Delaying Stan Musial

In 1941, the Cardinals were playing way over their heads.

They were certainly a good club, with a good offense and strong pitching, but they really weren’t in the same class as the Dodgers that season. Brooklyn had the best offense in the league by 66 runs, and coupled that with the best team ERA in the league as well. Throw in the best defensive efficiency mark of any National League club, and they had pretty much every box checked that season. There’s a reason the top three vote-getters for the Most Valuable Player Award that season, and five of the top ten, were Dodgers.

And yet the Cardinals stayed in the pennant race with them all year. It was a two-team race pretty quickly, with both clubs playing over .700 ball in April. They still were at the end of May, with only a game separating them, and the next-closest team was the 20-17 Giants who stood 8.5 games out of first. It would remain a nip and tuck race the entire year, largely because the Cardinals outperformed expectations.

St. Louis scored 79 runs in April and allowed 59. That’s excellent, but at a run differential of +20 through 13 games they were projected to have winning percentage of .630, not the .769 they actually had that month. Through May their run differential should have produced a .632 winning percentage, and yet they were in first place by a game with a .738 mark, more than 100 points above the level the team’s run differential would have warranted.