Inside the Cardinals’ anti-injury lab, where the 5-day start is just a suggestion
Dusty Blake wasn’t looking over his shoulder at the injured list the way his pitchers might when they’re trying not to jinx a no-hitter, but the St. Louis Cardinals pitching coach was well aware of the unusually good health his team was benefiting from as the 2025 season unfolded.
“If we have a real strength, that’s individualizing everything for these guys and then being dialed in between that group and our staff,” Blake said. “Not that we’re perfect. Probably [will] make a mistake at some point. But I would just say it seems like when people come in and out of here, that’s one thing they notice.”
The literal rebuilding of the team’s performance center into a new state-of-the-art facility has given the Cardinals the ability to maximize their in-house understandings of workload and how buildup puts stress on arms at the season’s most vulnerable points.
Pitching at the big league level is bad for an arm no matter what’s done to soften the blow, especially after periods of inactivity and when workloads reach their plateaus. It’s on the team, then, to figure out ways to be creative and inventive when it comes to allowing pitchers to compete but stay protected.
For decades, five-day pitching rotations have been as much a part of baseball as peanuts and Cracker Jack. Whether that should be the standard, however, is one of the questions the Cardinals are working through answering as they attempt to strip down their way of doing business to the proper component parts.
“If you [designed] it from a clean slate and didn’t have preconceived ideas of how to do it, that’s probably not what you would do,” manager Oli Marmol said of the five-day schedule. “We took that approach, and I like the way we built it out. I think last year was a great example of it, and we’ll continue to be thoughtful in how we move that forward.”
As pitchers and catchers move through their first five-day set of scheduled workouts, the team’s likely starting pitchers have gotten themselves into a rough rotation that could outline the way things will work during spring and into the regular season.
New starter Dustin May, however, hasn’t yet thrown live to hitters. After years struggling with injury, his needs and his climb up to comfort and stability will require a slightly different plan. The Cardinals knew that when they signed him, and part of what drew May to the Cardinals was his comfort that they would be willing to work with the way he needed to work.
“My impression is that he’s enjoying this and he’s excited to be out here,” Blake said. “For what he’s worked through and the challenges that he’s faced coming into spring training, hopefully where we’re at right now, it’s just a different vibe for him.”
The plotting and planning done back in the pitching offices is highly individualized, but it’s also conceptual. If the five-day schedule isn’t ideal for spring training, it logically follows that it’s not perfect for the season, either. If players are and should be highly individualized, then they shouldn’t necessarily all need to follow the same clock as it ticks down from five to zero throughout the season.
It’s easy enough to imagine a near-off future in which pitching rotations are variable, bouncing from one arm on a five-day schedule to one arm that throws once a week to a spot starter up from the minors or bouncing out of the bullpen. If there are more pitchers coming like Jurrangelo Cijntje, able to compete with both arms, that brings its own wrinkle. The question then becomes politics.
“I don’t know how that would go over in the clubhouse,” Blake admitted. “Does this mean he’s more valuable than me, or does this mean I’m more vulnerable and fragile than him? I think that would be another balance point you’d have to cross to implement something like that.”
Quinn Mathews became the first pitcher in camp to throw two simulated innings to hitters on Sunday, and his work in crafting his own biomechanics when he was pitching in college for Stanford eventuated in a 156-pitch postseason effort in his final college season. Even after a year in which he dealt with injury and unavailability for the first time in his life, he’s still about as hands-on as pitchers can be in working through their own physical programs.
“It’s all about recovery,” Mathews said. “If you were to give someone 14 days to recover, I’m sure they’d be recovering for 14 days. You give someone four days to recover on a five-day, they only have four days to recover. You just have to learn your body, learn what you need, and learn what works for you.”
As much as Mathews spoke about the process being driven by the player, he’s likely an outlier in terms of his comfort and engagement in that process. His level of comfort and knowledge is not necessarily matched in level throughout the clubhouse, and to the extent that it is, having the knowledge and weaponizing it incorrectly is not uncommon — and carries its own risks.
It’s developing the testing baseline and data out of the performance department, then, that helps strengthen those suggestions and give life to the new programs being designed for pitchers, both new and not.
“Everybody’s important, and everybody counts,” Blake said. “If we create some little [usage] spikes here and there in camp without red-lining anybody, then we can also help them become more adaptable with their tissue, with their body’s ability to evolve through not just a controlled schedule.”
That’s the next step, and it’s the goal after a long winter leading into a spring leading into a season that the Cardinals hope will realign both internal and external expectations. Last year, whether luck or skill or both, a big league pitching staff that didn’t suffer a single arm injury drew attention from the industry, and prying inquiries to Blake over the winter.
Some he even answered. “Depends who calls,” he joked.
Do it again, and a lot more people will be calling.