Cardinals face pitching predicament as Fedde fades, McGreevy waits in the wings
The St. Louis Cardinals started the season with no expectation that their starting rotation would reach July in perfect health, and they suddenly find themselves balancing the need to make a spot for a pitcher who has more than earned it with the natural inertia of a roster in place and the value propositions which surround the trade deadline.
Sooner than later, something has to give.
Erick Fedde’s aborted start on Sunday night in Chicago was the latest chapter in a troubling month which has seen him fade from arguably the Cardinals’ most reliable starter on the season to barely able to defend his place among the starting five. Following 5 ⅓ shutout innings against the Dodgers on June 7, Fedde held a 3.54 ERA and was a reliable bulwark against potential innings leakage.
Over his last five starts, though, that ERA has ballooned to 4.79. His last recorded win came two months ago, May 9, in a complete game shutout against his former team in Washington. He entered the season a prime candidate for a July trade simply owing to his expiring, affordable contract, but now the Cardinals are forced to scramble to determine how he can best help them in the short term while still potentially holding value at the deadline in three weeks.
“The reality is he has to find a solution to what’s going on and make an adjustment in order to get through an outing successfully,” manager Oli Marmol said after Sunday’s 11-0 loss to the Cubs. “Continuing to go down this road doesn’t seem like it’s beneficial at the moment.”
“Obviously it’s pretty ugly, so [I’ve] gotta do something,” Fedde acknowledged.
“I’m throwing a lot of balls. When I’m throwing strikes, they’re being hit well. It’s a difficult situation to navigate. Maybe, in a sense, thinking too much about outside things. About my mechanics, about [pitch] tipping, about holding runners, and you stop focusing on making the quality pitch right then and there. That’s something that’s inexcusable, and I’ve gotta be better about.”
Complicating matters for Fedde is that the Cardinals have a ready-made replacement, Michael McGreevy, who has made cameo appearances in the big leagues thus far this season and who is ticketed for a permanent promotion on the horizon. The plan, both said and implied, has always been that McGreevy would seize the rotation spot of whichever pitcher first came up hurt.
Alongside Fedde, both Sonny Gray and Miles Mikolas are over 30. Matthew Liberatore and Andre Pallante are pushing up against career innings limits. Pitching is bad for the body. The Cardinals can hardly be faulted for assuming attrition would take its path, but the time has likely come for upper management to cease acting as passengers of a ship that is ostensibly under their command.
“He’s a major league pitcher,” president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said about McGreevy. “There’s just not a spot right now.”
And yet, there is no one more able to create a spot than Mozeliak, who has thus far declined to do so largely out of concerns around maintaining sufficient depth at Triple-A Memphis. Depth, though, only matters if it can be used to fortify a team as needed. And for a Cardinals team that is teetering on a knife’s edge between contention and falling out of the race, it’s hard to see a more poignant point on the schedule ahead than the junction at which they’ve presently arrived.
As of Tuesday morning, the Cardinals have still listed Fedde as Saturday’s scheduled starting pitcher. It’s not a coincidence, though, that McGreevy was aligned to pitch at Triple-A on Sunday, Fedde’s start day. He turned in perhaps his worst start of the season, allowing eight earned runs in just three innings pitched.
That could delay any potential changes. So too could the looming All-Star break; with only one start remaining for Fedde before the team takes a week off, there is an argument to be made for holding off on major changes until they’re able to fully reset their pitching plans.
The focus on Fedde also obscures Mikolas’ struggles, as he allowed a franchise record six home runs in Friday’s game in Chicago and has seen his ERA climb above five for what would be a second consecutive season.
Mikolas, though, holds a no-trade clause and a large enough salary that he’s unlikely to have any trade value worth salvaging. The Cardinals and Mikolas also both believe he was somewhat egregiously tipping pitches during Friday’s start, and the hope is that a mechanical adjustment might wrangle that back under control.
Part of the decision with Fedde is not about what gives the team the best chance to win his next start, but also what keeps him in play as a movable piece at the end of the month. As Mozeliak previewed a coming “arbitrage” trade deadline, he came just short of hanging a neon “available” sign above Fedde’s locker stall.
It is perhaps best for team and player if he pitches less rather than more over the coming weeks, especially if there’s a concern that he’s more likely to dig the hole deeper than to climb out of it. Doubly so if there’s a worry about what the wait might do to McGreevy’s confidence.
“Thankfully, he’s a very patient, good guy,” Mozeliak said of McGreevy’s holding pattern. “He’s tolerating this. At some point, though, he’s gonna get that chance, and I think he’s going to be a very successful major league pitcher.”
For his sake, as well as his team’s, Mozeliak needs to be correct about that – again, sooner than later.
