Cardinals' pitching is stingy with walks, homers

Hi, I'm Brad Templeman, and this is my first post on MLB Notebook. I will be guest-posting several times a week. This post is about a few stats I have been following for a while, and have posted about at www.baseballindepth.com. The top of the Cardinals rotation has been dominant, with Adam Wainwright leading the NL in wins with 18 and Chris Carpenter a top Cy Young candidate at 16-4 with a 2.34 ERA. Joel Piniero is also have a turnaround season, winning 14 games with a 3.31 ERA. In fact, Wainwright, Carpenter and Pineiro have combined to go 24-6 since the All-Star Break, which is more wins than five teams have in total since the break. Pineiro and Carpenter are winning in part by being extremely stingy in allowing home runs and walks. Joel Pineiro is 1st in the NL both in allowing the fewest home runs (.32) and walks per nine innings (1.06), while Chris Carpenter is 2nd in allowing the fewest home runs (.35) and 3rd in walks(1.69). Between 1945 and 2008, there were only 5 times that a pitcher finished a season with at least 14 wins, while allowing fewer than .35 HR/9 and 1.7 BB/9. Pineiro and Carpenter are both matching those numbers and could easily join this list when the season ends in a few weeks: 1945 Dutch Leonard (Senators) 1994-95, 1997 Greg Maddux (Braves) 1996 Kevin Brown (Marlins) 2009 Chris Carpenter (Cardinals) 2009 Joel Pineiro (Cardinals) This is one of the reasons the Cardinals could be tough to beat in the playoffs. Their pitching staff is tied for 8th in batting average allowed (.258), but has allowed the fewest walks and 2nd fewest home runs in the ML (behind the Braves). They also have the 3rd best team ERA at 3.63 (behind the Dodgers and Giants).