With good health and depth, Cardinals have more big league pitchers than roster spots

As Miles Mikolas and Adam Wainwright prepare to depart for the World Baseball Classic, the way the St. Louis Cardinals have structured their appearances for pitchers in their stead — and in the early days of camp — offers a clue into the way they might be likely to construct their opening day roster.

Wainwright (Thursday) and Mikolas (Friday) are set to depart for Team USA’s camp in Arizona this weekend, with Jake Woodford and Dakota Hudson having shadowed each in their respective early appearances in game action.

Both righties clearly have the skill and experience to pitch in a big league rotation; neither has an obvious spot with the Cardinals, and both could be at risk of opening the season at Triple-A Memphis.

Along with Mikolas and Wainwright, Jack Flaherty, Steven Matz and Jordan Montgomery have all worked through the first three weeks of spring training in perfect health, ready for game action. With a five-man rotation in the offing and rules limiting the Cardinals to carrying only 13 pitchers at a time on the active roster, seats are filling up rapidly.

The Cardinals have instructed Team Italy not to push Andre Pallante beyond 45 pitches at any point during the World Baseball Classic. Tournament rules allow pitchers in the group round to reach 65, so St. Louis clearly has an internal limit which would push Pallante strictly to the bullpen.

Drew VerHagen, healthy after a season lost to ineffectiveness and a hip impingement, has strictly been on a reliever’s schedule. So too has lefty Zack Thompson, who manager Oliver Marmol identified as best able to assist the big league club this season from the bullpen.

Those three, plus the five incumbent starters, make eight. Ryan Helsley and Giovanny Gallegos will hold down the back end of the bullpen, and Chris Stratton has sufficient service time to block a minor league assignment.

Rule 5 selection Wilking Rodríguez has drawn rave reviews from fellow pitchers for his accuracy and the quality of his pitches, and in order to avoid offering him back to the New York Yankees, he must be either in the majors or on the injured list.

That brings the Cardinals to 12, and that’s before a second left-hander is even considered. One of Génesis Cabrera, JoJo Romero, Anthony Misiewicz, Andrew Suárez or Packy Naughton — or perhaps even Matt Liberatore or Connor Thomas — is bound to seize that second lefty spot. Any of those seven can be sent freely to the minors as desired.

Hudson and Woodford

With a month to go in camp, the fortunes of good health have shone happily on the club as a whole but cast a difficult shadow over both Hudson and Woodford.

Despite having made his debut in 2018, Hudson lacks sufficient service time to block a demotion to the minors, finding himself in much the same position Paul DeJong did during the 2022 season. He enters 2023 with four years and 62 days of service to his credit; that’s 110 days short of reaching the magic five year number which would help him determine his own fate. And despite having been sent to Memphis last September, the assignment was too short to burn an option year; he still maintains a full set of three years.

Woodford is arguably in an even more unreasonable spot, despite having much less experience than Hudson. He was called up and sent down multiple times in 2020, 2021 and 2022, which under most circumstances would make him ineligible to be sent down without waivers as of this season.

Unfortunately, from his perspective, the wild ride of the 2020 season saw him sent down and called up so frequently that he didn’t reach the necessary number to slice off a year. Ordinarily, that would be 20 days on option. That year, with proration, the number was 8; even then, after being added to the 40-man roster in August, Woodford was frequently enough on the active roster that his call ups and send downs were for naught.

Too much pitching?

With a month still to go, any number of unexpected events could push the members of the shadow rotation – Hudson, Liberatore, Thomas, Woodford — back toward the big league roster. Hudson and Woodford, in particular, could use their starts while Mikolas and Wainwright are away as open auditions for other clubs, and the Cardinals could reach the end of camp comfortable with the idea of swapping out one or both for depth elsewhere on the roster.

Or, more likely, understanding the necessity of filling innings over a long season, both could find themselves destined for Memphis despite being well beyond that level from a skill perspective. Neither is likely to be thrilled with that assignment, despite both being overwhelmingly likely to say all the right things should it occur.

There is, conventional wisdom asserts, no such thing as too much pitching. That is undoubtedly true from a team perspective. It is far less true for individuals who don’t have any further need to ride any more minor league buses.