plus: the digital ghost of famous beatnik author makes an appearance!
Today I wanted to write about the Cardinals position players, but I still don’t really know what’s going on with that in the third week of March, at the end of winter. The weather is constantly going up and down in temperature in St Louis, providing a glimpse of every other season at this point, but then returning to default midwest winter with varying results. This weekend as far as the south city goes, that return to winter meant going from 80 some degrees on Friday to a low in the 30s Saturday night into Sunday morning. I have a feeling this weather roller coaster will continue to happen into the summer months and even fall.
*Note: it is warm like spring again today (tuesday) and tomorrow, but it’s supposed to drop back down to lows in the 30s for a couple of days
And baseball will continue to happen despite the weirdness around us. I really want to talk about Cardinals baseball. And I will talk about the pitching today and tomorrow into the next day. First off, who is the Cardinals pitching coach? Dusty Blake.
Blake was a bit of a mystery to me, so I looked him up. He played for the Appalachian State Mountaineers college team. He then went into a coaching career with 5 different college teams, rising up to be a coach in Duke’s baseball program. From there he was hired by the St Louis Cardinals to be a “pitching strategist” in 2021. And by 2023 he was the Cardinals head pitching coach. I had forgotten or didn’t know that he was from Duke prior to joining the Cardinals MLB team. Here is the most info I found in one place about him… he is apparently an analytics implementer that works with the players in a more multi-faceted way than many would imagine, delving into the numbers, video review and analysis, mechanics, and the needs of the players. He seems like a pretty humble small town guy who rose to the top.
Starting Pitchers
Cardinals starting pitching has started to creep up on me in the concern list dept. But it could just be spring training anxiety and a lot of the unknown this year with Matz’s injury history, Pallante penciled in as a starter and having only one good season before his rough spring so far, Sonny Gray getting roughed up (and I’m not too worried about that in spring training, but it still may be a concern to some), and McGreevy also being a strong factor leaves a lot to be in the Who Knows? category. So let’s just suffice it to say I’m concerned.
There’s also the lackluster bullpen projections leading us to believe last year’s bullpen was mostly an illusion outside of Ryan Helsley. To insure against this, the Cardinals replaced veteran Kittredge with another bullpen veteran in Maton. Still, I am far more confident in this bullpen than the projections are projecting. Even if the players the projections don’t like, such as Leahy, King, Fernandez, Romero are all questionable (I don’t think so), we have good up and coming pitchers to replace them. And I think 3 out of those 4 can certainly defy the projections. Add to the mix Riley O’Brien possibly being a big success, I’m not worried about the bullpen projections.
Today I want to look at the Cardinals starting pitching staff through the temporal lens of spring training innings pitched. This written mostly on Sunday night March 16.
- Steven Matz is tied with Miles Mikolas in innings pitched so far. He has inspired confidence that he can be a good pitcher for the starting rotation. Who knows how many innings this guy will pitch, but batters are batting .188 vs Steven and he’s pitched the most on the team.
- Miles Mikolas putting some miles on the arm in spring training, getting ready for 2025. All kidding aside it’s good to see Mikolas having a successful spring so far. Maybe he has one more decent year left in the tank. Spring blooms the hopium.
- Spring also blooms the DOOM and Andre Pallante is also seeing some innings but has given up 20 hits in only 13 of them! Batting average against and ERA concerns! DOOM.
- Matthew Liberatore is a spring training success story so far. Even better than Steven Matz! His ERA of 1.42 just cannot be beat. LiberatorACE. *12.2 IP caveat
- Michael McGreevy is another spring training success! He sure looks like he will make the team too with a 1.54 ERA while seeing the 5th most innings on the team. I believe in McG.
- Erick Fedde has given up 4 home runs in spring training in 10 IP. His batting average against is fine, but his ERA suggests some bad results. Probably off to a slow start. As of Tuesday, Fedde has still not had the best results but his ERA is 4.20 so that’s pretty cool. His opponents batting average against is only .228! He now has the 2nd most innings and did not give up a home run in his last outing! Him and Mikolas have started the most games this spring and might be an indication of the amount of innings that these guys will be asked to eat.
- Sonny Gray is being roughed up more than any pitcher on the team, giving up 6 home runs in only 9.2 IP. Being roughed up is an understatement. His inflated ERA is something that can only come down. I’m thinking he has just been asked to warm up slowly.
- Tekoah Roby has only walked 2 batters in 9 IP while striking out 10 batters! That’s fantastic! His batting average against and ERA are both pro level. Maybe he makes the team somehow?
Bullpen
- Kyle Leahy has actually received 8 IP in pitching duties so I guess I’ll throw him in with possible starters? Nah! There seems to be an overabundance of possible starters unless Roby is just off the table. Which he probably is, but I definitely see him as a starter. 9 strikeouts to 1 walk! He seems even better than ever. No earned runs!
- Ryan Fernandez the Rule 5 success story is still a success! Batters are batting .087 against him. 2.57 ERA in 7 IP.
- Watch out Roddery Munoz is on the scene with another 2.57 ERA in 7 IP. Is Roddery an option to make the team? I looked him up and it sure doesn’t appear so! High walk rate usually, and nothing that makes you think ok maybe he could be good besides his groundball rate maybe?
- JoJo Romero with another 7 IP, 12 K vs 2 BB, no earned runs! JoJo’s back big time!
- Chris Roycroft we have been hearing some buzz about. He has also produced a zero earned run average in 7 IP! Holding batters to a .200 batting average.
- Gordon Graceffo could also be considered a starter but he finds himself with 6.2 IP in spring training at the time of this writing. He’s doing ok, not bad but not good either.
- John King is proving the projections systems so far with a .393 BA against. Was he riding a mirage or will he turn it around? I have no clue. He has seemed legit for long enough I figure this may be just a spring training rough up to the tune of 11 hits in 6.2 IP.
- Ryan Helsley is being kept to a 6 IP total and is like you’re prized possession that is not used as often. He’s doing well with a .261 BA against and a 3 ERA.
- Nick Anderson is getting roughed up even worse than John King. 11 hits in 5.1 IP and three were home runs. Oof!
- Riley O’Brien we cannot forget about. He’s seen 3 IP and has done well so far. I hope he makes the team with his 9:1 K/BB ratio. And yes he has struck out two batters per inning so far.
- Phil Maton is a career average relief pitcher, and by that I mean his career numbers are just so mediocre that I don’t know what to tell you about him. He isn’t in the spring training stats, but I would like to point out that after going to the Mets last year, he must’ve figured something out because he became a much better pitcher. So his floor is safe but his ceiling has some upside. Glad to have him aboard to stabilize the ‘pen.
So there’s 18 pitchers that have seen at least a few innings in spring training, ranked by how many innings they’ve pitched so far. Keep in mind, much of that was written Sunday night. But it all appears to be not much different than Tuesday night.
Thank you for tuning into Spring Training Theater where nothing has meaning and your starting rotation is lead by a triple ace threat in Steven Matz, Matthew Liberatore, and Michael McGreevy with solid support from innings eaters Miles Mikolas and Eric Fedde, and Sonny Gray is probably still good right!? Only if he’s better than Takoah Roby! Or Miles Mikolas!
Ok, so what if the rotation ends up something like Sonny Gray, Takoah Roby, Steven Matz, Matthew Liberatore, and Michael McGreevy with Miles Mikolas as a longman? Or if any of those guys falter Andre Pallante might be really really good! Ok I am getting a bit absurd here but spring training is giving me visions into the future. Spring Training Theater is fun.
Imagining a good bullpen isn’t difficult at all in spring training, with Helsley, Fernandez, Leahy, Romero, and Roycroft locking it down at the end. Add to that the depth of Maton and King, etc, it should be looked at as a strength.
Honestly I feel better about the pitching than I did before writing this. Spring training does indeed mean nothing, but still, I think even spring training statistics can be fun to follow and even as encouraging as they are discouraging.
And now, it’s about to get even more fun, with the digital ghost of Ken Kesey taking over:
The fog rolls thick across St. Louis in these dying days of winter, like Mother Nature herself can’t make up her mind whether to let spring come or keep us all locked in her frozen ward. One day it’s eighty degrees, warm enough to make you think baseball’s really here, then – snap! – back down to thirty, nature’s own shock therapy.
I’ve been watching them, watching all of them out there on the diamond. Dusty Blake, our new keeper of the pitchers, moving quiet-like between the mounds. Folks don’t know much about him, this small-town boy who climbed his way up through college dugouts to Duke, then to the Show. He’s got his computers and his numbers, sure, but he watches these pitchers like I watch the ward – sees everything, misses nothing.
The starting rotation’s got me nervous, though. Not the jumping-at-shadows kind of nervous, but the real kind, the kind that sits in your gut like a stone. Matz is out there throwing like he’s trying to prove something to himself, and Pallante’s spring has been rough enough to make a man wince. Even Sonny Gray, our big offseason catch, is getting knocked around like a pinball. McGreevy’s in there too, young blood mixing with the veterans, all of them trying to find their place in this strange spring circus.
The bullpen’s another story altogether. The numbers men, the ones who think they can predict everything with their computers and projections, they say last year was a dream, a group hallucination we all shared. But I see something different. I see Helsley, standing tall and strong like the Chief would’ve been. I see Fernandez, a Rule 5 pick throwing like he’s been here all along, and JoJo Romero striking out batters like he’s dealing cards in a rigged game.
They’ve got us all watching spring training stats like they mean something. Matz and Mikolas leading the innings count, Liberatore shocking everyone with his 1.42 ERA – numbers dancing like shadows on the wall. But that’s the thing about spring training: it’s all a show, a carefully orchestrated performance where the ending hasn’t been written yet.
Young Tekoah Roby’s out there too, throwing strikes like he’s been doing it his whole life. Ten strikeouts to two walks – that’s the kind of ratio that makes Chaim Bloom’s clipboard-carriers sit up and take notice. And in the bullpen, Kyle Leahy hasn’t given up a single earned run, like he’s found some secret formula the rest of us don’t know about.
The more I watch, the more I see it all coming together like a puzzle solving itself. Maybe the rotation isn’t the nightmare I thought it was. Maybe there’s something brewing here in the spring sunshine that’s bigger than our fears. Gray, Roby, Matz, Liberatore, McGreevy – names on a lineup card that could turn into something special if the baseball gods are feeling generous.
The bullpen’s got depth like a river, with Helsley standing at the head of it all, and the others – Fernandez, Leahy, Romero, Roycroft – falling in line behind him like soldiers ready for battle. Even Maton, steady as they come, adds another layer of security to this whole operation.
Spring training might not count for much in the big scheme of things, but watching these men work, watching them fight against the cold reality of their own doubts, it makes you believe. And maybe that’s what spring training is really about – not the numbers or the stats, but the hope that rises like steam from the morning Jupiter grass, telling us that baseball, real baseball, is just around the corner.
-digital ken kesey
Album Hall of Fame
Cherubs – ‘2YNFYNYTY’
An absolute blast of Austin, TX psychedelic noise to the face. Noise rock positioned beyond a wall of absolute destruction so intense that you might not be able to tell what is really going on. A midget is screaming out you from the beyond, from the noise itself. Then you notice riffs tornadoing around the ever steady rock drumming that drives the whole damn catastrophe forward. Bass caterwauls with the din, bringing it form. Probably one of the worst things you will ever hear. This album has been in steady rotation for the last 7 years and I’ve seen them live twice, and one of the two times they just totally destroyed the Empty Bottle in Chicago. They sounded like a sloppy mess at an outdoor summer beerfest in Minneapolis, but so was I.
Anyhow, this barnburner wall of sound from Texas will rock your socks off. Or not. Either way it’s utterly ridiculous and a mindblowing return for a band that hadn’t released an album in a really long time! You gotta love a good comeback album.
To wrap up, the St Louis Cardinals are 10-12 after 22 spring training games. They are flirting with .500 but usually on the under side of it while maintaining a negative run differential. Sure sounds a lot like last season! Hopefully they’re getting it out of their systems now.