A Different Path to an Expected Location

Some men just want to watch the world burn and they are all in the Cardinals bullpen

I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire
The ring of fire

—Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire”

I’m not a huge music person, but after yet another meltdown by the Cardinals’ relievers, it’s not surprising that fire-based imagery comes to mind. Miles Mikolas gave the club six scoreless innings today and left the game with a 1-0 lead. We could quibble with the fact that the potent Cardinal offense had yet again not shown up but when Mikolas gives you a quality start, you need to preserve it.

Yet three batters after Mikolas left, the lead was gone. The next inning, the volatile combination of JoJo Romero and Ryan Fernandez made sure that the club posted yet another loss.

Brian Walton sent out this depressing fact after today’s game. The Cardinals have four guys (Ryan Helsley, Kyle Leahy, Phil Maton, Steven Matz) in the bullpen with an ERA of 3.10 or less. The rest of them: Fernandez, John King, Romero, and Chris Roycroft (the only one that has been sent to Memphis) have an ERA over 6.42. Of course, there’s also Matt Svanson who technically would be in the first group but only has an inning under his belt. We’ll come back to that.

So there are currently four guys that you can send into a game with a lead if you actually want to win the game. Helsley isn’t going to be used unless there are specific conditions. Oli Marmol reiterated this week that “you don’t bring your closer into a tie game on the road” days before the Phillies did exactly that. (To be fair, it didn’t wind up working for the Phillies either.) Which is why Helsley went five days without pitching then wound up throwing in a 10-4 rout. You would think that we could see a few more outings of more than three outs for the closer, but we have yet to see that this season.

Maton has been a remarkable late-spring find and save his outing on Monday, where he blew the lead (with some help from Romero), he’s been solid. I may have seen some reference to not using Maton today since he threw two days ago, but if so that surprises me. In fairness, he did go Sunday and Monday, so maybe it’s not as surprising.

Then again, there’s been no such consideration given to Kyle Leahy. Leahy pitched Friday, got two days off, then appeared in all three games in the series. Leahy and Maton are tied with 13 games played this year, but Leahy has four more innings. Leahy gave up home runs against Houston and the Mets, but that seems to be less about wearing down and more the general issues that come from relievers. That being said, if Leahy continues down the Matt Bowman path, there’s no telling how it winds up.

As for Matz, he has been pretty remarkable both as a starter and a reliever. The Cards don’t tend to use him in short bursts, though. He has one game that he pitched one inning and one that he got four outs. Otherwise, it’s been at least two (plus his start). So his usage has been pretty restricted as well.

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That’s the good side of things. Except for the possible overuse of Leahy, there’s no particular reason to think that these players won’t be solid the rest of the way. However, there’s the other part of the bullpen, the part that has us reciting this over and over again.

The general nature of major league bullpens is that if they are good one year, they probably aren’t going to be good the next unless there’s some significant changes. A reliever might be good for a few years but even that is a pretty short shelf life. Giovanny Gallegos had one of the better careers for a reliever and even that was just basically four good seasons, one of which was 2020.

Running back basically the exact same bullpen was to court death. Ryan Fernandez was a remarkably great story last year. It’s understandable why the Cards thought that they had something there. JoJo Romero was pretty rough down the stretch (5.74 ERA after August 1) and there probably should have been some thought about what happens if that wasn’t a fluke. John King has been solid but not exciting since he came over from Texas and he was always a disposable part of the bullpen.

These guys are rough right now, much like Chris Roycroft was before he was sent to Memphis. Since his demotion, he’s still figuring it out, but he’s only thrown three innings for the Redbirds. Yet, according to the manager, there’s nothing the club can do but keep running these guys out there.

After today’s game, Oli Marmol was quoted as saying, "This is who we got and we got to get them back on track. ... We have to get these guys better, and the only way is for them to pitch." Now, to some extent that is true. Bullpen work and side sessions are only going to do so much. Maybe they help regain some feel on a pitch but you aren’t going to know how it is succeeding without pitching in games.

But that doesn’t mean they have to be MLB games. Fernandez has three options remaining. King has one. Romero, true, is out of them and poses an issue. Still, you could find some times to put him into games if you had some different options for the late innings. Fernandez had a stretch where he seemed to have figured it out, but now he has swung back the other way. He’s only had four scoreless outings out of 10—why couldn’t he spend some time figuring things out on Beale Street?

I can appreciate the logic behind Marmol’s position. He’s making the case that he should treat his pitchers the same as his hitters. However, it’s not really the same thing. A hitter gets four chances a night to make something happen, a reliever only gets one. The best bullpens are ones that have fresh arms continually being added. They also impact a game more than a hitter of a similar quality.

There’s also the case that there’s not just a ton at Memphis to bring up. Riley O’Brien is looking sharp (14 K in 7 innings) but I also recognize that we expected him to a savior last year and it didn’t go so well. Still, it would make sense for him to get a call. We saw Gordon Graceffo struggle in his brief stop in the majors and Memphis hasn’t gone any better. Ryan Loutos has been fine, if not outstanding, but the club seems to go out of its way not to use him if last year is any indication. Except for Andre Granillo (who would need to be added to the 40-man), it’s fairly slim pickings in Memphis.

If someone did get called up, though, would the club be willing to use them? Matt Svanson was off to a good start in Memphis and had a great run in Springfield last year. The club went ahead and called him up, but he was promoted on April 16 and has appeared in just one game in that time period. Why wasn’t he used in some of the situations in Atlanta? Sure, he might not have the late game experience in the majors but he couldn’t be much worse that what we’ve been seeing.

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We wondered going into this what a development season would look like. Would it mean that players were pressed into major league service and left there to figure it out or would it mean longer stretches in the minors because there wasn’t a real need to try to win in the bigs? It’s still not certain. If it was the former, you’d think that they’d be putting Svanson in a lot of different situations, seeing what he could do with it even if it didn’t work out. If it was the latter, would Svanson be here at all?

What we did expect was struggles. In fact, I don’t think anyone would have been surprised if, during the winter, you had said that the Cardinals would be 10-15 at this point in the season. However, I think that people would have expected the starting rotation to be the real issue or perhaps even the offense sputtering. It is true that the rotation’s ERA is 25th in baseball, but it’s also a respectable 3.89. The rotation actually has a winning record at 8-7. (This starter/reliever phenomenon must be happening around the league. Cardinal relievers have a 5.11 ERA….and they rank 24th in MLB.)

The offense has slowed from the red hot start that it had but still ranks second in average, fifth in OBP, and sixth in slugging. (That last is pretty surprising, given the fact that they are 20th in home runs.) Losing Ivan Herrera hurt but Pedro Pages has done a strong job of filling in the gap. Victor Scott II has made remarkable strides. Brendan Donovan has found another level. We’re still waiting on results from Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman, but for the most part hitting isn’t the real issue. There are nights when it gets shut down and there is a tendency to rally from big deficits only to fall short, but if there were a more reliable bullpen, a bullpen that didn’t have eight losses, this team might be a real surprise. As it is, it seems like the opening series sweep of the Twins was just a mirage, in part because Minnesota doesn’t seem to be the team we thought they might be. They currently have nine wins—four of which have come against the White Sox.

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There doesn’t seem to be a real desire to make significant changes on the team and I guess that’s not surprising given the focus of the year. However, continuing to run out Romero and Fernandez in high leverage situations is a good way for the local torches and pitchforks store to stay in business. I understand Marmol doesn’t have a lot of options but continuing to make the same decision time and time again with very little change in the outcome is a frustrating thing to watch.

Let us see what Granillo has. Bring up O’Brien to give a jolt to the ‘pen. Take the pressure off of Fernandez and let him figure a few things out at Memphis. If things keep going like they are going now, it’s going to feel like a season that could have been so much more that a waste of time.

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The second season of Andor has started up with the first three episodes dropping a couple of days ago. I think the conceit of this season—three episodes that showcase an event in a year, then a time jump to the next group—should be fun, leaving plenty of things that can be filled in by books or whatever should there be a need but moving the story along to the opening moments of Rogue One. The first three episodes were pretty solid but I will say, especially in the third one, jumping from story line to story line was a little much for me. I’m sure there were stylistic reasons for it but I think I might have liked a little less interweaving. I’m looking forward to the rest of the episodes, though.

I also recently watched The Residence on Netflix. It was a wonderful murder mystery set in the White House with an eccentric consulting detective. The language could have been toned down a bit (well, a lot) but overall I enjoyed it and I hope they find a way to make a sequel. I also wonder why someone hasn’t tried to write books with some of these TV/movie detectives like Cordelia Cupp (the detective here) or Benoit Blanc (Knives Out). While it would probably lose a little bit in written form, they’d still be fun.

I hope that you all had a wonderful and blessed Easter. It was a nice one around here with the entire family under one roof. Won’t be many more of those, I don’t expect. Also, Easter meant a conclusion of our Lenten Star Wars devotionals. All of them can be found over here.

Still running through guests on Musial—Nate of Talking About Birds joined me last week, Kyle Reis will this Friday—and David and I are humming along on Gateway, though we weren’t able to record this past weekend.

I hope with tax season down I can write a bit more often here, but it’s also less than a month until my daughter graduates, so it seems like almost every night has something going on. I’ll try to drop posts though!