What Did the Cardinals Lose to the DL?

Have the rash of injuries really harmed the Cardinals’ performance that much?

It seems like it happens every year. The St. Louis Cardinals, once again, are racked by injuries sending a not insignificant chunk of the roster to the disabled list to start the season. The same thing happened last year, and yet the Cardinals still came away with the best record in baseball, although that didn’t help them much come playoff time. Last year’s performance begs the question: did the injuries the Cardinals have suffered affect the roster’s performance that much? Of course these games aren’t played on paper, but it is a question worth asking. We’ll be looking at the impact on the projected and actual WAR and the effects of the various injuries that the Cardinals sustained.

As with most statistical analysis, one needs to select the right sample size, not too big, not too small. Mercifully, only five more Cardinals from the February 16 roster have been sent to the DL since Lance Lynn‘s announcement that he would undergo Tommy John. This keeps our sample size small to begin with.

Are the injuries the Cardinals have sustained enough to have effected the outcomes of games? While it’s far, far from an inexact science, one can look at the WARs of the teams the Cardinals have faced so far this season to figure out if the injuries had a tangible effect on the win-loss columns.

This is what the Cardinals’ 25-man roster looked like on February 16, the day before Lynn’s announcement, with their Steamer-projected WAR for the entire year noted in parentheses:

C Yadier Molina (3.0)
C Brayan Pena (0.3)
1B Matt Adams (0.9)
1B Brandon Moss (0.9)
2B Kolten Wong (2.2)
IF Jedd Gyorko (0.7)
SS Jhonny Peralta (1.8)
3B Matt Carpenter (3.7)
OF Matt Holliday (1.9)
OF Stephen Piscotty (1.1)
OF Randal Grichuk (1.8)
UT Tommy Pham (1.1)
P Adam Wainwright (3.8)
P Michael Wacha (2.6)
P Lance Lynn (3.4)
P Jaime Garcia (2.2)
P Mike Leake (2.1)
P Carlos Martinez (3.3)
P Trevor Rosenthal (0.9)
P Seung-hwan Oh (0.1)
P Seth Maness (0.2)
P Jonathan Broxton (0.2)
P Kevin Siegrist (0.6)
P Tyler Lyons (0.7)
P Jordan Walden (0.4)

Total WAR: 48.0

Here’s the current 25-man, with their WAR through seven games, and roster changes noted in bold.

C Yadier Molina (0.1)
C Eric Fryer (0.1)
1B Matt Adams (-0.2)
1B Brandon Moss (0.1)
2B Kolten Wong (-0.1)
IF Jedd Gyorko (0.1)
IF Greg Garcia (0.3)
IF Aledmys Diaz (0.5)
3B Matt Carpenter (0.3)
OF Matt Holliday (-0.1)
OF Stephen Piscotty (0.4)
OF Randal Grichuk (0.0)
UT Jeremy Hazelbaker (0.7)
P Adam Wainwright (-0.1)
P Michael Wacha (0.4)
P Jaime Garcia (0.2)
P Mike Leake (0.0)
P Carlos Martinez (0.1)
P Trevor Rosenthal (0.5)
P Seung Hwang Oh (0.1)
P Seth Maness (0.1)
P Jonathan Broxton (0.0)
P Tyler Lyons (0.0)
P Kevin Siegrist (0.1)
P Matt Bowman (-0.1)

Total WAR: 3.3

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To calculate the effect of the injured players, we’ll take the Steamer projection from each of the injured players, multiply it by 7/162, and add that to the total produced by the 20 players who have not been moved to or from the roster since February 16, which is 1.9 WAR. If one includes the WAR lost to the disabled list, it only increases to 2.2 WAR, a far cry from the total 3.3 WAR. In a vacuum, the current Cardinals roster is a whole win better than the roster on February 16. But of course, the Cardinals do not exist in a vacuum. The important part of this finding is to determine whether or not the current 25-man configuration led to a different out come throughout the first seven games of the season, or if luck played into the outcomes of games. To do this, we’ll compare the total WAR of the Cardinals’ opponents against the February 25-man and the current one.

In that respect, the Cardinals were very unlucky to start the season. Despite getting swept by the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cardinals actually have a better WAR than the Pirates through seven games; the Pirates have only been able to garner a 2.3 total WAR. What this means is that the February roster would have needed some luck to beat the Pirates, not lose to them.

However, the Cards had what one might call “soft” opponents in the next series. The hapless Atlanta Braves (who are 0-7) have a total WAR of…-0.5. The front office could bring in a crew of entirely replacement level players and it’d be better than what they have now. And, true to the statistics, the Cardinals walloped the Braves, and the February roster would have as well.

Which brings us to the Milwaukee Brewers. The Brewers haven’t had the greatest start to their season, but they’ve had a better one than the Braves (the Brew Crew have at least won a few games). Their collective WAR sits at a tidy 0.5, and while that won’t make them a force in the division, it’s still a good jumping off point. Once again, the currents Cardinals smacked the Brewers around, and evidence suggests that even if the February Cardinals wouldn’t have done so to the degree that the current Cardinals did, it still would have been a comfortable margin of victory.

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Of course, this isn’t an exact science, and fails to account for a lot of the Cardinals’ early going after the Pittsburgh series, namely Jeremy Hazelbaker and Aledmys Diaz playing out of their minds. But it still displays what the Cardinals have given to the DL and what they’ve gained from those losses, and it’s quite surprising that they seemed to have gained more than they lost.

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