Breaking Down the Series Against St. Louis

I was going to use the off day tomorrow and Tuesday to break down the upcoming series vs. the Cards, but Mike Scioscia's Tragic Illness beat me to the punch tonight, so I'll use their post as a guideline for what I was going to point out anyway.

MSTI basically touches on four key points, and they're pretty simple, too.

1. The Cards were the worst hitting team in the Majors this season against left-hended pitchers. It's pretty amazing to think when they have two of the league's best hitters in Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday, both righties, but alas, it's true, the team as a whole can't hit lefties. And not by coincidence, I don't think, the Dodgers are throwing two lefties at them in the first two games in Randy Wolf and Clayton Kershaw.
2. Two of the Dodgers starting pitchers, Wolf and Chad Billingsley, as well as Jonathan Broxton, who have faced Albert Pujols the most, have done very well against Sir Albert in the past. Between the three pitchers, they've held Pujols to just eight hits in 47 ABs, with only two extra base hits. (Holliday, on the other hand, has done very well against Wolf and Billingsley.)
3. The Dodgers have historically done very well against Adam Wainwright. The four Dodger regulars who have faced him the most have had a lot of success against him. Andre Ethier is 5 for 16 against him (.313) with a home run; Rafael Furcal is 7 for 16 (.438) against Wainwright; Russell Martin is 7 for 14 (.500) against him; and James Loney is 4 for 14 (.286) against him with a home run.
4. The Cards don't have a very balanced lineup in that they rely heavily on Pujols, and more recently, Holliday, as well, to provide the bulk of their offense. MSTI has two charts up that show the percentage of which hitters are relied upon the most in both offenses, and it's pretty staggering when you see how much more balanced the Dodger lineup is, when it's clicking, of course. Only two of the Cards hitters provide more than 10% of the team's offense while five of the Dodger hitters provide more than 10%. So if you can neutralize Pujols and Holliday, you have a pretty good chance of preventing the Cards from scoring a ton of runs.

And I'm gonna throw in one more point here:

• In head-to-head match-ups, the Dodgers hit .266 against Cardinal pitching, but scored just 19 runs in the seven games. The Cards hit just .218 against Dodger pitching, but scored 31 runs in the seven games. The Dodgers ERA against the Cards this season was 3.72, not great, but not bad either, while the Cards recorded a 2.48 ERA. Four of the seven games were decided by two runs or less, with two of the games decided by four and five runs. The one real big blowout was a 10-0 win by the Cards in St. Louis.

It's pretty safe to say that while most people are probably going to pick the Cards to win this series because of Pujols, Chris Carpenter and Wainwright, the Dodgers are no slouches when it comes to matching up with the Cards. Sure, the Dodgers don't have an "ace" like Carpenter, although Kershaw might be the pretty darn close, but they do have a very balanced lineup where, when it's clicking on all cylinders, any one hitter in the lineup can beat you on any given night.

The Dodgers finished the regular season with the best team ERA in the Majors, the best bullpen ERA in the Majors by far, the best rotation ERA among all of the playoff teams, the fourth most runs scored in the N.L., and the highest batting average in the N.L. Their defense wasn't too shabby either, having recorded the fourth fewest errors in the N.L. And probably the most important stat of all, at least I think so, they finished with the best run differential in baseball at +169. And it wasn't even close in the N.L. All of the Dodger marks above were higher and better than the Cards, including the starting pitching.

So there's certainly a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the post-season, and especially about their chances with St. Louis in the first round, regardless of St. Louis's 5-2 record against the Dodgers this season. And keep in mind the Cards played the Dodgers when the Dodgers weren't playing well in August.

And finally, one other note. The Cards struggled just as much, if not more, than the Dodgers did down the stretch, losing eight of their last 10. Point is, plenty of teams have had success in the post-season even after stumbling to the finish line. The 2000 Yankees lost 15 of 18 to end the regular season, and won the World Series. The 2002 Angels, 2006 Cards and 2007 Red Sox also had similar struggles and still won. Perhaps 2009 will be the Dodgers turn.