Brewers v Cardinals by the numbers

After wasting a ton of time getting you prepared for a four team battle royale, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh both were thrown over the top rope leaving us with St. Louis and Milwaukee. Both teams swept their weekend series setting up another huge series starting Tuesday in St. Louis. Now that we've eliminated the dead weight we can compare the two survivors side by side.

The two teams seem to stack up pretty equally, let's examine the numbers:


Team stats

	Brewers	Cardinals	Edge
AVG	.261	.271	Cardinals
OPS	.742	.765	Cardinals
HR	126	116	Brewers
SB	65	39	Brewers
ERA	3.89	3.86	Cardinals
WHIP	1.277	1.316	Brewers
Pitching H/9	8.6	9.1	Brewers
K/9	7.8	6.6	Brewers
FLD%	.982	.983	Cardinals
oWAR	13.8	22.4	Cardinals
dWAR	1.2	-2.5	Brewers
Pitching WAR	11.3	9.6	Brewers
Rdef	11	-23	Brewers

Position players value in WAR

	Brewers		Cardinals		Edge
Most valuable	Ryan Braun	5.5	Matt Holliday	4.6	Brewers
2nd Most valuable	Prince Fielder	3.7	Lance Berkman	3.6	Brewers
3rd Most valuable	Rickie Weeks	2.7	Albert Pujols	3.2	Cardinals
4th Most valuable	Corey Hart	2.6	Yadier Molina	1.9	Brewers

Pitchers value in WAR

	Brewers		Cardinals		Edge
1st starter	Shawn Marcum	2.6	Kyle Lohse	2.3	Brewers
2nd starter	Randy Wolf	2.2	Chris Carpenter	2.2	Push
3rd starter	Yovani Gallardo	1.9	Jaime Garcia	1.5	Brewers
4th starter	Chris Narveson	1.2	Kyle McClellan/Edwin Jackson	0.6*	N/A
5th starter	Zack Greinke	0.3	Jake Westbrook	0.3	Push
Set up 1	Latroy Hawkins	1.0	Eduardo Sanchez	1.2	Cardinals
Set up 2	Francisco Rodriguez	1.6**	Jason Motte	1.1	Brewers
Closerr	John Axford	1.5	Fernando Salas	1.9	Cardinals

*McClellan 0.9 Jackson -0.3 (was 2.2 with Detroit)
**Rodriguez 0.4 with Milwaukee, 1.2 with New York

So what did we learn?? Well it looks like the Cardinals hold the edge in batting while the Brewers have the advantage in pitching and defense (!) but they are pretty closely matched on paper.

But as Kenny Mayne would say, games aren't played on paper they're played inside televisions.



Stats as of 8/6 via Baseball reference

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