Six games into the season, the biggest surprise aside from the starting pitching, in my opinion, has been the Cards ability to draw walks. St. Louis leads the entire MLB with 30 walks, Cincinnati being second with 27 and the Cubs a distant 16th with 18. To put it in context, the Cardinals were 22nd with 506 BB's in 2007, 13th with 531 in 2006, and 10th with 534 in 2005. As expected, contenders tend to stay at the top in walks: Boston led the Major League in walks from 2005-2007, with Oakland coming in second all three years. Colorado was fifth last year with 622, although the White Sox were in the back of the pack during their World Series season in 2005. The conclusion that can be drawn from these numbers is that walks are important, but you didn't need me to tell me that. We've heard it from Moneyball, we've heard it from Bill James, we've heard it from just about every scouting resource these days - "ability to get on base," "displays patience at the plate," "knows how to take a walk," etc. Walks are good...
Which makes it so surprising that the Cardinals are getting on-base at an awesome rate. They are tops in the Majors with a .373 on-base percentage and have a 5-1 record despite being middle-of-the-pack in runs scored and home runs. The walks are coming from unlikely places too: Cesar Izturis, who hasn't walked more than 6% of the time in his entire career, is walking 23.8% of the time thus far. Skip Schumaker is walking 22.2% of the time. Ankiel has shown to have greatly improved his plate discipline so far with an 8% walk rate. Even Jason LaRue has a walk. The biggest number to digest: Albert Pujols, with 8 walks in 25 PA, is walking 32% of the time in the young season. The god of walks himself, Barry Bonds, has only been able to hit that number twice in his career. Pujols has never exceeded 14.9%.
What do these numbers tell us? Aside from small sample sizes, they could show that our hitters are becoming more patient at the plate. The spring training numbers do show a slight increase in the ability to get walks, but nothing as significant as we're seeing now. The outburst in walks could also be a tribute to the pitching we've seen. While the Rockies were one of the stingiest teams in allowing walks last year, the Nationals allowed the 5th most walks in 2007. The Rockies walked the Cards 16 times in the opening series of 2008 while the Nationals walked us 14 times. Or it could be a simply case of dumb luck, getting an increase of bad pitches in a certain few at-bats.
Whatever the causation relationship is, part of the success of the Cardinals has been their ability to get on base. With Duncan coming back, this season could soon become the Year of the BB. Granted, Pujols must stay on his tyrannical pace and Izturis must continue to show us that he can be good for something other than defense. Is it possible? Certainly. Likely? Probably not, but we have another series against a typically stingy team to test us some more - the Houston Astros. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go take a walk now.
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