Cardinals over Pirates, 68%

Matchup eqas, based on both the hitters and pitchers splits:

              Wainwright Lynn   Kelly  Miller
Martin          248      256     277     243
Morneau         264      321     286     310
Walker          270      328     291     316
Mercer          220      227     246     216
Alvarez         270      328     291     316
Marte           244      252     273     240
McCutcheon      287      297     322     283
Byrd            263      272     294     259

Net            .2377   .2646   .2644   .2537 (includes a .100 pitcher)

                Burnett Cole Liriano Morton
Carpenter        361    312    167     413
Beltran          344    297    267     394
Holliday         268    303    311     256
Adams            342    295    130     391
Molina           246    278    323     235
Jay              310    268    134     355
Freese           218    247    303     208
Descalso         277    239    111     317

Net              2886  2599   2314    2966

Game 1: The Cardinals, behind Wainwright, are a huge favorite over Burnett and the Pirates in game 1. He’s got a huge lefty split, and the Cards will throw 5 against him (counting Beltran). A .2886-.2377 eqa margin equates to a 72.5% win percentage for the Cards.

Game 2: Lynn vs Cole: This time it is the Cardinal pitcher who has a big platoon split, but the Pirates can only send 3 lefties up to the plate (unless they choose to send Jones up over Marte). It makes for what should be the evenest matchup of the series; the Pirates have a .2646-.2599 eqa advantage, which comes out to a 52.2% chance for the Pirates to win game 2.

Game 3: All those lefties spell trouble for the Cards in game 3, as they have to face Francisco Liriano and his extraordinary lefty-killing splits. Meanwhile, Kelly offers the Cardinals nothing special. Its a .2644-.2314, Pirates, and that makes a 66.1% win chance for the Pirates.

Game 4: But all those Cardinal lefties come back in game 4, because Morton has even worse splits than Burnett. The Cardinals against Charlie stack up as a .2966 eqa, against the .2537 the Pirates manage against Shelby Miller. If it is Miller – Wacha’s numbers would come through as better than Miller’s, so the odds would only go up from the 68.6% in the Cardinal favor.

Game 5 figures to repeat game 1. <Edit: Ah, the Pirates swict to Cole for game 5. That makes it a much tighter .2599-.2377 Cardinal advantage, 61% instead of 73%…without taking into account the rest advantage for the Cardinals.>

Stick those percentages in with a random number generator, and the Cardinals are projected to win the series 67.6958% of the time.

And, with game 1 in the books and a 9-1 win, the Cardinals are up 78% to win the series.