Back in February I discussed St Louis Cardinals starter Kyle Lohse, and how his ability to command his curve ball might define his season.  Lohse just finished April 4-0 for the Cardinals; how is his curve ball working for him?

Through five starts Lohse’s velocity on all his pitches is within .5 MPH of what he was throwing last year, except with his change-up; interestingly that’s up 1 MPH from 2011.  He is also throwing all his pitches with roughly the same frequency as in 2011 with two notable exceptions.  Lohse’s change-up usage is down ~5% from his 2011 numbers, and his slider usage is up over 7%.

Has it made much difference?  That is unclear so far.  Lohse’s walk rate per 9 innings is down slightly as compared to 2011 (1.6 now, 2.0 last season), and his strike out rate is up a commensurate amount (5.7 now from 5.3 a year ago), but that could just be noise in the statistics.

Ok, so let’s look at his isolated pitch values.  The wCH value is currently 2.0, the lowest it has been in April since 2008.  On the other hand, his wSL value of 4.2 is the highest it has been as a Cardinal. Lohse’s slider has been a devastating pitch in 2012.  His fastball hasn’t been half bad, either.  Last season his April wFB value of 8.0 was more than twice as good as it had been in his Cardinal tenure.  This year’s number of 4.2 is half that personal best, but it is also the second-best value he’s had as a Cardinal.  Now Lohse’s fastball is a valuable pitch because it sets up all his off-speed stuff, but it has never been an out pitch for him.  It would be exciting if he’s able to maintain that quality with his fastball throughout this season.

Lohse’s curve ball has not been a good pitch so far this year, just like it has not been that good in April in all his years in St Louis.  So far it would appear the curve ball is not what’s driving Lohse’s success; it’s his slider that’s making him one of the NL’s best pitchers in 2012.

One caveat to all this discussion.  Lohse is 14-2 in April as a Cardinal, by far his best month of the season; and April is the only month in which Lohse is over .500 in his career.  Early season success does not guarantee full season success, as his injury-plagued 2009 would suggest.  Lohse is pitching great so far, helping to lead St Louis to the second-best record in the league after one month of play.

Mike Metzger is a freelance writer based in San Diego.  He also blogs about the Padres.  Follow him on Twitter @metzgermg.

In fine print in a remote corner of the sports section: “The Royals select pitcher Nathan Adcock in the 2010 Rule 5 Draft.”

Who? Ho hum. Flip to the NFL section of the sports page. Nothing to see here.

One of the overlooked “perks” of being one of the worst teams in baseball is annually having a high selection in the winter Rule 5 Draft – a culling of seasoned minor leaguers.

But to the casual fan of most teams, the Rule 5 Draft goes unnoticed. Their teams are busy filling holes in their major league roster through free agency, trades or promotion of minor league talents. The drafting of minor league castoffs isn’t cause for excitement.

To the rabid Royals fan, however, hungering for any morsel of hope, the Rule 5 Draft is one more chance to inject life into the languishing franchise.

And the addition of one of the finest closers in the game is certainly worth getting excited about. That’s right, the Royals imported Joakim Soria for just $50,000 in the 2006 Rule 5 Draft.

The Rule 5 Draft is a bit complicated. In general, players over 23 years of age with four or more professional seasons under their belts must be protected on their teams’ 40-man major league roster. If they are not protected, they are eligible to be drafted by another team, with the only caveat being they must stay with their new major league club for the entire season. The cost of the selection is $50,000. If at some point the new team doesn’t want to keep the player on the roster, he must be offered back to the original club for $25,000.

(For a more complete look at the policies governing the Rule 5 Draft, go here.)

The Royals struck gold in the 2006 draft by plucking Soria from the San Diego Padres minor league system. Soria stayed with the big league Royals the entire 2007 season, emerging as their closer and finishing the year with 17 saves and a 2.48 ERA.

There’s hardly a player in the league for which the Royals would trade Soria, but shockingly the player taken right after Soria in the 2006 draft… none other than reigning MVP Josh Hamilton.

In 2005, the Royals and six other clubs passed on slugging second baseman Dan Uggla in the winter draft. Imagine for a moment the Royals with Hamilton and Uggla in their lineup and you realize how significant the Rule 5 Draft can be.

There have been a few other big name players taken in the winter draft over the years, the most significant being Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente (1954), Darrell Evans (1968), George Bell (1980), Bobby Bonilla (1985), and Johan Santana (1999).

Will the name of Adcock, a 22-year-old righty who has yet to pitch above high A ball, someday be mentioned with Uggla, Hamilton, Soria, and even Clemente? Probably not. The jump from the minors, in most cases, is too much to ask. But Rule 5 picks can be demoted to minor league rosters after they are offered back to their original clubs.

In 2009, the Royals took Edgar Osuna from the Atlanta Braves. Deemed not ready for the bigs, the Royals offered Osuna back to Atlanta, but the Braves declined to reclaim him. Osuna went 6-2 in 17 starts for Northwest Arkansas last season and figures in the Omaha rotation for 2011.

Some players of note from past Rule 5 Drafts include:

Andrew Sisco, taken in 2004 from the Cubs, pitched well out of the bullpen in 2005 (3.11 ERA and 9.1 SO/9), then netted Ross Gload in a 2006 trade.

D.J. Carrasco, selected from Pittsburg in 2002, had three productive seasons out of the pen before the Royals released him in 2005. Carrasco has pitched well enough to earn a spot on several teams since and has a career record of 23-18 and an ERA of 4.31 in 244 games.

Endy Chavez, drafted from the Mets in 2000, played sparingly in 2001 and was allowed to return to the Mets. Chavez made a decent career as a journeyman outfielder, hitting .270 through the 2009 season.

Brandon Weeden, a pitcher taken in 2005 from the Dodgers in a minor-league phase of the draft, spent one campaign with the Royals’ High Desert affiliate. In that season, Weeden suffered through a 6-5 record, a high ERA, and arm troubles. Name sound familiar? He’s the 27-year-old junior quarterback of the OSU Cowboys who must have overcome his arm problems – he passed for 4,037 yards this season, leading the Cowboys to a 10-2 record and a berth in the Alamo Bowl.

A star quarterback doesn’t do the Royals much good. And for the most part, neither have these other selections over the past decade. Teams must weigh the cost of selecting a player in the draft – since the player drafted must remain on the roster for the entire season, it blocks one spot from being filled by any other player, costs money that could be used in some other way, and could force a player in over his head.
One bit of good news is that, in surveying the drafts of the past 12 years, the Royals haven’t let any significant players slip away as a result of the draft. Unfortunately, one reason for this could be the Royals system has been so devoid of talent that there weren’t good players being left unprotected. Glass half full, or half empty?

Best of luck, Nathan Adcock. You’ve been given the opportunity every minor leaguer dreams of – a chance to prove you belong on a big-league roster. Go take your place among the Sorias, Hamiltons and Ugglas of history.

How does one evaluate a hitting coach? Most guys on a Major League roster already know how to hit, otherwise they would not be on a Major League roster (there are execptions, of course; we’re talking about the every day players here). Coaching hitting at that level seems to be more of an investigative and cheerleading effort. Sure it helps if your coach has the chops of a George Sisler, but he needs to be equal parts Jack Ryan and Stuart Smalley: Ryan to figure out what’s gone wrong with your approach if a slump develops, and Stuart to be relentlessly positive.

Into this position stepped Mark McGwire. He seems to have a sunny disposition, uses video to break down the swings of his charges, and was a hitter of some renown during his playing days. Based on the opening paragraph of this treatise, he was a good fit and we are done with the discussion. However baseball is a results based business, so let’s take a look at some offensive numbers.

Cardinal Team Offensive Production

Comparing traditional statistical metrics for 2010 with 2009, we find they are quite similar.

• 2009: 4.51 runs/game, 294 2B, 29 3B, 160 HR, 528 BB, 1041 K, .263/.322/.415.
• 2010: 4.54 runs/game, 285 2B, 18 3B, 150 HR, 541 BB, 1027 K, .263/.322/.402.

The Cardinals as a team had 76 more plate appearances in 2010 than 2009, or 1.2% more; that’s not statistically significant. The one trend we can pull from this small data set is the Cardinals hit for less power in 2010 than 2009 across the board (based on extra base hits); the caveat to that statement has to be their 2009 2B total was the highest since 2004, the 2009 3B total was the highest since 2003, and 2010 marked the second consecutive season the team’s HR total dropped when compared to the previous season.

I calculated the team’s average XBH production (a) since Albert Pujols joined the team, and (b) since they moved into Neo-Busch, as well as the standard deviation for each metric.

• Average (2000-2010, 2B/3B/HR): 291/25/182; 1 standard deviation for each is 22.4/5.6/27.9 (rounded)
• Average (2006-2010): 287/23/162; 1 standard deviation for each is 6.3/6.8/17.4 (rounded)

What does that tell us despite the small sample size? That the 2010 team was right where we would expect them to be XBH production wise when compared to previous teams (within 1 standard deviation of the average calculated). So McGwire’s hiring neither helped nor hindered the team’s offensive production.

Cardinal Individual Offensive Production

Although team strikeouts dropped a small amount from 2009 to 2010, among the individual starters strikeouts went up. Cardinal starters struck out more often in 2010 than 2009. The Cardinals walked slightly more frequently in 2010, but other than Rasmus’ big jump the starting 8′s walk rates seem to have gone down. Yadier Molina’s stats look worse in 2010 than 2009, but he did miss the last 2 weeks due to his knee; really his numbers look the same. Albert Pujols numbers were down but he still had a good year. Skip Schumaker and Brendan Ryan, as was highlighted in this Post-Dispatch article, had bad years. Colby Rasmus seems the only player upon whom McGwire had a positive influence based solely on the numbers, but how much of that was McGwire’s coaching and how much was the advice Colby’s dad gave him will probably never be known.

The argument can be made Mark McGwire did not help nor hinder the Cardinals offensive production as a TEAM, but may have negatively impacted INDIVIDUAL players based on these counting statistics.

Conclusion

More data is obviously better, and it is unfair to rate McGwire as a failed hitting coach after only 1 season. As was also pointed out in that Dispatch article, some of McGwire’s philosophies, like adjusting in-game to what the pitcher is doing without running to the video room, are significant departures from previous philosophies and it will take time to change that behavior. It is easier to focus on one individual hitter and evaluate his strengths/weaknesses; it is somewhat more difficult to juggle 25+ hitters over the course of the season and give them the same attention to detail. Hopefully Mark learned how to do that over the course of last season and will apply whatever lessons he learned to 2011.

McGwire deserves a passing grade if only because the Cardinal offense did not regress in 2010. Improvement in how well they drive the ball should be a focus area for the 2011 team, and we as observers should evaluate how well he’s doing that as the 2011 season progresses.