Will the St. Louis Cardinals’ breakneck schedule exhaust starters or sharpen bench?
When Cardinals manager Mike Shildt met virtually with the media before Thursday’s return to Busch Stadium, he was asked about the proper way to manage the workload of Yadier Molina, the 38-year-old catcher who spent nearly three weeks in isolation following a positive test for COVID-19.
Shildt laughed out loud at the thought that such a thing could or would be managed.
“You crack me up with that question,” he said, smiling beneath his mask. “Balance Yadi’s workload? I don’t know if we balance Yadi’s workload.”
Backup catcher Matt Wieters had just been placed on the injured list with a toe contusion in the midst of a brutal scheduling stretch. Wouldn’t Molina need to take a breather from time to time?
“‘Nope,’” Shildt recalled his catcher saying. “‘I got the rest of ‘em.’”
There’s one spot covered.
The wave of rescheduling which followed the tide of postponements due to the team’s coronavirus outbreak leaves the Cardinals without an off day between Aug. 15 and Sept. 3, with four doubleheaders set for that stretch. A two-game series against the Minnesota Twins was condensed to one day in the middle of the month in order to create another day off on Sept. 9.
Those two days are the only on the calendar without at least one scheduled game until the season ends on Sept. 27. At least seven doubleheaders lie ahead with three already having been played in the last six days.
The typical grind of the season has taken on a whole new light.
“I think body-wise it kind of feels like the middle of August even though we’ve only played like 10 games,” veteran infielder Brad Miller said.
The extended wait to get back on the field — and the requirement in most cases to stay indoors and away from people — had grown a layer of rust which Miller described as being shaken off during the eight-games-in-five-days trip to Chicago.
“I just think the coaching staff’s done a great job,” Miller said. “They’ve understood that, hey, we’re gonna rely on everybody. We’re gonna rotate some guys. We have a ton of games. We’re just gonna do the best to not wear anybody too thin.”
The whirling dervish of roster moves which has enveloped the club since Saturday has been focused almost exclusively on the pitching, owing to the need to seek out innings coverage as the team tries to build stamina in its starters.
Infielder John Nogowski was briefly promoted to the active roster and started one game at first base before being sent back to the taxi squad to allow for another pitching promotion. Wieters and Andrew Knizner split time at catcher before Wieters was felled by a foul tip, paving the way for Molina’s return.
The bulk of the action has fallen on just 12 roster spots for position players, nine of which are in play every day, owing to the usage of the designated hitter. Until the players who have been cleared to return from COVID get their legs underneath them at Springfield, the opportunities for the Cardinals will be doled out to a select few.
“It’s the challenging part of having a schedule that we have,” President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak said. “It’s going to be really a test. It’s an endurance test.
“We should be adding some fresh people, but even with that, they’re going to be ramping up to get back to play. It’s still going to be hard to over push. That’s going to be the balance, and again, having a 28-man roster when you have an outbreak is challenging.”
Rookie outfielder Dylan Carlson is the only player to have started each of the last nine games in the field, and has played every available inning defensively. Despite strong secondary numbers suggesting he’s hitting into tough luck, he’s just 4-for-31 since his promotion, and was hitless with two strikeouts on Thursday night.
In a typical season, that sort of nine-game stretch would be enough for a manager to encourage a player to take a step back, get a breath, and reassess. “Get a blow,” as Shildt is fond of saying.
Under the current circumstances, Carlson may have to course correct mid-stream.
“Dylan’s the only guy who rode all eight games (in Chicago), and he’s one of the fresher guys as far as consistently being in baseball activity,” Shildt said of Carlson, who was able to continue his work at the alternate training site in Springfield while the Major League players were under quarantine.
“I feel like we’ve passed the at bats around, passed the innings around. These guys do want to play.”
Shildt explained that veteran players will have to manage their own readiness by enforcing smart limitations on the amount of work they put themselves through before each game; indeed, the Cardinals had a later-than-usual arrival time at Busch Stadium on Thursday and were on the field pre-game in noticeably smaller groups, owing also in part to a desire to limit time spent together in confined spaces.
Those adjustments come from the team learning how to manage this unique season and push forward with a new schedule that presents fresh challenges at every turn.
“Everybody’s having to roll up their sleeves,” Mozeliak said. “I imagine all of us can think back to what our days looked like in late March, in April. We all yearned for the day of, hey, I want to get back to baseball.”
“And guess what? We finally did. But now it’s, like, such an uphill climb just trying to keep everything moving.”
Getting on the field on a more-than-daily basis might help. It might not. Only one way to find out.
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 11:07 AM.
