Finding three pitchers for Cardinals’ rotation won’t be easy and could be pricey
The chorus has begun to sing the refrain and it is certain to repeat for the next several months: three starters. The Cardinals need three starters.
They must identify and secure three starting pitchers — one, two, three, and that — in combination with largely the same group on offense. That should be sufficient to return to contention after an unexpectedly dreadful year.
That is, of course, very easy to say and significantly more difficult to achieve. And it relies on the assumption that both Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz should be assumed to be incumbents, which is both a natural decision based on their contract status and a risky one based on performance.
Mikolas, hamstrung by his bizarre non-usage in the World Baseball Classic, has largely been himself despite aggregate numbers which have ticked up.
Of the 64 earned runs he allowed in his first 24 starts, 21 of those were in the first five. Since April 27, he’s recorded a 3.55 earned run average and 3.37 fielding independent pitching, pairing 71 strikeouts with 19 walks. Once he recovered from his lost month with Team USA, he’s been exactly as expected.
Matz, however, is harder to rely upon. His early season struggles saw him removed from the rotation entirely, but after a month in the bullpen, he’s been lights out.
In six starts since returning to the rotation, he’s allowed only six earned runs. In holding opponents to a .534 OPS over that stretch, Matz is putting up one of the most productive stretches of his career.
If this is the pitcher he’s crafted – the pitcher with increased velocity and the conviction which allows him to throw each of his pitches for strikes – then he’s a bargain relative to what the Cardinals acquired two years ago in free agency. If this is a fluke, and a regression is coming, then crafting an offseason strategy around his renaissance is risky to say the least.
“I think pitching with confidence is a big thing,” Matz said Saturday after his win over the Colorado Rockies. “[Pitching with an edge] was something I kind of maybe got in the bullpen when I was out there. Coming in again, I want to come back starting pitching with an edge like I belong there, and I think that’s something I can carry in.”
“He’s not letting just a little bit of adversity kind of snowball into a bad inning,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “He’s staying on the attack. From a mentality standpoint, you’ve got to be able to pitch with conviction at this level, and that’s what he’s doing.”
If there is a silver lining in this lost season for the Cardinals, it’s in finding confidence for pitchers like Matz who do not have to sweat the possibility of losing their spot after a bad outing. In part, that’s a function of the team’s commitment to sorting out options for the remainder of the season, but it’s also the result of attrition; there are very few other options in house, even if the Cardinals eventually wish for one to appear.
That same conviction has been extended to Matt Liberatore, whose first stretch in the rotation was constantly subject to interruptions and adjustments based on the schedules of others. And it applies as well to Zack Thompson, whose largely lost season has seen him yo-yoed between the majors and minors, and the bullpen and rotation.
“It’s been a really weird year,” Thompson said Sunday after striking out eight in four innings of work as a spot starter, filling in for Mikolas in his last game of a suspension. “But it all happened for a reason. The combination of everything I learned from getting sent down, struggling there, coming back, having some struggles in the bullpen, and starting to put it together.”
The search for three starters will of course include a look at some internal options, especially given that shopping for high-end pitchers has to date been anathema to this front office and ownership group. There is undoubtedly a degree of sticker shock coming around the bend, and one way for the decision makers to blunt that edge for themselves is to find one reliable starter among the players they already have.
Liberatore could be that pitcher. Thompson could as well. Dakota Hudson will get opportunities to prove himself in much the same way, though optimism among those in charge is lower that his resurgence is sustainable.
All the while, every start Matz puts up which puts distance between his current games and his bad ones gives increased confidence to the length of the team’s shopping list. They would like it to shrink. They must be prepared for it to grow.
“As a pitcher,” Thompson cracked when asked about the role in which he sees himself moving forward. “We’ll see where the chips fall, but just go out every outing and compete my tail off, and hopefully good things happen.”
