The Cardinals think they have the front-end talent in the back of their rotation
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When experts shied away from picking the St. Louis Cardinals going into this season, they often cited a vanilla starting pitching rotation.
A lot of Cardinals fans wanted the team to sign one of the remaining name-brand starters as spring training kept going and a few remained available.
The Cardinals didn’t budge in that direction, and here’s why: They think they could have one of the deepest rotations in the game before long. Judging by early results, they’re not necessarily crazy.
The area of this Cardinals roster with some of the dimmest name recognition also has some of the most exciting upside.
After Adam Wainwright strained a hamstring and then Carlos Martínez and Michael Wacha pitched duds in New York, the relative no names have steadied the ship.
Luke Weaver and Miles Mikolas soothed Cardinal fan nerves with solid starts. Jack Flaherty could pitch the Cardinals to a three-game winning streak with a good start Tuesday.
Wainwright likely won’t pitch for another week or so, and top prospect Alex Reyes is about two months from joining the rotation, but the Cardinals believe what they have now is good enough to get them through this. Once they get healthy, they could have enviable depth.
A burly right-hander, Mikolas is, for now, best known for swallowing a live lizard while in the Arizona Fall League (hey, we all did crazy stuff when we were 22, right?).
He is with the Cardinals on a two-year, $15.5 million deal because scouts Matt Slater and Jeff Ishii liked him and the Cardinals analytics department loved him. Why? One phrase:
“A high strikeout rate in a contact league is interesting,” Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said.
In three seasons pitching for the Yomiuri Giants, Mikolas had a strikeout-per-nine rate of 8.1. It was an indication to the Cardinals that Mikolas not only continued to have good command but that his raw stuff had enjoyed an uptick. In MLB, where hitters often sell out contact in a bid for home runs, Mikolas might be roughly as effective as he was in Japan and that’s saying something. He was 31-13 with a 2.18 ERA.
The Cardinals saw surprising velocity from Mikolas all spring. He looked pretty strong dotting a 97-mph fastball on the outside margin of the strike zone to strike out Ryan Braun on Monday, when he held the Brewers to four runs in 5 2/3 innings.
“The more we watched, the better he looked,” Matheny said of Mikolas’ spring.
Weaver started his season promisingly with five strong innings against the New York Mets on Sunday and helped shake the pitching from its sluggish start. Beforehand, Matheny said he doesn’t view Weaver as he might another pitcher with just 18 major league starts.
A lot of perceptions changed when Weaver came up for his second taste of the big leagues on the eve of Independence Day last summer.
He was different. In 2016, the Cardinals watched a rookie pitcher who gave too much credit to major-league hitters and walked too many. When he tired of giving free passes, he threw too many strikes and got hit hard. Then, he showed up the following summer.
“He just had a physical confidence on the mound that relayed into how he was executing pitches,” Matheny said. “I’ve seen enough from him. I don’t think the rest of the baseball world has – maybe Cardinal fans who pay close attention – so he’s done enough to take away a lot of those doubts.”
Weaver’s approach is not typical of a young pitcher. With two runners on base against the Mets, Weaver – his jersey sleeves flapping in a cool, westerly wind in Queens — faced a possible make-or-break moment in the first inning.
He showed Wilmer Flores everything he had in a nine-pitch at-bat and, as a result, he got away clean. That allowed the Cardinals to get their first lead of 2017.
He threw four different pitches, starting with an 82-mph curveball for a strike. When Flores fought through changeups and cutters, then fouled off two 94-mph four-seam fastballs in a row, Weaver froze him by throwing an 81-mph curveball on the outer edge for a strike. Here's the video.
The least-known commodity, Flaherty, will make just his sixth major-league start when he faces the Brewers on Tuesday. The Cardinals hope Flaherty, like Weaver, benefits from having already gotten major-league time last season. While he wasn’t terribly effective, pitching to a 6.33 ERA and 1.55 WHIP, he did show a sometimes-devastating slider. In the spring, he refined a sinker to give him a five-pitch mix.
“The kid’s got pretty special stuff,” Matheny said. “You watch him, and he competes and prepares like a guy who’s been around a whole lot longer than he has.”
Flaherty’s first stop in St. Louis this season could be a short one. Wainwright, according to all accounts, should be ready to return after just 10 days on the disabled list, meaning Flaherty likely will be sent to Triple-A Memphis. Still, two starts, if they’re strong, will keep him in his current role: as the Cardinals’ No. 6 starter.
What – or, in fact, who — the Cardinals have going for them as they try to bring along the untested back of their rotation is Yadier Molina. He spoke highly of the young pitchers he saw this spring, taking special care to get to know their unique repertoires and competitive styles throughout camp. There’s a reason he has a reputation as one of the best handlers of pitchers the game has seen.
Molina encourages the pitchers he doesn’t know to shake him off as much as they want the first few times he catches them.
“That’s the best way for a catcher to learn a guy, not sit back and go, ‘I have a whole bunch of Gold Gloves, and I can show them to you if you need to see them. So, do what I tell you,’ ” Matheny said. “It’s never that conversation. It’s, ‘Show me what you’re thinking. Do your thing, and then trust the fact we’re not going to let you do anything stupid.’ ”
The Cardinals will stay on the lookout for rookie mistakes. Meanwhile, they sound pretty confident in their least-tested starters.