 .313 .357 .385 .072
post-injury  65  242  74  15   0   1  16  15 .306 .356 .380 .074 

On one hand, a startlingly consistent season; on the other, a piecemeal one. That is the nature of arbitrary endpoints, friends.

Considering the Cardinals signed him coming off of two years in which his slugging percentage hovered around .330, the production they’ve gotten from him in these three years–.297/.357/.375–was outstanding; I don’t think it’s said enough how well the Cardinals made out in that deal. That said, he has to fall off at some point, right? And with so many holes elsewhere on the roster, even somebody like Brendan Ryan should be explored as a possible free talent starter if it means extra cash with which to fill out the rest of the team. I wouldn’t be angry if they resigned Eckstein–who doesn’t love David Eckstein?–but I don’t think the Cardinals are the kind of team who should be committing to above-average 33-year-old middle infielders. That’s the kind of fit for a team like–well, the Cardinals squad that signed Eck in the first place.

That’s right, it’s time for the latest in a long line of Get Up, Baby! features designed to make me look like a flake when I realize that it’s a really boring feature. The Post Post-Mortem is this: What did the player do this year? That’s the post-mortem. What will they do for the Cardinals next year? That’s the post post-mortem.

We start off with the only Cardinal to play more than 133 games, the only one with an OPS+ over 120, more than 70 RBI or 30 doubles: Down-Year Albert Pujols. Compared to Albert’s past, particularly since his 2003 ascension from really-good to really-great, 2007 was a pretty tame year, particularly in the power department. His .241 isolated power was the lowest of his career, and a massive drop from his MVP second-most valuable player .340 mark in 2006.

Much of this relative decline–the man still had the second-highest OPS+ in baseball last year–can be attributed to the fact that Phat Albert played much of the year on one leg. Bizarrely enough, though, the meat of his season came when he was hobbling the most. Remember post-All-Star-Break Albert’s hobbling? The way he’d struggle to first base on line drives into the outfield?

         G   AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB   K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO  K%
pre-ASB 85  310  96  16   0  16  53  39 .294 .399 .487 .193  13
postASB 73  255  89  22   1  16  46  19 .358 .455 .642 .284   7

The power still isn’t where it was last year, but there’s not much to complain about when you’re going from 2005 Larry Walker to Blake Street Bombers Larry Walker over the course of a season. In September, he threw up what might be the most absurd split of the season:

      G  AB   H  2B  3B  HR  BB  K   BA  OBP  SLG  ISO  K%
Sept 28  88  34  13   1   2  18  2 .386 .486 .625 .239   2 

Two strikeouts? Two?

Albert’s production next year is going to be dependent on two things: his legs. If he gets healthy and stays healthy, his seemingly, inexplicably improved bat control might allow him to do something ridiculous, and have the season he presaged with his outrageous start and finish in 2006. If he doesn’t, I expect to worry some more about whether or not Pitchers Have Caught Up With Him for the second April in a row.

Where were we?

Oh, yeah, baseball.

Firing Walt Jocketty? I don’t know that it was a necessary move, but I certainly understand why it was done. Fire Walt now, and replace him with some guy–Mozeliak or an outside hire–and it’s a response to an ugly World Series hangover, the beginning of rebuilding. Get rid of him when his contract runs up, whether the season’s good or bad, and it’s a Capital-Y Youth Movement, and Luhnow has a ton of pressure on him as the face of the next Cardinals would-be dynasty. This spreads out the perceived responsibility by throwing up a buffer between the extremely successful Cardinals teams against which the New Cardinals will be benchmarked.

Joel Pineiro? People are going to come into the season irrationally exuberant over Pineiro, I’m sure, but at this point in the economic history of baseball it’s hard to get that worked up over paying a guy $6.5 million a year. What does that buy you, now? Well, last year it bought the Cardinals Mark Mulder, and basically the Cardinals are paying him $13 million for one year and the right to resign him at $11 million in 2009, if Bill DeWitt finds, when the time comes, that he has been willed $300 million if he’s able to spend $11 million in 30 days without getting anything of value out of it. It’s about what people expected Jeff Weaver to go for, before he signed a one-year contract worth more money.

Is he going to be very good? ZiPS predicts a 5.28 ERA–a little higher than that, actually, since part of ZiPS’s projection is relief outings. That’s not great, but just as when he was signed he’s a better reclamation project than, say, Kip Wells. His numbers as a Cardinal don’t match up to the way he actually pitched–his FIP is 4.87–but he struck out enough hitters and showed off a heretofore unseen ability to avoid the walk. His only problem was an absurdly high home run rate, and home runs allowed tend to fluctuate much more than walks and strikeouts–I’m more likely to believe he found a new true talent level of 2 walks per nine innings than I am he sank to a new true talent level of 1.5 home runs per nine innings. In short: I think he’ll have an ERA around 4.50, which isn’t bad at all for the money.

I think the problem people have with this deal isn’t that it’s for Joel Pineiro, or it’s for $6.5 million, but that it’s not the kind of deal the Cardinals need right now. They aren’t in a place where problems can be solved by picking up reclamation projects and hoping they work out–they need some sure things to plug holes where there are no prospects on the way. They need someone in the class above Weaver and Pineiro last year–they need a Ted Lilly or a Jeff Suppan. Joel Pineiro represents the status quo, and the status quo isn’t going to get the Cardinals 80 wins this year.

So: if Joel Pineiro is a pitcher, not a bad deal at all; if he’s a metaphor: well, crap.

Nothing about the whole not updating thing? Sorry about that. Still figuring out what the new design will look like, but I should probably keep updating in the meantime. I guess I just needed a little time off from baseball, because when I saw the Pineiro signing on the ESPN Bottom Line I had one of those update-the-website instincts that I haven’t had in some time. As far as madeleines go it’s pretty mediocre, but I’ll take what I can get.