This Time Around, NL Championship Series Matchup Favors Astros

While fans will have to get used to the idea that we won’t have a Red Sox-Yankees confrontation in a Championship Series this year, we do get a rematch in the National League. The Astros have been sold short before, but where the American League’s Divisional Series match-ups both featured mismatches between potent offenses and strong rotations, the NLCS takes the idea to its most extreme: a strong Cardinals lineup and a durable rotation is pitted against the best pitching trio in baseball and whatever offense the Astros can eke out to support them. Here’s an in-depth look at the series, using each player’s Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), Baseball Prospectus’s measure of how much better, in runs, a player was over a freely available replacement at his position.This group isn’t blessed with a lot of strengths, but Ensberg and Berkman combined to hit nine of their 60 home runs on the season against the Cardinals – how they go, so will the Astros. That really puts Lane and Lamb on the spot, but both finished the season strong. Manager Phil Garner may compensate for his lineup’s overall lack of firepower with some running at the top of the order. He may also get cute with one-run strategies with the tail end of the lineup. Getting too cute, however, will just make life easier for the Cardinals’ starting pitchers.Palmeiro is this bench’s best weapon, but the challenge for Garner is using him at a time when Carindals manager Tony LaRussa won’t negate his bat by responding with his lefty relievers. Burke and Bruntlett aren’t really “Killer B’s” in keeping with Biggio, Berkman, and Jeff Bagwell, but Burke’s a young player capable of hitting better than he did this season, and will be looking to build on the fame he earned himself for ending the 18-inning marathon with the Braves on Sunday. Similarly, Scott hit for considerable power in the minors this season (31 home runs at Triple-A), so he might be a surprise in the right situation.If the series is to be won by Houston, it will almost certainly be achieved here, on the strength of the best trio of starting pitchers in baseball. None of the Astros’ big three, however, logged multiple wins against the Cardinals this season, though that may not matter. Pettitte has been especially hot down the stretch, winning 11 games in the second half while logging 15 quality starts (three runs or fewer allowed in six innings or more) in 16 starts. What we won’t see is another eight shutout innings in the NLCS from Backe to match last October’s surprise effort against the Cards, but if the front three do their jobs, the Astros shouldn’t need them.It may not get its praises sung as often as the Cardinals’ pen, but the Astros have a better group than they’re given credit for. Although Lidge hasn’t been the overpowering pitcher he was last season, he finished strong, and he’ll be well-rested following his necessary multiple-inning duty on Sunday. If there’s a pitcher on the spot, it’s Gallo. He isn’t a particularly effective situational lefty, so he’s not going to be useful against Larry Walker and Jim Edmonds. If Garner chases situational advantages that aren’t there, it could cost the Astros the series. During the season, though, he generally avoided over managing by relying on Wheeler and Qualls to set up Lidge.Even without a healthy Scott Rolen at third, the Cards still have one of the NL’s better lineups now that Walker and Sanders have returned from injuries. They don’t run like Cardinals teams of old (nabbing only 83 steals all year),but they don’t need to. They get men on base at the top of the order, they get power in its heart, and the bottom does a decent job of getting balls in play to convert all the front-end fireworks into additional runs. For all of LaRussa’s fame as a tactician, Astros catcher Brad Ausmus will keep baserunning out of the equation, so the Cardinals’ lineup will be more reliant on big blows than manufacturing runs.LaRussa can call on a diverse and talented group of reserves kept sharp by frequent use. In the middle and late innings, he’s going to need the depth he has here to help achieve a key platoon advantage, and Mabry in particular has experience and success in a pinch-hitting role, slugging .471 this year. Luna might be brought in to pinch-run, but this is the sort of quality that should give the Cards an advantage in any extra-inning game.Beyond ace Carpenter, the Cardinals’ rotation is less about individual greatness than it is about combined talent and durability, not to mention the success that LaRussa and pitching coach Dave Duncan have had in building veteran rotations. This group gives you quality starts more often than not, and with a lineup that scores five runs a game, that’s usually good enough for a win.But it’s a different story in a short series, where Carpenter is the only starter who matches up well with the Astros’ big three – and he has Houston’s number this year, going 4-0 in five starts against them. The tough decision here is whether Marquis gets to start the third, fourth, or any game in the series ahead of Morris or Suppan – Marquis was also 4-0 in five starts against the Astros during the year. Research generally supports the conclusion that a pitcher loses an advantage the more he faces an opponent, so LaRussa has a tough call about whether to rely on that success.The Cardinals can boast a pretty good pen. Isringhausen gets reserved for save situations, and everyone else dances to the beat set by LaRussa in his careful attention to situational advantages. Whoever gets dropped from the rotation for the series will serve as the team’s long reliever. If there’s a negative here, it’s that Al Reyes blew out his elbow on the final day of the regular season and is unavailable. Reyes was one of the Cards’ strongest relievers this year, with an ERA of 2.15 and a VORP of 23.3.The CallThe Cardinals dominated the season series, winning 11 of 16, but that’s not really a good measure of the matchup we have on our hands now. Houston’s Berkman and St. Louis’s Rolen were simultaneously active in only one of these two teams’ six regular season series, and the Cardinals’ depth in their rotation doesn’t shine as much in a short series in the way that great starting pitching usually does. The Cardinals dodged a lot of bullets against the Padres, and it would be asking too much to expect them to enjoy similar good fortune against an Astros rotation that will keep the scores low.In an upset, the Astros in seven.Ms. Kahrl is a writer for Baseball Prospectus. For more state-of-the-art commentary, visit baseballprospectus.com.

This Time Around, NL Championship Series Matchup Favors Astros

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