- Commissioner’s statement on Ventura, Marte
- Ronnie O’Sullivan: Masters champion ‘felt so vulnerable’ in final
- Arron Fletcher Wins 2017 WSOP International Circuit Marrakech Main Event ($140,224)
- Smith challenges Warner to go big in India
- Moncada No. 1 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- Braves land 2 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- Kingery makes MLB Pipeline’s Top 10 2B Prospects list
- New Zealand wrap up 2-0 after Bangladesh implosion
- Mathews, Pradeep, Gunathilaka to return to Sri Lanka
- Elliott hopes for rain for Poli
Cardinals’ luck improves with a pair of close wins
- Updated: July 21, 2016
12:11 AM ET
ST. LOUIS — At what point does bad luck become just a bad season? The St. Louis Cardinals are trying their best not to find out.
Fangraphs’ Jeff Sullivan recently did a correlation between win expectancy based on run differential and actual wins called “The Cardinals have had historically horrible timing.” He came to the conclusion the 2016 Cardinals are among the unluckiest teams of all time. We’ve all suspected they were better than they have shown, but this shows the extremity of it.
Writing before the Cardinals played a doubleheader with the San Diego Padres Wednesday, Sullivan wrote, “The Cardinals have a winning percentage of .522, and an expected winning percentage of .610, and that yields a difference of -0.088. Since 1950, that would stand as the second-lowest difference for anyone. Only the 1993 Mets were off the pace by more.”
The ’93 Mets, by the way, lost 103 games. The Cardinals don’t want to be sitting at home watching the playoffs and telling everyone how snakebitten they were. At some point, they have to make their move.
Wednesday’s doubleheader sweep of the San Diego Padres qualified as their best day in a month or so for several reasons. The most obvious, of course, is that they won two baseball games — by scores of 4-2 and 3-2 — thanks to good pitching, stout defense and, as usual, home runs. A win Thursday and they’ll be seven games over .500 for the first time since June 12, the day they celebrated a five-game winning streak by losing their next five.
Jedd Gyorko’s power surge Wednesday gave the Cardinals a key doubleheader sweep. Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images
This wasn’t another ho-hum Wednesday either. Two Cardinals relievers, Kevin Siegrist and Seung Hwan Oh, worked in both games and provided untouchable relief. Most of the Cardinals got there by 10 a.m. and left after 10 p.m.
They also managed to avoid having their bullpen shredded in the process. Given how things had been going, the best news was nobody got hurt. For the first time since 2012, for example, the Cardinals …
continue reading in source espn.go.com
