Drumroll, please.
It’s time to introduce the single most important statistic to the 2024 Cardinals.
Well, besides wins.
It’s what they’re betting leads to wins.
It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as late Raiders owner Al Davis’ bottom line of, “Just win, baby,†but wins for the Cardinals this season could boil down to just getting quality starts, man.
Last season a cratering of the rotation produced all kinds of problems downriver during a last-place finish that included 91 losses and the freshest evidence yet that an iconic franchise continues to fall behind the National League powers it once took pride in leading.
An overmatched bullpen was overused. A capable offense played under extreme stress often. A running game was iced by lopsided leads surrendered early.
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And yet, the worst Cardinals team witnessed in decades still managed to win just less than 69 percent of its games in which the starting pitcher set the tone with a quality start.
Forty eight times a Cardinals starter checked the box of lasting at least six innings and surrendering three or fewer earned runs. Thirty three wins followed in those settings.
The 2023 Cardinals doing something right 69 percent of the time, considering their many flaws, is remarkable. Problem was, those 48 quality starts received ranked third to last in the NL. No Cardinals pitcher who finished the season here had more than Miles Mikolas’ 14. The rotation’s quality start percentage of 30 was the lowest a Cardinals team had produced in the divisional era (1969) and continued a trend.
As recently as 2015, a Cardinals rotation produced a quality start percentage of 65, finishing second in the divisional era only to the 1969 team’s 72. That 2015 team, some of you will remember, won 100 games. But since the pandemic showed up the Cardinals have produced four consecutive seasons of their lowest quality-start percentage in more than five decades: 38 percent in 2022; 35 percent in 2021; 31 percent in 2020 and the previously mentioned 30 percent in 2023.
In short, the Cardinals haven’t been this lousy at producing quality starts since Hall of Fame baseball writer John Lowe created the stat.
As teams have used their bullpens more aggressively and looked for more reasons to pay non-elite starting pitchers less money, there has been a growing discussion in and around baseball about the demise of the traditional rotation. Some are even calling for rule changes that incentivize starters staying in the game longer, like tethering the ability to use the designated hitter to the starter staying on the mound. But after being burned by a rotation that was short on innings and, more importantly, short on quality starts, the Cardinals are singing a very different tune now.
They don’t need incentives.
They have last season’s painful reminder.
It’s resulted in this season’s bet, that a rotation reinforcement heavily prioritizing quality starts and veteran experience providing them will lead to a rebound while bucking a baseball trend.
“What happens when you have shorter starts,†Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak asked at Winter Warm-up. “You tend to put a lot more pressure on your bullpen. There are really two ways to structure a bullpen. You have a very dynamic bullpen that can tolerate high volume or high use — or you create a bullpen that has a ton of flexibility in it, meaning guys with (minor league options), so as you start to tire, you can flip out. What we are trying to do is sort of thread that needle. We would like our starters to go deeper because if we can shorten the game we now feel we have a bullpen that can manage that. Last year we just put so much stress on the bullpen, really from day one, I don’t think we ever really got on track. Maybe the league as a whole is trying to find ways to shorten starters, but in the end you will see a trend where starters try to go deeper.â€
Thirty two active major leaguers have produced 65 quality starts or more since the start of the 2018 season. Four on that list are now in the Cardinals rotation, and three of them were added this offseason: Kyle Gibson (82, 12th); Lance Lynn (77, 17th); Miles Mikolas (74, 23rd) and Sonny Gray (65, 31st).
There are fair and real reasons to wonder if the age and use on some of these arms are going to squander the stated mission. Current times are unkind to starters and Father Time is no friend to aging arms. That’s why it sure would be nice to see someone like Jordan Montgomery, who finished last season with 20 quality starts after the selling Cardinals flipped him to the championship winning Rangers, surprise everyone by showing up to Cardinals spring training. The free agent is still unsigned.
That’s why if there’s not another rotation upgrade coming, and it doesn’t sound like there will be, adding at least one proven impact reliever who is comfortable and productive in high-leverage spots still feels like a must.
No matter what happens, the most important statistic of the season is clear as report day nears.
Get enough quality starts and a rebound is within reach.
“The guys we brought in have pride in doing that,†manager Oli Marmol said. “So that was intentional as well. If they do their jobs we can go to the pen and use them the way they should be used. It should lead to more success.â€
I don’t know if it will work, and I don’t know if all these veteran arms will all hold up, but I’m more interested in watching it than a team that aims to bullpen games to death during a 162-game grind.
Baseball shouldn’t need new rules to incentivize starting pitching if the results for teams that do it well speak for themselves.