The Frustration of a Bullpen

I was doing my daily reading up on the Cardinals game last night and came across a stat that troubled me, but first, a couple of background things.

1) The Cardinals are currently 62-50 on the season, which is actually pretty good. There are only 8 teams in baseball that have 60+ wins; 3 of those are in the NL Central (and those 3 are the only ones in the NL with 60+ wins).

2) The problem is that the one team with more wins than the Cards is the Cubbies, who are sitting at 65 right now; and the Cards are tied in the standings with the Brewers. If the Cards keep up their current winning percentage, they'll be at 89 wins for the year - not too bad of a season really, but I don't know if it'll be enough to get them into the playoffs.

3) The bullpen scares me. I'd rather see the starters throw complete games every night, or have the offense severely outscore the other team, then see the bullpen with the ball in a close game, and this brings me to the stat that troubled me.

The Cardinals' bullpen has blown 25 saves and lost 23 games. The Cardinals have had the most save opportunities in baseball with 55. In other words, there have been at least 55 games that have been close enough that the Cardinals probably should have won, and they only won 30 of those (30 saves in 55 opportunities).

To put that in perspective, the Angels have the best record in baseball at 69-40. They have the second most save opportunities with 54, and they have recorded 47 saves. That's right, in one less opportunity, the Angels have 17 more saves than the Cardinals. The Nationals, the worst team in baseball at 39-70 have 18 saves in 38 opportunities. That's right, the worst team in all of Major League Baseball has fewer blown saves than the Cardinals right now. Across MLB, the average number of blown saves is 13.8.

Putting that into perspective again, take away just 10 blown saves (which still puts them worse than league average) to where the Cards are right now. That would put them at 72-40 - the best record in baseball, 1.5 games better than the Angels. The current top teams in baseball, where to they fare in all of this:

In order from most wins, teams with 60+ wins:
Angels - 7 blown saves
Rays - 5 blown saves
Cubs - 16 blown saves
Red Sox - 17 blown saves
Cardinals - 25 blown saves
White Sox - 13 blown saves
Brewers - 18 blown saves
Twins - 9 blown saves

With the exception of the NL Central teams and the Red Sox, all of the top teams are at or well below the league average. (I have to admit though, I'm a little surprised by the Red Sox. I knew the Cubs and Brewers had bullpen issues, but I didn't know that about the Red Sox.)

In summation: Here's hoping that Izzy gets back to form quickly (as I raise my future can of Mountain Dew). If the bullpen can keep it together, these Cardinals can (believe it or not) make a serious run into and through the postseason.

The irony of all ironies about this season:
2006 - the Cards had 86 wins and won the World Series.
2008 - the Cards could very well have 90+ wins and miss the playoffs altogether.
That's baseball...