It’s not serious, but here’s why Cardinals should be concerned about Gray’s hamstring
Making it through spring training without a pitching injury is almost impossible under the best of circumstances, and given that the St. Louis Cardinals were planning to enter the season with a starting rotation composed of players all at least 32 or older, they were not operating under the best of circumstances.
Indeed, if Sonny Gray’s mild right hamstring strain is as bad as things get, they would likely grudgingly admit that it’s an acceptable outcome.
President of baseball operations John Mozeliak told the assembled media in Jupiter on Tuesday that Gray’s scheduled opening day start was in doubt but that the Cardinals didn’t yet believe that the injury would threaten a significant part of Gray’s season.
For all its pomp and circumstance, opening day is still just one game of 162, and with three weeks to go before the first pitch is thrown at Dodger Stadium, a steady recovery for Gray would suggest only a few missed starts.
There are, of course, reasons for concern.
Gray spent two separate stints on the injured list in 2022 with similar injuries in the same leg, ultimately making just 24 starts and coming in shy of 120 innings pitched that season for Minnesota.
There’s also something to the morale deflation that comes with an injury to a player who was not only the organization’s off-season headliner, but who also had quickly established himself as an invaluable team leader in camp’s opening weeks.
Gray vocally directed workouts, both his own and that of the team more broadly, and spoke eagerly of stepping into the sort of unquestioned ace role which had eluded him to this point in his career. His talent has never been in question; his durability has not always been what he or his teams have desired.
In his four career seasons in which Gray has made at least 30 starts, he’s finished no worse than seventh in Cy Young voting in three of them, and twice was in the top three. The only outlier was his 2014 campaign for Oakland, in which he posted a 3.08 ERA and won 14 games as a 24-year-old.
The Cardinals will now turn to three pitchers around that age in competition to take Gray’s spot in the rotation.
Lefties Matthew Liberatore, Zack Thompson and Drew Rom all made starts for the Cardinals last season to varying degrees of success. Liberatore and Thompson in particular were seemingly already in competition with each other for a potential slot as a swingman or sixth starter in the first few rotation turns of the season, owing to a deficit of days off on the season-opening road trip to southern California.
Now, one will seemingly depart Florida among the group of five trusted to take the ball, pending any potential outside additions.
It’s highly unlikely that the Cardinals would at this point pursue a significant free agent to bolster the rotation, despite lefties Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell’s lingering availability.
Without any indication that Gray is expected to miss a big chunk of the season, the Cardinals will rely on the depth they’ve revamped and trust their processes. The timing makes the injury feel significant, but modern baseball almost never allows a team to go through a full schedule while using only five starters. Other guys will, eventually, have to take the ball.
There’s also the financial realities of the free agent market.
Mozeliak was firm in December that the team would not exceed the first threshold of the competitive balance (luxury) tax, set for this season at $237 million. The Cardinals, according to FanGraphs, are currently approximately $22 million under that threshold. Even if either Montgomery or Snell was willing to accept a shorter term deal at this point in the offseason, the average annual value of that deal would almost certainly push the Cardinals past that threshold, without any obvious way to shake off salary.
This winter’s strategy for rebuilding a pitching staff which took on water all throughout 2023 was to focus on adding bulk in Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn and then turn to Gray as a high-end mainstay.
The obvious risk which accompanies relying on a rotation of such advanced age is health, and before the first week of March is over, the Cardinals are paying their share of that toll. It was a predictable outcome; indeed, it was an unavoidable one.
The tone from both Gray and the team is one of disappointment, but not one of despair. Cynicism aside, there’s not yet a reason to believe that this setback will linger deep into the summer months, aside from perhaps a nagging feeling about the third similar injury suffered in a two-year span.
The rotation bet made by the Cardinals included this firmly in the set of potential outcomes. It does not necessitate catastrophe.
It is, however, a real stress test, and their recent pass/fail history in those circumstances has not been kind.
