Bernie’s Redbird Review: An Aging Cardinals Rotation Isn’t Holding Up In The Summer Heat.

THE REDBIRD REVIEW

Lost in the caterwauling over the destitute St. Louis offense were the cracking sounds of a heavy baseball bat blasting pitches served by a Cards starter. It is an alarming noise that warns us of the severe damage to come. It means that another Redbirds starting pitcher is getting beaten up. It happened again Tuesday night before thousands of eyewitnesses at the ballpark in Cincinnati. This time, the punching bag was newcomer Erick Fedde.

In the first two games of the series, the Reds jumped Sonny Gray and Fedde for 10 earned runs and five homers in only 11 innings. The Cincinnati batsmen who came to the plate against the two St. Louis starters walloped a home run every 9.2 at-bats. Boom goes the dynamite.

The Reds have smoked the Cardinals over two consecutive evenings by a combined score of 10-2. If you include the first defeat in the current three-game losing skid and add the Royals in there, STL has given up 18 runs and plated only five.

This is not an ideal way to begin a big, bold push for a playoff spot. Instead, the Cardinals are drifting in the opposite direction. Instead of making that push for October, they’re getting pushed around. Instead of gaining ground in the standings they are rolling around on the ground under a pile of bad losses.

As I noted in my first column today, since STL’s 33-18 run of good baseball came to an end, the Redbirds have flopped to a 12-18 record since July 10. Their .400 winning percentage over that time ranks 14th among 15 National League teams 27th overall among the 30 franchises. We can parse it out with revealing details. The Cardinals are 10-14 since the All-Star break, 6-8 since the trade deadline, and 4-8 in August.

And a huge factor in the implosion is the deteriorating state of the Cardinals’ starting pitching. When your team is so starved for runs because of its malfunctioning offense, the worst that can happen is a collapse of the starting pitching. And we’re basically watching that happen. As we bellyache over the offense, it’s important to put more attention on the state of the rotation. I’m not sure why this has been largely ignored by local media … but I digress.

Since July 1, the Cardinals have a 5.28 ERA through the first three innings of a game. That has led to early deficits and tough circumstances. Since July 1, the Cardinals are 3-9 when trailing after three innings, 4-7 when trailing after four innings and 4-13 when trailing after five. Good luck making comebacks with this Cardinal offense.

Going into the season, we knew that the Cardinals had four starting pitchers that were at least 34 years old. As a group, Sonny Gray, Miles Mikolas, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn had an average age of 35.5 years. The fifth starter, Steven Matz, was 33. (Per usual, he broke down early with an injury.) The Cardinals had to cover for the Matz absence, but a lack of starting-pitching depth made it hard. There was some scrambling until the Cardinals belatedly inserted a younger starter – the 25-year old Andre Pallante – into the rotation on May 29.

For the most part, the Cardinal starters were pretty solid over the first three months. But the busy schedule tested the pitchers’ endurance. The weather turned warmer and then hotter. For the most part, the top four starters did a pretty good job of providing innings, but the quality of the pitching worsened. The question of having so many starting pitchers in their mid-to-late 30s became more relevant. And that’s what we were wondering about, right? Would these salty veterans hold up?

Here’s a quick look at how the rotation evolved through time.

+ Over the first three months of the season, through the end of June, St. Louis had a 4.18 starting-pitching ERA that ranked a decent 17th overall.

+ During the team’s 33-18 run that began May 12 and went through July 8, the rotation ERA held steady at 4.20.

+ The rotation had a 5.04 ERA in July.

+ The rotation has a 5.56 ERA in August.

+ And the ERA for July-August combined is 5.21, which ranks 26th over that time.

+ Since the end of the team’s hot streak on July 8, the starting pitchers have a 5.02 ERA. And the Cardinals have a 12-18 record.

The solid rotation gave the Cardinals a chance to get through some early–season storms and was a plus when the team began an extensive stretch of winning baseball on Mother’s Day. But this was always a fragile rotation, mostly because of the age factor, and it’s easy to see the pattern here: playing blocks of games with few days off. A more rugged schedule. The rising summer temperatures. The result: ERA inflation. And it shouldn’t be a surprise. This was one of our concerns.

President of baseball operations John Mozeliak and staff pulled off a widely praised trade by acquiring Erick Fedde, age 31, from the White Sox. But Fedde’s arrival did not immediately change the dynamics of a fading rotation.

Here are the individual earned-run averages since July 1:

• Andre Pallante, 3.97 ERA in 8 starts
• Lance Lynn, 4.66 ERA in 8 starts
• Kyle Gibson, 5.06 ERA in 8 starts
• Sonny Gray, 5.30 ERA in 9 starts
• Miles Mikolas, 6.56 ERA in 9 starts
• Erick Fedde, 5.63 ERA in 3 starts.

Is it a coincidence to see the youngest starter (Pallante) have the best ERA over the last 1 and ½ months? Is it surprising to see Pallante yielding an average of just 0.4 homers per nine innings when most of the older starters are being used as launching pads for rocket-shot homers?

If you remove Pallante from the group and focus on the numbers attached to the four older starters, this is what we see:

Gray, Gibson, Mikolas, Lynn and Fedde have been rocked for 93 earned runs in 154 innings for a collective 5.43 ERA since the start of July. And the four starters have also been ripped for 28 homers (combined) and have a group home-run rate of nearly 2 bombs per nine innings.

These guys do worse when losing the home-field protection that Busch Stadium provides. The STL starters haven’t been good at home since July 1, pitching to a 4.83 ERA. But at least Busch gives them some shelter, and they’ve allowed fewer home runs there – only 10 in 87 and ⅔ innings.

On the road it’s a different sound … that loud crack of the bat. The St. Louis starters have a gross July-August road ERA of 5.51. They’ve gotten shelled for 22 homers in 114 innings. They’ve been muscled for a .481 slugging percentage in the enemy venues.

Here are the road ERAs since July 1:

• Pallante, 1.45 ERA in 3 starts, and 1 HR allowed
• Mikolas, 4.45 ERA in 5 starts, and 1 HR
• Gibson, 4.56 ERA in 4 starts, and 3 HRs
• Gray, 6.75 ERA in 4 starts, and 9 HRs.
• Fedde: 7.36 ERA in 2 starts, and 4 HRs
• Lynn, 11.74 ERA in 2 starts, and 3 HRs.

I still laugh at the distinct possibility of the Cardinals removing Pallante from the rotation when Lynn returns (soon) from the IL. That would be such a Cardinal Thing, right? These people are pretty poor at evaluating talent and performance and attaching payroll considerations to their decisions. If the Cardinals pull the one fresh arm out of the rotation to stick with the old dudes – well, perhaps the opposing-team hitters will send a gift basket to the Cardinals as a gesture of thanks.

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

A 2023 inductee into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Bernie has provided informed opinions and perspective on St. Louis sports through his columns, radio shows and podcasts since 1985.

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Stats used in my baseball columns are sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Statcast, StatHead, Baseball Savant, Baseball Prospectus, Brooks Baseball Net, and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise noted.