Offensive Production between
2013-2019

A Look at Batting Average, OPS, HRs, Runs, and Total Bases

I gotta be honest, this chart only proves one thing– baseball is absolutely strange.


This interactive chart doesn't seem too interactive does it? That's partly my fault and it's also partly the nature of the St. Louis Cardinals' offense over these particular seasons.

Above us shows us the team totals for batting average (AVG, not included is the "." at the beginning), total Home Runs (HRs) hit, On-Base Plus Slugging or OPS (once again, here's a great breakdown from Jon Bois explaining OPS), and total runs scored.

Something this does say, is that, sure, it's great when the club is 2nd overall in total offense (like they were in 2013 with the highest batting average in the National League, the 2nd highest OPS, racked up the second-most total bases, and scored the most runs all while bizarrely hitting the third least amount of homeruns), but they also had great pitching that year as they won 97 games.

Contrast that against 2015's offense that produced very middling-to-low offensive numbers and I remember the phrase going around that year as they marched to 100 regular-season wins was "this team is built on run suppression." The whole "a run saved is as good as a run created" philosophy.

Once again, here are the Win-Loss records for each season this time partnered with total bases and where that ranked against the other fourteen NL clubs:

2019 = 91-71 (1st in NL Central)   2260 TBs (12th)
2018 = 88-74 (3rd in NL Central)   2250 TBs (7th)
2017 = 82-79 (3rd in NL Central)   2330 TBs (10th)
2016 = 86-76 (2nd in NL Central)   2453 TBs (2nd)
2015 = 100-62 (1st in NL Central)   2163 TBs (10th)
2014 = 90-72 (1st in NL Central)   2003 TBs (11th)
2013 = 97-65 (1st in NL Central)   2231 TBs (2nd)

This all goes to show that you can have a good year if one or two of the team's facets produces well, but it truly requires the entire team achieving and contributing together in order to have an outstanding year culminating with a deep run through October.
Speaking of which, let's look at the notable players over the course of these seasons.