Believe It or Not, the Mets Have the Edge in the Pitching Matchups in This Series
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Here’s a fun fact with which you can amaze friends and co-workers: The Mets, Oliver Perez and all, actually enter this series with a better rotation than the Cardinals. No one seems aware of this, but it’s nonetheless true. To demonstrate, I’ll use a tool called xFIP. You can read up on the gory details at the hardballtimes.com Web site, but it’s essentially an ERA-like statistic that accounts only for what a pitcher controls. Major league pitchers have relatively little control over how often balls put in play go for hits, for instance, or how often fly balls go for home runs — xFIP measures how many runs per 9 innings a pitcher is giving up once you strip that noise out.
In Game One, the expected matchup is Tom Glavine (4.43 xFIP) vs. Jeff Weaver (5.38). In Game Two, it’s John Maine (4.87) vs. Jeff Suppan (4.86). In Game Three, it’s Steve Trachsel (5.92) vs. Chris Carpenter (3.53). In Game Four, it’s Oliver Perez (4.65) vs. Jason Marquis (5.78).
The eye blurs a little bit looking at all that, but if you look carefully you’ll see that in one game the Mets are even according to this metric, in two they have a large advantage, and in one they have a large disadvantage. A quirk of the way the rotations line up is that the Mets’ worst starter, Trachsel, will be going against the Cardinals’ best, Carpenter. While this seems like a bad thing, it’s actually a good thing. It allows the Mets to achieve a certain concentration of force in the other games. If Glavine was lined up against Carpenter, the Mets would still be at a big disadvantage, and they’d be at a disadvantage in the game Trachsel started as well, as he’s the least of these eight starters. As is, you’d bet against the Mets in Game Three, but they have the edge in pitcher matchups in every other game, without accounting for the fact that they have a much stronger lineup and bullpen.
On those fronts, too, news is good for the Mets. Yadier Molina is a fine defensive catcher, but he can’t hit at all—he batted .216 BA/.274 OBA/.321 SLG this year. He’s the most egregious example, but the Cards have several other outright poor hitters in their lineup, like Ronnie Belliard and David Eckstein. Worse for them, two of their big guns are injured. Scott Rolen may miss tonight’s game as he recovers from a cortisone shot meant to help his ailing shoulder, while Jim Edmonds is suffering from post-concussion syndrome. You hate to see a pair of potential Hall of Famers injured, but it’s good news for the Mets — the heart of the Cardinals’ order is absolutely nowhere near as intimidating as it looks on paper.
Finally, the Cards’ bullpen is a mess, as injured closer Jason Isringhausen has been replaced by the tandem of Adam Wainwright and Braden Looper. Wainwright is a good reliever, somewhat comparable to Aaron Heilman, but he’s not a terrifying closer, and Looper is the same guy Mets fans remember—a guy, the ultimate generic reliever. Roberto Hernandez is about as good, and he’s something like the Mets’ seventh-best reliever; Looper is the Cards’ clear second-best man. So while the Mets’ sketchy starters just need to hold the fort for four innings and hand off the ball to the likes of Guillermo Mota, the Redbirds starters are actually the strong part of the pitching staff.
Albert Pujols is fearsome. The Cardinals are absolutely not.