Cardinals limp into Pittsburgh with injured catcher, battered pitching
As long as everyone wakes up on Monday morning feeling roughly the same as they did on, well, earlier Monday morning, the St. Louis Cardinals believe they’ll have dodged serious consequences from a bruising weekend in Boston.
That is far from a guarantee, and will be measured by any of several tests laid out in front of the team and its players.
The most consequential of those is likely to be the physical testing on catcher Iván Herrera’s left knee scheduled for Monday afternoon. The National League’s leader in slugging percentage and the team’s leader in home runs and RBI, Herrera felt what he described as a “shooting pain” through his knee as he hustled from first to third base in the top of the third inning of the first of Sunday’s two games.
He was helped from the field by manager Oli Marmol and head trainer Adam Olsen, seemingly unable to put weight on the leg. Within 90 minutes, though, those who had seen Herrera moving about the team’s clubhouse were encouraged. By the end of the second game, Herrera was departing for Pittsburgh (temporarily) without a brace or bandage in sight.
“The MRI was clean, so ligaments, meniscus intact,” Marmol reported. “Nothing’s torn, so we’re not looking at a crazy recovery.”
Herrera will be placed on the injured list Monday, though seemingly not for the months-long stretch the team initially feared.
Yohel Pozo will be selected from the Triple-A Memphis roster and join the Cardinals in Pittsburgh as Pedro Pagés’ backup. Marmol did allow for the possibility that Pozo could be in Monday’s lineup, as Herrera’s early injury meant that he was forced to squat for nearly 18 innings of catching spread over approximately eight hours of a doubleheader.
That roster move will also require clearing a spot on the team’s 40-player roster. Lefty Zack Thompson, currently on the 15-day injured list with a strain in his throwing arm, could be a candidate to move to the 60-day list. President of baseball operations John Mozeliak said on opening day that the team wasn’t certain Thompson would be out that length of time, but necessity remains the mother of invention.
Whoever is catching the pitches in Pittsburgh will be the unwitting conductor of the second test – whether the pitching staff enters the week with the coverage that its manager expressed belief in after the team’s third bruising loss of the weekend.
Ryan Helsley’s four free passes in the ninth inning of Sunday’s day game not only handed a victory to the Red Sox, but also offered an unwitting hand to the Pirates. By the time the game slipped from Helsley’s grasp, the Cardinals had already cleared their bullpen of leverage relievers Kyle Leahy, JoJo Romero and Phil Maton. Ryan Fernandez would follow Helsley’s 37 pitches into the game, and ultimately deliver only six before Boston cashed in its tiebreaker runner in the bottom of the tenth to end the game.
Marmol expressed belief that Romero, Maton and Fernandez would all be available Monday in Pittsburgh, owing in part to having pitched earlier in the day rather than later.
John King and Chris Roycroft, both of whom pitched in the nightcap after the game was already well out of reach, were held to manageable counts that will make their Monday throwing sessions the determiner of their availability.
Long reliever Steven Matz was similarly held to a (relatively) shorter outing on Friday, and could be a live option as soon as Tuesday. Helsley likely will be back in the mix on that day as well, though the Cardinals have a history of caution with his comeback after particularly stressful outings. As of Sunday night, Marmol did not believe the Cardinals would need to make a roster move on Monday to bring in additional pitching.
Part of the reason the Cardinals are leaving Boston counting outs is that they received a woefully inadequate start from Miles Mikolas in Sunday’s nightcap. Once a reliable innings eater, Mikolas was taken out of his first start of the season before being allowed to fake Angels star Mike Trout for a third time.
In his second start, Mikolas did not escape the third inning. He allowed nine runs and 11 hits in just 2 ⅔ innings pitched. The only other occasion in team history of a pitcher allowing as many runs and hits in as few innings a start also, ignominiously, belongs to Mikolas, who was shelled by the Colorado Rockies to a similar tune on August 9, 2022.
“I made some good pitches, I made some bad pitches. You know, it didn’t seem to matter,” a laconic Mikolas observed. “They’ve got some hot bats over there. Sometimes, there’s not much you can do.
“This is one of those ones – hopefully I don’t have any more of these – but this is one that I’ll probably just forget about completely. Toss it aside. Wake up tomorrow, start getting ready for my next start, Hakuna Matata and keep on rolling.”
That is the attitude the Cardinals are eager to project, and perhaps equally eager to feel. A promising 3-0 start has slid into a 4-5 hole.
On many occasions over the last two decades, a trip to Pittsburgh has been a cure for what has ailed St. Louis baseball when it needed a boost. That starts, over the next three days, with grading out as necessary.
