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There are few events in baseball more exciting than Opening Day. Or Opening Night. Er … let’s just go directly to some observations from the Cardinals’ 4-1 victory over the Marlins, ushering in Marlins Park in disappointing fashion for the home crowd onlookers.

• Kyle Lohse was brilliant, of course, taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning and reminding everyone of Bob Feller's Opening Day no-hitter. Lohse said after the game that the no-hitter "probably did cross my mind after the fifth inning." He doesn’t throw hard, keeping hitters off-balance with a little slider and a changeup that he kept at the knees at night. Lohse had the best season of his career in 2011, although there was some luck built into it: He allowed a .269 average on balls in play, well below his career mark of .302. There’s nothing in the numbers that suggests he was doing something different -- his ground-ball rate matched his career and his line-drive rate was actually 1.1 percent higher than his career mark. Everyone expects some regression in 2012, but his first start was more 2011. No walks on the night and through six he threw a first-pitch strike to 13 of the 18 batters he faced. Hitters should know Lohse will come right after them when the bases are empty. He walked only 10 hitters last season in 469 plate appearances with nobody on; with runners, he walked 32 in 306 plate appearances.
• Josh Johnson allowed 10 hits for only the second time in his career. While a few of the hits were bleeders and bloopers, he did leave some pitches over the middle of the plate. We can’t read too much into the start other than that he threw 91 pitches, avoided the blister issue that popped up in spring training and has his first start under his belt. Undoubtedly, he was pumped up pitching the first game in the club’s new park in his first start since last May. There's no reason not to expect better results moving forward.
• There was miscommunication in the early innings between Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes as both pulled up on Carlos Beltran’s little trickler, allowing the ball to roll into left field. In the sixth inning with two runners on and Lohse up in a bunt situation, Johnson made sure to step off the mound and talk with Ramirez. That stuff will sort itself out, but the Marlins’ defense is an issue to keep an eye on. The Cardinals legged out two doubles to Logan Morrison in left field on balls that weren’t really even in the gaps. As Orel Hershiser said during the broadcast, "A lot of scouts are writing notes down about the arm of Logan Morrison." It doesn’t help that Morrison is still battling a sore knee that kept him out most of spring training, but he was a liability out there in 2011 even when healthy. According to the defensive runs saved metric, Morrison was 26 runs worse than the average left fielder -- the worst mark in the majors (only Raul Ibanez was in the same vicinity) and a whopping 46 runs worse than Brett Gardner’s majors-leading 23 DRS. There is a lot of ground to cover in deep left-center and center in the new park. In Emilio Bonifacio, the Marlins have an inexperienced center fielder (only 29 games started there in his career entering the season). Chris Coghlan, their other center fielder, rated minus-13 runs in 2011, the worst figure in the majors.
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AP Photo/Lynne SladkyOpening night of the 2012 season found Kyle Lohse (26) looking a lot like his 2011 self.
• Giancarlo Stanton found out about those center-field dimensions, hitting two deep balls out there that were caught, a towering fly to the warning track in the fifth inning and a deep fly to right-center in the seventh that Jon Jay made a nice running catch on. It’s obviously too early to report on how the park will play, and it might play differently when the roof is open versus closed.
• Jason Motte threw some 99 mph smokebombs to finish it off. A bit of a step up from Ryan Franklin.
• For a while, Lohse had us thinking about the best Opening Day starts. Via Baseball-Reference.com, here are the best Game 1 starts since 1918:
  

  Walter Johnson, Senators, 1926: 111 (15 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 9 K)
  Lon Warneke, Cubs, 1934: 96 (9 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 13 K)
  Bob Veale, Pirates, 1965: 95 (10 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 10 K)
  Mel Harder, Indians, 1935: 95 (14 IP, 8 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 6 K)
  Johnny Vander Meer, Reds, 1943: 91 (11 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 5 BB, 3 K)

  
  Six pitchers scored a 90: Bob Feller twice (including his 1940 no-hitter in which he walked five and struck out eight), Tom Glavine, Bob Gibson, Clint Brown and Johnson again with a 13-inning effort in 1919. The best recent effort was Felix Hernandez striking out 12 in eight shutout innings in 2007. Camilo Pascual holds the Opening Day record with 15 strikeouts for the Twins in 1960. Randy Johnson twice fanned 14 for the Mariners.

Opening Night down. Opening Day up next. Good times have arrived.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter @dschoenfield.

I'm not going to suggest it was the single worst play in postseason history. Babe Ruth, for instance, once got caught stealing for the final out in Game 7 of the World Series, trailing by one run with the Yankees' cleanup hitter at the plate. Dropped fly balls and dropped pop-ups have led to winning runs in Game 7 of the World Series.

But when Milwaukee Brewers third baseman Jerry Hairston Jr. tried to field a ground ball with his knee, then flip the bouncing baseball to second baseman Rickie Weeks with his glove, only to have the ball bounce in front of Weeks, and then to have Weeks see the ball go through his legs, with the runners moving up a base ... well, it was atrocious baseball at its worst. Two physical errors by Hairston, one mental error on Hairston for attempting the trick play in the first place when he had no shot to get the runner at second, and one mental error by Weeks for pulling up on the ball like a fourth grader taking infield practice.

So, no, I won't say it was the worst postseason play we've ever seen; that would be exaggeration just for effect. Plus, that play alone did not lose Game 6 of the National League Championship Series for the Brewers and prevent them from reaching the second World Series in franchise history. But, as the St. Louis Cardinals beat up Milwaukee 12-6 to win their 18th NL pennant, it symbolized a night that saw:

• Corey Hart boot a base hit in right field, just a few seconds before Hairston's triple blunder.
• Hart miss a cutoff man on a long-shot attempt to throw out Matt Holliday on a sacrifice fly to medium-deep right field, allowing runners to move up to second and third, with both scoring on Allen Craig's two-out pinch single in the third inning.
• Nyjer Morgan also miss a cutoff man, on a dubious attempt to throw out Albert Pujols going first to third on a base hit.
• Manager Ron Roenicke start Shaun Marcum, making Roenicke perhaps the only person around who had faith that Marcum would deliver a good start.

While Milwaukee's defense was questioned all season, it was also a questionable decision to stick with Marcum, who had been blistered in his two previous postseason starts and five of his past six starts going back to September. It's certainly understandable why Roenicke would believe in Marcum, who went 13-7 with a 3.54 ERA during the regular season. But Marcum clearly tired down the stretch, wasn't getting strikeouts and you had to question his mental state going back to the division series when he threw his glove up in the air after surrendering a home run to Paul Goldschmidt.

Sadly for the Brewers, his first inning was all too predictable: Four runs, capped by David Freese's three-run bomb to left on a first-pitch curveball (making Freese 7-for-9 with 10 RBIs in the series when swinging at the first pitch). For the Cardinals, it was another game in which they scored first, making them the first team to score first in all six games of a six-game series. Overall, St. Louis scored 11 runs in the first inning and four in the second.

There was a glimmer of hope for the Brewers in the bottom of the third when Jonathan Lucroy absolutely destroyed an Edwin Jackson fastball way over the fence in left-center to cut the lead to 5-4. But the Cardinals -- as they did all series -- just kept hitting and scored four in the top of third, as Albert Pujols lined a high fastball out to left off Chris Narveson, followed by the sac fly/missed cutoff man/two-run single string of events. Craig, hitting for Jackson, fought off a 94-mph fastball from LaTroy Hawkins, bouncing it over Hawkins' head and into center. Yuniesky Betancourt, shifted over in the hole toward third, had no shot at it; then again, it's Yuniesky Betancourt, and we saw balls all series going just out of his range.

But that pinch-hit was the finishing touch on a magical series for Tony La Russa. He saw the chance to score runs and took it, even if it meant removing Jackson from the game and using his bullpen for seven innings. Cardinals starters pitched just 24.2 innings in the series and allowed 19 runs. The bullpen, of course, was brilliant, pitching 28.2 innings and allowing seven runs. Three of those relievers were picked up during the season: Octavio Dotel and Marc Rzepczynski in the Colby Rasmus trade, and Arthur Rhodes off waivers after he was released by the Rangers.

The St. Louis pen, of course, had been maligned for much of the season, although it pitched much better after several early-season blown saves by former closer Ryan Franklin. But give La Russa credit for his willingness to adjust: Fernando Salas became the closer after Franklin, pitched well and saved 24 games. As Jason Motte got on a roll late in the season with his high-90s heat, La Russa made him the ninth-inning guy. Salas became a setup guy and then, as he did in this game, has become the team's long reliever of choice. So while most managers resort to using the back end of the bullpen early in games, even in loser-out games -- see Roenicke in this game, or Detroit's Jim Leyland in Game 6 of the ALCS -- La Russa can turn to a good pitcher who closed games earlier in the season.

Of course, the team the Cardinals will be facing in the World Series have a similar approach. Ron Washington has managed his Texas Rangers pitching staff in the postseason like La Russa: Turn over the game to the bullpen as soon as reasonably possible.

It should make for a fun World Series of tactical moves and decisions. Both teams have deep benches. The Cardinals have the red-hot Freese (12-for-22 with nine RBIs in the NLCS) and the Rangers have the red-hot Nelson Cruz (six home runs, 13 RBIs in the ALCS). What's perhaps most amazing of all: After losing on Aug. 24, the Cardinals were just 67-63. They were 11.5 games behind the Braves in the wild-card race.

Their season was over.

Almost over. They went 23-9 to make the playoffs on the final day as the Braves fell apart, a minor miracle essentially lost in all the attention given to the collapse of the Boston Red Sox.

Almost over. And now they're four wins away from a World Series title.

A great bullpen. David Freese delivering huge hits. Who saw this happening back in August?

The Minnesota Twins and Boston Red Sox battled for 11 innings on Monday night, and in the end, Carl Crawford’s double high off the Green Monster plated Jose Iglesias with the winning run in a 2-1 victory.

Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, apparently waiting to take the lead before using closer Matt Capps, and not wanting to use Joe Nathan on back-to-back days, was left with somebody named Jim Hoey on the mound. With one out, Hoey walked Jed Lowrie -- not necessarily a surprise since Hoey walked 34 in 52 2/3 innings in the minors last season. Iglesias came in as a pinch-runner and Crawford hit a 3-2 pitch off the wall.

We’re going to see a lot of games like that this season: low-scoring affairs decided in the late innings. With scoring down, games will be tight, and with close games, late-inning bullpen work may be more important than ever. And if you’re relying on Jim Hoey in tie games, chances are you may be 12-21.

Let’s do a quick overview of the state of 'pens around baseball.

Three best bullpens on contenders

1. San Francisco Giants: The unheralded secret weapon of last year’s champs, the bullpen has picked up where it left off, with Javier Lopez, Sergio Romo, Ramon Ramirez and Guillermo Mota throwing lights-out. Closer Brian Wilson blew his first save chance but has since converted 11 in a row, despite a little wildness. The team has lefty-righty balance, with lefties Jeremy Affeldt and Dan Runzler adding solid depth.

2. Florida Marlins: Several arms were added to the Marlins' 'pen after last season’s shaky performance and so far they have a 2.59 relief ERA, second only to San Diego’s. I believe in this group, although stellar setup man Clay Hensley was just placed on the DL with a bruised rib. Closer Leo Nunez appeared in 17 of the team’s first 32 games, so watch his usage carefully.

3. New York Yankees: Yes, Mariano Rivera had that little burp, but he’s back on track. Setup man Rafael Soriano has struggled, but I project he’ll turn it around. Joba Chamberlain is throwing better than he has in years, and underrated David Robertson has one of the nastiest curves you’ll see. The 'pen has allowed just five home runs in 95 innings. The big question is whether Boone Logan will prove to be a reliable lefty in the absence of Pedro Feliciano.

Bullpen doing it with smoke and mirrors right now

Tampa Bay Rays: The Rays have a 2.69 bullpen ERA, third-best in the majors, and have allowed opponents a .203 batting average. They’ve allowed just 61 hits in 87 innings despite a poor 51/34 strikeout/walk ratio. Some of that is attributable to their defense, but the low strikeout rate means that .203 average will be difficult to maintain. And maybe you believe in Kyle Farnsworth more than I do.

Three bullpens I’m worried about

1. Texas Rangers: The Rangers will be fine at closer once Neftali Feliz returns, but the rest of the ‘pen looks shaky, as it has allowed 16 home runs in just 94 innings and has a poor 66/43 strikeout/walk ratio. Forty-somethings Darren Oliver and Arthur Rhodes are looking more their age and have surrendered three home runs apiece, and Darren O'Day is on the 60-day DL with a torn labrum in his hip.

2. Detroit Tigers: The team’s best reliever has been Al Alburquerque, and with a name like that, he'd better be good, because we want him to last a long time. Closer Jose Valverde is always a tightrope, but the rest of the setup crew, including high-priced free agent Joaquin Benoit, has looked inconsistent.

3. Milwaukee Brewers: Brewers relievers already have nine defeats. They have a few good arms in closer John Axford and Zach Braddock and Brandon Kintzler, but control issues have been a problem so far and lack of depth could be an issue.

Two awesome bullpens if you only need two guys

1. Atlanta Braves: Craig Kimbrel and Jonny Venters are dominant (and Eric O'Flaherty provides a nice third guy). We’ll have to see whether Venters holds up after pitching 79 games and 83 innings last year, but so far he’s been even better than he was in 2010, with a 0.70 WHIP.

2. Boston Red Sox: Daniel Bard’s raw numbers are great (well, except that 0-3 record, which is not exactly a non-important notation). Jonathan Papelbon is back with an 18/2 strikeout/walk ratio. But new acquisitions Bobby Jenks and Dan Wheeler have been disastrous, leaving a gaping hole after the top two.

Bullpen that may actually be OK

St. Louis Cardinals: The Cards are tied with the Brewers with nine bullpen losses, three by deposed closer Ryan Franklin. And while the team may not have a set closer (Fernando Salas has the role for now), there are some good arms here. Jason Motte, Mitchell Boggs and rookie Eduardo Sanchez all average more than 93 mph with their fastballs, and Salas throws strikes. Mix in LOOGYs Trever Miller and Brian Tallet, and I think Tony La Russa will figure out roles that turn this into one of the better 'pens in the NL.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

What's the deal with blown saves? Erstwhile St. Louis Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin recently blew up on the mound for the fourth time this season, then blew up at fans for booing him. In response, people flamed him on the radio and internet. All this over a few blown saves.

Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly like blown saves, either. But blown saves are, if you will, overblown. Don't believe me? The Cardinals, whose relievers shut out the Braves for four innings in their 5-3 win Friday night, lead the National League Central with a 15-11 record. They also lead the league in blown saves.

The reality is that blown saves don't really negatively correlate with winning percentage. That doesn't mean they're good, but it probably means that they're not an indication that the Mayan apocalypse is upon us. This makes the certain freak out over every last one of them a little tiring. The preoccupation also tends to crowd out other aspects of the game that matter as much or more.

Happily, St. Louis fans will be spared any headlines Saturday about which closer du jour coughed up the lead Friday night. But partisans in Atlanta (Craig Kimbrel), Minnesota (Alex Burnett) and Boston (Bobby Jenks) will be stark-raving mad about their relievers' blown saves after Friday night. And that doesn't even include Detroit's Joaquin Benoit, because in a non-save situation -- so he couldn't get a blown save -- he surrendered a walk-off grand slam to Carlos Santana.

All of this is part of the problem. Like its ugly brother, the save, the blown save is a blunt object wielded to bash relievers into easily identified goats.

Consider these weird facts:

• A pitcher who enters a tie game and gives up the lead can’t get a blown save.
• A pitcher who enters with a four-run lead and gives up the lead can’t get a blown save.
• A pitcher can get a blown save if the go-ahead run scores on fielding errors.
• A pitcher who blows a save can also get the win.
• A pitcher can be charged with a blown save even though a run may not even be charged to him.

A blown save is merely a half-inning sample of a ballgame. That means that a team has at least 17 other half-innings in which to win any particular game. What do you call it when the starting pitcher allows a run in the fourth inning with a 7-4 lead? Or a sixth-inning reliever who comes into the game down 3-2 but allows a run to increase his team’s deficit? We don’t call it anything, of course.

The upside-down world of the blown save was on display during the Cardinals’ mid-week series in Houston. The team’s most dominant reliever, Eduardo Sanchez, pitched notably worse than Mitchell Boggs, the pitcher expected to replace Franklin in the closer’s gig. Yet Boggs was saddled with the scarlet letters “BS,” while Sanchez wore an “S” like he was Superman. To top it off, Fernando Salas "earned" a save Thursday night by throwing a wild pitch (on which the inning ended with a runner tagged out trying to score), then pitching one inning with a four-run lead. "Hey, nice work, Fernando Salas," quipped broadcaster Dan McLaughlin, we hope mockingly.

It’s no surprise that Franklin, though successful in the past, has had a hard time closing games. It’s because he has had a hard time getting hitters out, relying as heavily as he does on defense and the vagaries of “luck” (with career rates of 4.9 K/9 and 2.7 BB/9, he has one of the highest rates of balls put into play). Regardless of the situation: He has allowed at least one baserunner in every game in which he has pitched this year.

Rather than focus on the non-qualitative blown save, let’s instead take a smarter look at relief pitchers. Until someone determines that saves are a special, repeatable skill -- rather than simply a function of opportunities and how good a reliever is in any context -- let’s just check out strikeout and walk rates, for starters.

For example, Sanchez entered Friday’s game with 14 strikeouts and one walk in eight innings, and in six minor-league seasons, the 22-year-old posted 9.9 K/9. With dominance like that, he’s going to succeed in relief, whether he enters with a four-run lead, in a tie game or down one run. Sure, he’ll blow a save every now and then, but so does Mariano Rivera

It’s a fact that the top two career leaders in blown saves are in the Hall of Fame. If you don't believe me, take a trip to Cooperstown, and you'll see that both Goose Gossage (112 blown saves) and Rollie Fingers (109) got elected. Almost always, more variables explain a team’s lost than a single hapless pitcher’s inability to obtain three outs on a particular night, so try not to attach too much significance to the Blown Save in isolation.

PHOTO OF THE DAY
Matt Philip covers the Cardinals for the SweetSpot Network at Fungoes. You can follow him on Twitter.

With the news that the Cardinals have both a closer conundrum and a pair of players headed to the DL, the thing that comes to mind isn’t that the Cardinals are now suddenly doomed, or even especially troubled. Instead, it’s that in the case of both Ryan Franklin and Skip Schumaker, they might be running up against the limits of what they might have reasonably expected from two ballplayers, having asked both to do something extraordinary in the context of their previous careers.

In Franklin’s case, there was perhaps some surprise that this has gone as long as it has. Before his arrival in St. Louis, nobody, perhaps not even Ma Franklin, envisioned Franklin notching a 38-save season at some point. Especially not heading further towards 40 years of age. Franklin’s subsequent success as the Cardinals’ save-generating dude is fairly easy to cite as an example that more people can close games than might automatically get associated with the label "closer." Certainly his pedestrian velocity and a more starter-like three-pitch ensemble doesn’t exactly conjure up classic visions of who gets to rack up the game’s glory stat.

That Franklin has done so as effectively as he has is another example that, while teams idealize what kind of pitcher racks up saves, there are people who can do it without lighting up the speed gun. He’s probably being replaced by Mitchell Boggs, whose fastball sits in the mid-90s -- something much more closer-y. However, even while lighting up the gun, Boggs will need to continue to make progress with his slider against lefties to reliably succeed in a high-leverage role. If it works out, the Cards could wind up a little better off than they were.

As for Schumaker, the converted outfielder’s travails at second base have hardly been a source of strength. Across the panoply of defensive metrics publicly available, the Schumaker's numbers rank sharply negative in all of the major available metrics -- BIS’ Plus/Minus, Total Zone, Fielding Runs, and UZR. That kind of damning consistency suggests that the attempt to make Schumaker a second baseman just hasn’t worked out especially well. When he was posting OBPs in the .350 range, you could make excuses for his defense, but he only reached base at a .328 clip last year, and that’s about the extent of his contributions as a hitter.

This doesn’t make the Cards dumb for trying to make Schumaker a second baseman. In 2009 they didn’t have a great set of options at the keystone, so converting an outfielder was a creative way of giving themselves an alternative. However, moves against the defensive spectrum, from "easier" positions to harder ones are fairly uncommon for a reason. As much hard work as Schumaker has put into the attempt, his trip to the DL makes for a handy way of acknowledging that, in Daniel Descalso, the Cards probably have another home-grown guy who might produce similar offense and better defense. Whether Descalso gets a clean shot at the job, winds up platooning with Tyler Greene, or if Nick Punto gets in on the action, this doesn't necessarily represent bad news in itself.

Instead, in both cases, with Franklin and with Schumaker, the Cards can feel pretty good about how well these surprising adaptations worked, for as long as they've worked. That they're forced to do something else in these circumstances highlights the possibility that they may find themselves rewarded again.

Christina Kahrl helped found Baseball Prospectus in 1996, is a member of the BBWAA, and covers baseball for ESPN.com. You can follow her on Twitter here.

Eric and Keith discuss some big issues on Wednesday's Baseball Today podcast , including:

• Joe Mauer's value as a catcher and whether the Twins should move him to a new position.
• Is Josh Johnson the most dominant pitcher right now? Would you take Johnson or Roy Halladay?
• Keith says the Indians aren't making the playoffs and aren't the Padres of last season.
• Who should close for the Cardinals?
• Ian Stewart sent to the minors and thoughts on Jonathan Herrera hitting well.
• Eric is upset with the Mets designating Brad Emaus for assignment.
• Plus: Wrapping up the Carl Crawford debate, the 20-80 scale for scouts, Jason Varitek and a preview of Wednesday's game.

Maybe we'll make this a regular Monday feature. I'll spend a few minutes and report back with some of the interesting nuggets that pop out to me.

• I love looking at a hitter's walk-to-strikeout ratio early on because I think it's indicator on whether a player has had a good approach or is just on a hot streak. Matt Kemp is hitting .474/.545/.719 and has more walks (9) than strikeouts (8). That's a big change from a guy who had a 170/53 SO/BB ratio in 2010. Look, Kemp could go backwards the first week the hits don't start falling and start swinging at pitches out of the zone, but so far the improvement looks real.
• Who is Jonathan Herrera and why is he hitting .400? Colorado's little second baseman (5-foot-9, 150 pounds) is winning the everyday job from Jose Lopez ... and deserves to. Lopez is a bad major league baseball player. Herrera has 11 walks against only three strikeouts and is 4-for-4 in stolen bases. Lopez played 150 games last year and drew 23 walks. Herrera never walked much in the minors, so I'm not sure if this is a new skill or a two-week fluke.
• One last note here: Troy Tulowitzki is starting to receive a lot more respect from pitchers. He had a 48/78 BB/SO ratio in 2010, but is already at 14/5 this season. It's no surprise that the Rockies lead the NL in walks so far.
• American League teams averaged 4.45 runs per game in 2010, the lowest average since 4.32 in 1992. So far, scoring is down again, to 4.33 runs per game. Home runs aren't down that much (and are higher than 1992), but the league average is just .247. The AL hasn't hit that low since a .239 mark in 1972 -- the last season before the designated hitter rule.
• A lot of people pointed to a high BABIP (batting average on balls in play) as a reason Detroit's second-year center fielder Austin Jackson was unlikely to repeat his excellent rookie season (.293/.345/.400). So far they've been proved right, as Jackson continues to whiff at astronomical rates (19 K's in 65 PA's) and is hitting just .175. The Tigers don't really have another good center-field option, as Brennan Boesch and Ryan Raburn are best suited for left field.
• Good news for the White Sox: Carlos Quentin is mashing again, with nine doubles and three homers through 15 games. If Quentin can approach his 2008 numbers, when he was an MVP candidate before getting injured early in September, that lineup looks even more dangerous.
• Have pitchers figured out Brett Gardner? His basic plan last year was "don't swing." He worked that approach for 79 walks and a .383 OBP. This season, he's hitting .140/.213/.209 with four walks and 14 strikeouts. With no power, pitchers may as well throw him strikes.
• Ryan Franklin and Matt Thornton each have four blown saves already. The single-season record is 14, shared by five pitchers -- Bruce Sutter, Bob Stanley, Gerry Staley, Rollie Fingers and Ron Davis. But those guys did that in a different time, when the closer often came in in the seventh or eighth inning. The most blown saves since 2000 is Ambiorix Burgos of the 2006 Royals. Wow, his numbers that year were pretty astonishing: 16 home runs allowed in 73 innings. Some of those blown saves came as a setup man. Brad Lidge had 11 blown saves in 2009 for the Phillies and Huston Street had 11 for the A's in 2006.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter at @dschoenfield. Follow the SweetSpot blog at @espn_sweet_spot.

It's a mantra this time of year: Early-season action can lead to early-season overreactions, producing hastily conjured trends. Consider the lot of NL Central closers after their teams' first series:

March 31

• Up 6-3, Brewer John Axford blows the ninth-inning save against the Reds by allowing four to score.
• The Cards' Ryan Franklin blows his ninth-inning save opp up 3-2 against the Padres by giving up a tying homer to Cameron Maybin.

April 1

• Astro Brandon Lyon blows a 4-2 lead over the Phillies by surrendering three runs and allowing hits to six of the seven batters he faced.
• Joel Hanrahan of the Pirates notches a clean save to lock up a 6-3 win over the Cubs, making him the division's first closer to come through.

April 2

• Although not a ninth-inning save opportunity, Bucs set-up man Evan Meek gives up five runs in the bottom of the eighth against the Cubs -- not a classic save opp, since all he'd get for his efforts if he did well is a hold, but it winds up being a bit of BS action nonetheless.
• Carlos Marmol closes out the Cubs' 5-3 victory by striking out the side.
• Francisco Cordero logs a save up 4-1 against the Brewers, but gives up a run.

April 3

• Marmol blows a 4-3 lead in his ninth-inning save opportunity against the Pirates.
• Hanrahan notches his glory stat in the bottom half of the inning, making him the division's picture of perfection as the only unscored-upon closer in the Central.

That's a total of four saves in eight classic "closer" opportunities in the ninth inning, and two of those were by Hanrahan, a man who had to pitch his way into the job over Meek's rival claim in front of new manager Clint Hurdle. Hanrahan's far from what you'd call an established closer, having never finished with a double-digit save season. Interpretive metrics like any of the flavors of Wins Above Replacement (whether FanGraphs' WAR or Baseball Prospectus' WARP) say nice things about Hanrahan's 2010, but the balance of his career suggests that, as with many relievers, what you get from him year to year is far from a sure thing.

Evaluating relief performance is easier than projecting it, of course, but because relievers face so few batters over a season, let alone in April, the results aren't nearly as cut and dried as you might wish. Take leverage-minded relief metrics and their potential problems: Referring to Win Probability Added, Axford's four-run disaster on Opening Day took a 91 percent shot at a win and converted it into 100 percent of a loss, but that goes far toward noting that leverage metrics only go so far to document value -- Axford was just a batter away from notching his glory stat, after all, and Ramon Hernandez's homer matters very little if Joey Votto doesn't work his way aboard for a walk, or if the umps rule that Brandon Phillips was out of the basepath while avoiding Casey McGehee's tag on Scott Rolen's grounder to third. That play created a bases-loaded situation that Axford had to pitch out of.

The full sequence of events, not all of which Axford had control over, define the value of the subsequent homer. But Axford's giving it up and Hernandez's hitting it winds up being the one play that accrues the most value, despite it's absolute dependence on everything that happened before to become possible. So Axford gets that big -0.96 WPA hit on Day 1 of the season.

Concern over overreacting to early-season performance, however, is merited in part, especially when we're talking about new managers or newly elevated or recently acquired closers. If Axford keeps getting lit up into April, that's not going to represent a statistically significant sample of what he's capable of, but it would also go pretty far toward Ron Roenicke subsequently deciding that enough's enough, and maybe it's time to hand save opportunities to Takashi Saito or somebody else.

The other thing to think about is that poor performance from a pen early in the season can change how a manager chooses to manage his bullpen, and that's what is at stake now, for the managers and for their relievers. For example, when Eric Wedge was managing the Indians in 2006, an early-season series of bad ballgames from his middle-relief crew led to a decision to favor letting his starters finish their own innings. As an adaptive strategy, it led to a league-leading tally of blown quality starts -- games when his starters had gone six innings and allowed three runs or less (I'm going with runs, not earned runs here), all because he'd acquired a strong distrust of the bullpen he had on hand.

In light of this "trend," you can sort of understand why Tony La Russa looked at Sunday's 2-0 lead over the Padres, with Jaime Garcia's pitch count at 95 through eight innings, and decided to leave well enough alone rather than risk another ninth-inning conflagration. We can't say which of these late-game disasters will herald a real trend in terms of how managers run their staffs, but just as a late-game blown save isn't always the product of a single independent event, these kinds of decisions will be the product of cumulative, mounting frustrations with bullpen performance, and these decisions, no matter how little evidence exists to support them either way, will get made just the same.

Christina Kahrl covers baseball for ESPN.com. She helped found Baseball Prospectus in 1996 and was voted into the Baseball Writers' Association of America in 2008 as one of its first four Internet columnists. You can find her ESPN archives here, and follow her on Twitter here.

Host Nate Ravitz was kind enough to have me fill in today for Matthew Berry on the Fantasy Focus podcast . We had plenty to talk about after Opening Day, including:

• Tough day for closers: Ryan Franklin, John Axford, Jonathan Broxton. Who are we most worried about?
• Looks like Craig Kimbrel may not share closer duties with Jonny Venters in Atlanta.
• Derek Lowe has a nice first start. What kind of year will he have?
• Nationals lineup looks terrible.
• Kansas City's Aaron Crow is a sleeper relief pitcher.
• What to expect from Marlon Byrd this year.
• Over/under on Opening Day home run hitters.

1. Should the Brewers panic about John Axford? I think they should be nervous. He was legit last season, with 11.8 K's per nine, but he may have been a little lucky by allowing just one home run. His career minor league BB/9 rate was 6.0, which he cut to 4.2 in the majors. If some of that wildness returns, then hitters can sit on the fastball, like Ramon Hernandez did.

2. I really don't like when managers use their No. 4 or 5 reliever in the bottom of the ninth (or extra innings) and save their closer if they take the lead. What if Chad Qualls or Pat Neshek blows that game and you never get to Heath Bell? Use Bell first and then the other guys.

3. Ryan Franklin has skirted a fine line for years as a closer without dominating stuff. The flyballs stayed in the park in 2009 when he allowed two home runs and posted a 1.92 ERA. They flew out more frequently in 2008 (10 home runs) and 2010 (seven home runs) and his ERA was a run-and-a-half higher. I'd be a little nervous about him.

4. The Angels' bullpen had some shaky moments as well. Definitely worth keeping an eye on. Fernando Rodney is hardly a dominant closer and on paper there isn't much depth beyond Kevin Jepsen and Hisanori Takahashi.

5. Albert Pujols. Three GIDP. He's now worth only $299,999,999.

6. Lots of empty seats in Yankee Stadium Thursday, especially behind home plate. No surprise. Padres-Cardinals in the 11th inning ... and the stadium is half empty. Surprising.

7. Jon Jay: Welcome to TLR's doghouse.

Follow David Schoenfield on Twitter at @dschoenfield. Follow the SweetSpot blog at @espn_sweet_spot.

Yes, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Matt Holliday lost a line drive in the lights, and eventually the Cardinals did suffer a crushing loss. Does he really deserve the goat horns, though? Hardly. Dave Cameron:

But I'd suggest that Cardinal fans go easy on the poor guy. There's plenty of blame to go around, and Holliday's not the one most at fault for the loss.

Yes, if Holliday catches the ball, the game is over. But even after the drop, the Cardinals still had an 87% chance of winning the game. Ryan Franklin then took that 87% percent probability and flushed it down the toilet. Walk, single, walk, single, ballgame. Holliday put one guy on base. Franklin put four guys on base. It takes some kind of perverse twisting of the facts to think that Holliday was more responsible for the loss than Franklin.

--snip--

It's easy to say that if he would have caught the ball, the team would have won. While true, it also ignores everything that went before and after that play. Matt Holliday didn't lose the game for the Cardinals – it was a team effort.

Ryan Franklin had four chances to get a third out, and four times he failed. I'll bet that Franklin knows he blew the game every bit as much as Holliday. Now the rest of us just have to figure that out, too.