After a 14th inning appearance where he walked two and allowed a hit that put the Diamondbacks on top for the eventual win, Victor Marte is on his way back to Memphis. Since his recall on May 27th, Marte has made four appearances allowing four hits and three walks. Not a recipe for success. Kevin Reynolds (@deckacards) and I had some fun at his expense last night on Twitter.

Kevin: This game has Marte throwing error written all over it.
Jon: That’s not a throwing error, that’s just how he pitches.
Kevin: I was waiting for that… it’s like I set it on a tee for you.
Jon: Also something Marte does well.

Marte had a time last season where he provided some valuable innings for Mike Matheny in the bullpen. Unfortunately, the league caught up and figured him out while he had some trouble finding the strike zone.

In his place, however, comes Maikel Cleto. Six of one, half dozen of the other if we’re being honest. Cleto, the piece we received in return for Brendan Ryan, has allowed 20 hits, 6 walks, and 6 home runs over 13 major league innings the last two years. This year in Memphis, he returned to the rotation in Memphis in early May, and has answered with a 2.97 ERA in six starts. Overall, he has been ineffective with a 5.67 ERA this year. Cleto has a dominant fastball, but is typically wild with it. His recent success as a starter is encouraging, however.

Joe Kelly will start tonight’s game against the Diamondbacks, a start opened up as a result of the doubleheader played with the Giants last weekend. Because Kelly’s been working out of the bullpen, with a longest outing of three innings, he isn’t quite stretched out for a starter’s role. Enter Cleto who is likely the matching piece to hopefully help the team get through.

It was certainly not Yadier Molina‘s finest hour yesterday afternoon. After putting what he thought was a hit through the gap between the third baseman and the shortstop, Molina cruised his way to first. Except that Giants’ shortstop Brandon Crawford made a great play on the ball and threw Molina out by half a step. Frustrated by what he should have gotten, Molina threw his helmet to the ground and turned towards the dugout. Behind him umpire Clint Fagan threw Molina out.

Rule 9.01 (d) of the MLB rulebook reads, “Each umpire has the authority to disqualify any player, coach, manager or substitute for objecting to decisions or for unsportsmanlike conduct or language, and to eject such a disqualified person from the playing field.”

By the letter of the law, the ejection was correct. Molina throwing the helmet at the ground is an unsportsmanlike gesture. Except that players get away with it 99% of the time. If umpires always ejected players for throwing things, I’d be cool with the ejection of Molina because he should have known better. But in the heat of the moment, it’s a totally acceptable response that rarely gets called.

It was a pretty easy call as far as umpiring calls go. The ball clearly beat him with the naked eye.

What I really have a problem with is umpires that seem to believe that every outburst of emotion is targeted at them. Sometimes players are just mad they made a mistake. To me, there isn’t a reason for an umpire to react like Fagan did unless he was concerned that he made a mistake on the call and wanted to reinforce his authority in the wake of it.

It is also ridiculous that umpires are hidden after making a call like that. If an umpire ejects a player or manager from the game, he should be required to explain it to reporters. Fagan is a rookie umpire, so the team’s crew chief Tim Welke (who has made some fantastic blunders himself, like this one where he called the runner out despite Todd Helton being a yard off the base) refused to let him speak (a bogus rule to begin with, he’s 31 years old and perfectly capable of speaking for himself). Welke said the objection was due to “obvious discontent over the call.”

Was Molina discontent over the call? Probably. Did he think Fagan got it right? Probably.

And that’s the key difference. The line that has to be drawn for umpires. Any time a call goes against a player they aren’t going to like it. That doesn’t mean they object to the call. Sometimes players are just mad at something they could have done differently to create a different result.

Regardless of a players’ actions, the umpire is still in charge. Umpires have to remember this and act like they are in charge. And when you’re in charge, a lot of times it comes down to what you don’t do more than what you do.

It’s a common expression in other sports where penalties are called by officials during the course of play to let them play the game. Let the players play the game. Sometimes you let things go. If a player is unhappy with a call you made, it doesn’t change anything. The call is still made and you are still in charge. If the player wants to get in your face or threaten you, then the line has been crossed and its time to assert your authority.

Ejections need to be used as a last course of action, not the first reaction.

There was contact made between Molina and an umpire during the course of the argument that followed the ejection, that usually warrants a suspension. But from the replay it doesn’t appear like he made contact with Fagan at all. The only umpire he made contact with was the one that initiated contact with him by getting in front of him. That’s not Molina’s fault and shouldn’t be something he’s suspended for.

Because of that, and because the Cardinals keep winning, Matt Holliday‘s start to the season has been kept out of the eye of baseball fans. But he’s struggling to start the season, so what is up with Matt Holliday?

Through June 2nd, Matt Holliday is hitting .244 over the team’s first 56 games. That is a whole 66 points lower than his career average. It is by far the worst start of his career. In now 10 major league seasons, Holliday has a batting average under .300 at the 56 game mark for just the fourth time. His previous worst was .271, which came last year, and then .272, which came in his rookie year.

So how did he do in the final two-thirds of the season when he’s started this poorly? Last year, Holliday hit .310/.393/.520 with 17 HRs through the remainder of the season. In 2009, the year he was dealt to the Cardinals, he hit .330/.400/.545 with 16 HR through the end of the season. And in his rookie year of 2004, Holliday hit .302/.354/.479 with 6 HR down the stretch.

When looking at the numbers, Holliday has really been the face for the enigma that has been the Cardinals’ offense which has disappeared when there is nobody on base, but if you put someone in scoring position, they light up. Holliday sports a .362 (17-for-47) batting average with runners in scoring position and a .356 (31-for-97) batting average with men on base, but just .151 (16-for-106) when the bases are empty. So much for being “un-clutch?”

Some statistics do just stand out when you look through his. He is striking out at almost a career low 14.2% rate. The only year he had fewer was in 2010 when he struck out just 13.8% of the time, which means he’s getting a lot more contact with the ball this season. That in turn, combined with a low batting average, is a recipe for a poor BABIP. His career BABIP is .341, while this year’s is just .252, the only year of his career that is below .330.

He’s also generating more ground balls, with a 1.50 GB/FB rate, which is the highest in his career since his first two seasons with the Rockies where he posted a 1.51 GB/FB rate. His career average is 1.29.

Holliday has also seen an increase in the number of sinkers and sliders he has faced. According to PITCHf/x, he saw 10.9% sinkers in 2012, to now 14.6% this season. That is the highest percentage of sliders he’s seen since 2007 for when PITCHf/x data became available. Usually he hits the sinker well, accumulating a 15.0 runs above average on sinkers, and that has dropped to just 0.0 this year. His ability against the slider has also taken a tumble as well, he posted a 21.8 runs above average off the slider over the previous three seasons, but it stands at -3.3 this year so far.

When you look at his plate discipline, according to PITCHf/x, he is seeing the most pitches in the strike zone in his entire time as a Cardinal at 76.9%. He faced just 68.3% last season. He’s being more aggressive at swinging too, up to swinging at 50.8% of pitches, which makes sense if he’s seeing more pitches in the strike zone, up from 47.3% over the last three seasons. This has lead to an increase contact rate of 82.8% on all swings, but 71.4% rate on all swings on pitches outside the strike zone, up from 65.0% last season.

That’s a lot of data to consider and you aren’t ever going to really pinpoint the cause of an issue by simply looking at statistics. There is just too much information that comes through with individual circumstances. But given that he’s getting more pitches around the strike zone I think we’re seeing a situation like we saw with Albert Pujols in the #3 hole after the arrival of Holliday. Pujols began swinging more and his walk rate began to tumble. Why? He had protection and he was seeing more pitches around the strike zone as a result.

With a year under his belt and a five year contract signed, Allen Craig is generating more and more protection for Holliday, especially when Craig is hitting .314 behind him while Holliday is still at .244. As a result, Holliday is seeing more pitches around the strike zone, so he has to swing more often and less ability to work the count to get pitches in his favor. More swings equal more balls hit and not all of them are going to do what you want them to do.

While I wholly despise the use of BABIP being used to compare someone to the benchmark of .300 and conclude that they have been lucky or unlucky, I do think it’s an excellent tool to use to compare a player to himself in this sort of situation. When your career BABIP is over .340 and your current one is .252, I think it is safe to conclude that you’ve been mostly unlucky. He will turn those numbers around because balls will eventually start finding holes.

If it isn’t broken don’t break it, but it would be interesting to see what would change if Holliday and Craig were swapped in the lineup, or even slid forward a spot with Carlos Beltran hitting fourth. I’ve always felt that Holliday made a better #2 hitter than #3 hitter, especially if you have the depth to put equal or better hitters in the #3 and #4 spots of the lineup. We have that with Craig and Beltran. So you’d be guaranteeing two heavy hitters in behind Matt Carpenter‘s team leading .394 on base percentage.

Holliday has been putting balls in play, and as I like to say, that’s when baseball happens. It’s only a matter of time before he starts turning it around.

Cardinals fans have seen this scene far too often in 2013. Unfortunately, I called this when I wrote a couple sentences about his return. Mitchell Boggs wasn’t fixed yet. Boggs still isn’t fixed yet and we learned that once again with his appearance in the ninth inning of a one run game, an appearance that was inexplicable to most every fan on Twitter. Matheny seemingly gift-wrapped the game for the Royals, bringing in Boggs who allowed a first-pitch home run by Jeff Franceour to tie up the ballgame.

Mike Matheny is a popular manager for players because he has a great deal of confidence in his players. Regardless of what is going on or what they’ve done recently, Matheny puts them in position to do what they’ve always done. At this point, Boggs’ issues are far more Matheny’s fault than his own.

Inexplicably Mike Matheny likes to use Boggs in tight situations to hopefully get him kickstarted and be able to parlay a successful outing into another and another until he is “back.” I understand Matheny is pulling for Boggs to get right. Every single one of us in Cardinal Nation is doing that right now. But whatever Boggs is doing now it is obvious to all of us, or at least it should be, that it isn’t working. Yet he continues to be brought into close ballgames and he continues to not be right.

Since his return to the big league club, Boggs has allowed 4 hits and 3 walks over four innings pitched. Two of those hits have been home runs.

In the wee hours of this morning while explaining his decision to use Boggs in the 9th inning last night, Matheny told the Post-Dispatch, “I had a lot of confidence that he was going to get the job done.” He indicated that, with Edward Mujica and Trevor Rosenthal being unavailable, he wanted someone on in the ninth inning who had experience in that role. Matheny was about the only one in the world who had confidence that Boggs would get the job done.

In trotted Boggs, who did exactly what his previous ninth inning experiences would have you expecting. It hopefully doesn’t escape Mike Matheny and the others in the Cardinals’ organization that Boggs’ career record in the ninth inning is littered with far more disappointment than success. Boggs has logged 48 innings worth of ninth inning work in his career. He sports a 5.25 ERA and allows 1.63 walks and hits per inning pitched. Combine that with a struggling season and you have a recipe for disaster.

And it shard to argue small sample size on that anymore. That’s a season’s worth of work over six years. That’s called a track record. Boggs may have experience in the ninth inning, but he doesn’t have a track record of success. Confidence doesn’t win ballgames, unfortunately for us.

Last night I figured that the opposition to Boggs had reached a fever pitch once again and that John Mozeliak was going to have to do something about it. That news came this morning when the Cardinals optioned Boggs to Memphis in exchange for minor league reliever Keith Butler, who has excelled as a closer in both Springfield and Memphis this season.

I hate that this has happened to Mitchell Boggs. I really hope that he can get a handle on this and kick it and return to the Boggs we all knew and loved in 2012. Hopefully this time in Memphis, it’ll get figured out. If not? I think it’s going to be a tough final couple months of the season for the Cardinals pitching staff.

Is it a Sports Illustrated cover jinx? Is it just plain bad luck? Once again the Cardinals feel more like a MASH unit than a baseball team as injuries mount. Jaime Garcia down for the year after labrum and rotator cuff surgery, Jake Westbrook is headed to visit Dr. James Andrews for a second opinion, and rookie starter John Gast (who replaced Westbrook in the rotation) left Saturday’s game in the second inning with shoulder tightness.

It appears now that Michael Wacha is being targeted as the potential call to replace Gast in the rotation, being pulled from his turn in the rotation tonight with Memphis. That’s given people plenty to talk about. But for now, Michael Blazek has received the call to be an extra arm in the Cardinals’ bullpen until the decision is made who should take Gast’s next turn in the rotation on Thursday against the Royals.

There are definite pros to bringing Wacha up. The 19th selection in last season’s MLB Draft, Wacha impressed in spring training. He has also been solid in Memphis posting a 2.05 ERA over 53 innings and 9 starts while allowing fewer than a baserunner per inning.

Is he ready? Probably not. And that’s the big con. The giant elephant in the room no one wants to talk about.

I’m sure there are people out there who have been saying he would get the call to the major leagues will brag that they were right. And that those who said he wouldn’t are wrong. Ignoring that John Mozeliak has indicated that Wacha’s innings load is a concern for them when they consider bringing him up, which is the point I make.

But what should happen and what does happen aren’t necessarily the same thing.

Wacha hasn’t even thrown 100 professional innings in his career. It’s hard for me to see a situation where he’s effective for the Cardinals much past June. Take Mike Leake as an example. Leake skipped the minors, making the Reds’ rotation out of spring training in 2010. Leake started his career 5-0 with a 2.22 ERA over his first 11 starts. His next 11 that season? 3-4 with a 5.60 ERA.

This is not an ideal situation. Were it ideal, Wacha wouldn’t even be in discussion for a shot at the major leagues this season. If he does get the call, I expect him to be up for a few starts and then back down to the minors, regardless of performance. The last thing the Cardinals should do is push Wacha this year and put his future in jeopardy. Unfortunately we need him now. But they should be planning to find a way to get him back to Memphis where they can limit him better.