The St. Louis Cardinals are Major League Baseball’s best team. Without question, right?
How, though?
It’s all because they have the greatest starting rotation in baseball history.
The Cardinals have predominantly used four starters, none of which is ace Adam Wainwright due to his potentially season-ending Achilles injury that came only four games into 2015. They have stepped up and became one of the best pitching staffs . . . Ever.
Baseball-Reference has a tool called the play index, a wonderful tool that allows for some crazy stats to show up. According to the play index, the Cardinals are one of only 127 teams that have registered four starters with the following stat line: 125 innings pitched (minimum) with an earned run average equal to or below three for each pitcher.
If the four pitchers (Carlos Martinez, Michael Wacha, Lance Lynn, and John Lackey) continue with the current average of 6.3 innings per start, they will all reach at least 200 innings pitched this season.
So let’s add that filter.
If they all stay under a 3.00 ERA, that will qualify them as one of only 52 teams to reach the mark of four pitchers all under 3.00 for an entire season’s worth of work.
However, there have been only three teams that have been able to reach this mark since 1920, the 1972 Baltimore Orioles, 1968 St. Louis Cardinals, and 1943 New York Yankees.
It hasn’t been done in over 40 seasons and only three times in over 90 years.
And need I remind you? This is without their “ace.”
In theory, if Wainwright hadn’t injured himself and was able to do what his career 2.98 ERA says he should’ve, they’d be only the fifth team to have five pitchers under a 3.00 era for an entire season, and the first in over 100 years.
Just for arguments sake, let’s look at the fifth spot in the rotation.
It has bounced around between multiple pitchers including Adam Wainwright (1.44 ERA in four starts), Tim Cooney (3.16 ERA in six starts), Tyler Lyons (4.24 ERA in six starts), and Jaime Garcia, who currently holds the five spot (1.57 ERA in 11 starts).
If you take the ERA from the four pitchers, combined it sits at a cool 2.60. This would qualify them as only the fifth team to have five starters under 3.00 with 200+ innings pitched.
Wow.
Again, the St. Louis Cardinals have the best starting rotation . . . Ever.
Looking at what the pitchers have done is phenomenal.
And if this continues for the entire season, it will be unrivaled as the greatest season ever.
But it should go down as the greatest pitching season of all time because of the circumstances surrounding the team.
They lost Wainwright for the majority of the season. Matt Adams went down for the season in June. Jon Jay has been out for an extended period and now Matt Holiday is out with a grade two quad strain.
They are middle of the road in just about every offensive category, and they have been without some of the most reliable hitters on the team.
The starters, who are nearly going seven innings a game, have hidden the offensive blemishes.
Along with all of this is the fact that the team is using a bunch of, historically, middle of the road players.
The 2015 Cardinals don’t have a bevy of Hall of Famers like the ’68 Cardinals.
The ’68 Cardinals included Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Steve Carlton, and Orlando Cepeda. The ’68 rotation was anchored, of course, by Gibson, who finished the season with the fourth-best season from a start ever with a 1.12 ERA.
The 2015 Cardinals feature a typical five-man rotation, unlike the Yankees of ’43 and Orioles of ’72.
The Yanks had a six-man rotation where four guys got the most starts, and two other pitchers split the fifth day.
The O’s only ran out four pitchers, one of which was Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, who went 21-10 with a 2.07 ERA.
This team doesn’t have the appeal that the Cardinals had with all of the legends, or even the Yankees just for being an in-between year that didn’t feature guys like Joe DiMaggio, Red Ruffing, or Phil Rizzuto.
This team is doing it all without those big names, at least for now, Wainwright hopes to return this season rather than next.
There are no surefire Hall of Famers in the current rotation.
Outside of Yadier Molina, no legends in the lineup, and he is past his prime. Their manager Mike Matheny, even though he has had a ton of success, isn’t in the same breath as Earl Weaver.
So this team isn’t easy to talk about from the standpoint of legendary status, at least not yet.
You just have to look at the stats and gain the respect for what John Lackey (2.91), Michael Wacha (2.93), Carlos Martinez (2.62), and Lance Lynn (2.95) have been able to do.
With a fifth spot in the rotation sitting at a 2.60 ERA, this staff is just absolutely incredible.
They are the greatest pitching rotation that MLB has ever witnessed.
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