How will Cardinals, Marmol weather the crush of extra innings on their pitching staff?
The St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Angels squeezed in three extra innings of play over the first two games of their series, and extra innings means extra pitching.
As a result, righties Ryan Fernandez, Ryan Helsley and Chris Roycroft each pitched on back-to-back days on Monday and Tuesday night.
Common belief would hold that there’s no better time than the first week of the season to ask conceivably fresh players to push themselves, but the data does not bear that assumption out. The season’s opening month is by far its most perilous time for pitcher injuries, and both teams and players are hyper vigilant about allowing for recovery and rest wherever possible.
There are ball games to be won, which means there are bad spots which cannot be avoided. There is, however, resultant pressure which changes the look and feel of these early season matchups.
“The last thing you want is to piece [pitching] together for five [innings] and then get rain,” manager Oli Marmol said from his office on Wednesday morning. “I’d rather not play God and just be the little St. Louis manager.”
The inbound weather was yet another wrinkle in the week that serves as an additional stressor on the amount of available innings. The Cardinals have two relievers – lefties John King and Steven Matz – who only appeared once in the season’s first five games. Matz, though, is a career starter who provided four full innings and earned his first career save on Sunday afternoon.
Workload concerns are real, and they trickle down through every decision a manager makes to every corner of the roster. Pitchers need to pitch in June, July and August, and the best way to guarantee they’re able to do so is to avoid grinding them into dust in April and May.
“It’s always tough, because as soon as you leave spring training, every game matters and you’re trying to win them,” veteran reliever Phil Maton said. “I think that’s kind of the balance of not trying to burn guys out too quick, but also playing competitive baseball, trying to win every game. It’s incredibly tough, and that’s something I think every team wrestles with the first couple weeks of the year.”
Maton appeared in three of the team’s first four games, though he benefited from the built-in off day on Friday to avoid pitching back to back. Had he been used on Tuesday, though, it would’ve been his second consecutive day and third of four. That kept Marmol away from him, even though doing so necessitated asking for more from Fernandez and Roycroft.
“If you think about how late [Maton] got to us in spring, his buildup had been very different than the rest of the guys,” Marmol said about the righty, who signed on March 13. “When you’re in spring training, you throw, two days off, you throw and you build into it. He didn’t have the opportunity to do that with us and face hitters, so you’re asking for a lot.”
“Even in the offseason, I feel great, but I don’t throw on the weekends,” Maton explained. “And then going into the season, it’s seven days a week. Spring training, as well as you prepare for it, you can’t really simulate pitchers in baseball, and that’s just really tough.”
Maton said that his arm doesn’t typically follow the rhythms of the calendar and tends to feel about the same regardless of how far the schedule has advanced. But Maton has nine years in the big leagues and has made at least 65 appearances in each of the four seasons preceding this one. He’s perhaps uncommonly dialed in to his arm health and his routine, and has the experience to know when and how he’s able to push himself.
That’s a skill which is learned with time – not really able to be simulated – and for a Cardinals bullpen populated by pitchers who are early in their own careers, it falls on the manager and the performance staff to have a feel for when to push and when to ease off.
All the while, there are games still to be won.
The Cardinals under Marmol have been diligent about avoiding back-to-back outings wherever possible, so to see three pitchers asked to provide them within the first week of the season stands out as a departure from the norm. It was an unavoidable departure, but one that’s relevant to the coming days and weeks.
These are concerns that crop up despite the Cardinals benefiting from relative innings bulk from their starters through the rotation’s first turn. None of the five left the game before completing five innings, and despite two weather delays over the first weekend, the timing of storms provided them with an opportunity to still use their relievers in their desired spots.
In order for that to be true three months from now, it requires short term patience. That’s a significant ask for players and teams alike, especially when circumstances conspire against even the best laid plans.
“Ultimately, at this level, you’re trying to win games,” Maton said. “That’s going to trump everything else. The player development, the schedule you’re trying to do. That’s just something that every manager has got to battle, and it’s extremely tough to do.”