A few hours before Cardinals general manager John Mozeliak made his first trade of the regular season Saturday, I sent him a text message to ask if we could discuss trade possibilities.
I told him I was worried about the Cardinals’ bullpen.
With lefthander Brett Cecil off to a difficult start, the Cardinals would be wise to acquire another setup man to lift some of the bullpen’s burden on days the training staff decides that hard-throwing righthander Trevor Rosenthal needs to be off because of soreness or lefthander Kevin Siegrist is unavailable with neck stiffness.
A huge red flag went up Friday night when the Cardinals’ medical staff ruled Rosenthal out against the Giants even though the team was off on Thursday. That decision was made after Siegrist, who had not pitched on consecutive nights this month until throwing Friday and Saturday, was unavailable during the two-game set against the Red Sox on Tuesday and Wednesday because of neck stiffness.
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Siegrist’s first back-to-back appearances of the season proved too much. After throwing a scoreless 12th inning to keep the game scoreless, he was tagged for three runs in the 13th as the Giants pulled away to beat the Cardinals 3-1.
Siegrist, who has not pitched more than 1 1/3 innings since throwing two innings on Aug. 12, 2015, gave up five hits and three runs with one strikeout over 1 1/3 innings on a night manager Mike Matheny didn’t risk using Cecil.
Rosenthal began the season on the 10-day disabled list with a strained right lat muscle. He didn’t make his debut this season until April 10. He didn’t pitch on consecutive nights until May 6-7. He went back to back again on May 9-10 and May 13-14. When he returned from his third back-to-back appearances after two days off on Wednesday against the Red Sox, he blew the save and gave up one hit and two runs with a walk over one inning.
Even worse, the training staff wouldn’t let him pitch when the team returned to action two days later. Rosenthal said he told the trainers he had “normal usage soreness.â€
“I’ve been feeling really good so far over the last few months,†Rosenthal said before throwing a scoreless inning Saturday.
What’s the balance between telling the staff you need a break or being ready? What’s the key to straddling the fine line between overusing a reliever and having him fresh?
“It’s tough,†Rosenthal said. “But for me where I’m at right now, I’m just honest. I tell them exactly how I feel every single day to give them the best opportunity to make the best decision. I think that’s going to be the best way to go about it.â€
Although Rosenthal lost his closer’s job to Seung Hwan Oh last season, he remains the Cardinals’ most overpowering reliever. His fastball routinely hits 100 mph.
The Cardinals are wise to be careful with him. They need help, though. They cannot afford to overwork Matt Bowman, who threw a scoreless frame Saturday.
Cecil is tied with Bowman for the bullpen lead with 22 appearances, which says quite a bit about Cecil’s willingness to take the ball and the stubbornness of management to keep giving him the ball despite his 0-1 record and 5.65 ERA.
The Cardinals gave Cecil a four-year, $30.5 million contract this winter.
“I think when you look at how we planned for this bullpen to look, it hasn’t probably performed exactly how we thought,†Mozeliak said. “I think on the positive side, ‘Rosey’ and Bowman have been very good. I think the problem that we’re seeing is how often they’re available and how to balance that with usage.
“When you talk about ‘Do you need another setup man?’ On paper I feel like it’s a luxury to have three players who can pitch the eighth and ninth. Clearly, the way Cecil’s performed to date, it’s been tough, it’s been better and it’s been tough again. I still think over the course of the year he’s going to be somebody we can count on, but he’s certainly having to work through some early struggles.â€
Mozeliak made a win-win trade Saturday by sending Matt Adams to the Braves for 19-year-old corner infielder Juan Yepez, who garnered a $1 million signing bonus as an amateur free agent out of Venezuela in 2014. Now the Cardinals must protect the talented Rosenthal, Bowman and Siegrist and give Matheny another quality arm to bridge the gap between the seventh and eighth innings as they try to get Oh the ball.
“It’s just tough on the other guys in the ’pen,†Matheny said. “I think it’d be nice if we’d just said, ‘All right, you’re going to be the seventh-inning guy, you’re going to pitch the eighth and you’re going to pitch the ninth and we’re going to roll with it every day.’ But through the long haul of the season that just isn’t possible.
“Then you add in some complexities. Michael (Wacha), if Michael goes seven yesterday it might look a little different, but we couldn’t do that because of where he was in that particular game. It’s just going to be those unique situations every game. There’s a little bit of interesting complexities with some of the past issues we’ve had with some of these players to try to keep those past issues from coming back up.â€