When a Luxury Becomes a Necessity: Cardinals Forced to Lean on Pitching Depth

Well, baseball happened.

Jason Motte never got his feet off the ground in spring training and recently underwent Tommy John surgery. Mitchell Boggs was brought in to take his spot, and he turned into an absolute machine. A batting practice machine.

No problem, said manager Mike Matheny. I’ll just put Edward Mujica in the spot. Mujica’s responded with a 2.25 ERA and 13 saves in 13 opportunities.

Then, Jake Westbrook, off to a terrific start (2-1, 1.62 ERA), went on the DL with forearm issues. Projected to miss just two or three starts, he’s now facing the possibility of missing considerable time. Time to panic.

Not so fast, said UberMatheny. The Cardinals promoted rookie John Gast, who was off to a phenomenal start at Memphis. Gast has performed admirably in his two starts thus far, John has gone 2-0. Both times, he threw shutouts for five innings before running into trouble in the sixth.

Then, it was announced Jaime Garcia would go on the DL with shoulder issues, the same problems that plagued him last year. More time to panic.

“Not so fast,” said Magic Mike. “We’ll just bring up Tyler Lyons.” And Lyons responded with a gem, throwing seven innings and allowing just one run, even contributing to the offense with a hit.

The result of all of these moves? A 30-16 start to the season, the best record in MLB. With the offense clicking, the defense doing an above-average job (a liability at times last season, the Cardinals rank third in the majors in fielding percentage and have the third fewest errors), and the pitching humming along, the Cardinals have established themselves as the class of the National League

But…

The Cardinals remain on edge, even with all of these outstanding efforts. Now that Garcia is done for the season, the Cardinals may well have to rely on their rookies much more than they had intended. Currently, the team has three rookies written into the rotation, only one of which (Miller) was counted on at the beginning of the season.

Right now, the rookie pitchers are doing a phenomenal job. Through May 23, the rookie pitchers had combined for the following:

11 wins, 3 losses, 49 games pitched, 12 starts, 113.2 innings pitched, 94 hits, 30 earned runs, 28 walks, 119 strikeouts, 2.38 ERA, 1.073 WHIP, 4.25 K/BB, 9.42 K/9

That’s a phenomenal rate, but how long can it last? Two factors will come into play over the next few months.

1. Opposing teams will get more and more tape on the rookies, exposing their tendencies, pitch types, arm slots, etc. This will give an increasing edge to the batters.

2. The wear of the season will start to bear on the starters. When an organization is building up their prospects into starters, often times they will restrict their innings increases from year to year by 25-30 innings so they don’t wear their arms out.

The Cardinals’ organization, however, has not necessarily adhered to this unwritten rule.

– John Gast threw 106.1 innings in 2010 between Batavia and Florida State. In 2011, he jumped to 161.1 Now, last year, he did stick around the 160 innings total.

– Tyler Lyons threw 84 in 2010 at Oklahoma State, then 94 in 2011, then jumped to 152.2 in 2012. He’s already up to 53.1 this year.

– The pitcher who’s borne the worst brunt of this increase, though, has been Joe Kelly.

Kelly’s an interesting study. Joe was drafted as a closer out of UC Riverside. In 2009, his final year there and his first year in the organization, he threw 59 innings. In 2010, that jumped to 103.1, then to 133 in 2012. Last year, he threw a combined 187 innings. This year, he’s been far less effective coming out of the bullpen. He’s striking out batters at a better rate (7.98 per 9 innings this year, 6.31 last year), he’s getting more ground balls, and he’s even throwing harder (average fastball 95.2 mph, a tick better than last year).