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Wa have what we have currently.I don’t think it’s changing with Dobbins as a long man and Fitts out until next season. These are our internal options. Matthews and Doyle appear to be in next years plan somehow next season.
External impact starter via trade isn’t happening. The consensus is even if we are above .500 at the deadline that they will be looking to replace Noot, May and Romero with young talent. You may get a near ready starter for one of them but I doubt you get 3 near ready plug and play starters to replace what we have. 2 would be a miracle.
If, going forward, the org has to develop its own starters, then it will end up with a rotation consisting of guys who can stay on the mound. That is an inescapable fact. It follows that in developing starters, the durable is the subset of pitchers who matter. Their ‘stuff’ is what the development staff has to work with whether it is exciting stuff or not. The development effort has to consist of turning them into functional starters.
Under the Mo regime, I think the development effort amounted to starting with the subset who lit up a spreadsheet of measurables and then trying to figure out how to keep them on the mound long enough to matter, curating workload this way or that. That has been a complete failure. I think it comes down to the effects of arm trouble accumulates and pitchers are unlikely to become more resilient in the future than they have been in the past.
I have for a long time had an interest in the subject of pitching injuries and have studied the matter as best a layman with a day job can. A consensus is developing around the idea that if a youth throws too hard, too much while the bone growth plates are still active, it causes subtle changes in the way bones in the arm grow, in particular, the bones forming the shoulder joint area which are under particular stress. Further, these changes in the way the bone develops cause there to be more and different stress placed on the structures making up the shoulder and associated with it. Advances in imaging and in biometric measurement, are making it possible to measure and quantify this effect. That is potentially important because it is measurables that matter in baseball. Since it can now be quantified, it will become a factor.
I have previously posted links to articles on this subject. Here is a quote from one such article that sums it up pretty well:
“Back in 2008, I published a research study that looked at the range of motion of professional baseball pitchers and noted that their throwing shoulders had 137 degrees of external rotation. When we measure players now, it’s not uncommon to have 140-155 degrees of external rotation.
We know that external rotation in the throwing shoulder is due to boney adaptations from throwing while the growth plates are open. Youth baseball players are throwing so much, that the volume of throwing is likely leading to more boney changes, and more layback.
So that lat will need to produce tension to eccentrically control the arm into layback and switch to concentric acceleration from a more biomechanically disadvantageous position. The lat is needing to produce more force at further amounts of end range of motion.”
https:
//elitebaseballperformance.com/lat-injuries-in-baseball-pitchers/One could probably look at most any year and team and say they could use more starting pitching. I think we are doing it right by working to develop good pitching.
Yeah, there is no going back to pitchers working on stamina as opposed to working on velocity. And that will result in more injuries due to the stress put on the shoulder and elbow. Baseball management figures the reward is worth the risk. Misioroski (not sure on that spelling) pitched out here last night and put on a show. He is the prototype of the future MLB hurler.
Misiorowski was drafted out of a Missouri JUCO. We took Hjerpe and Mautz ahead of him, and the Brewers paid way over slot for him as the 63rd pick $2.3M vs $1.1M to break his commitment to finish his college career at La. State. It sounds like MLB orgs were aware of him, not like an unheard of find or anything.
Just doing a bit of reading it doesn’t seem like he had the intense baseball prep coming up like top prospect kids do. High end camps, travel teams, Cape Cod, whatever. But I didn’t do much digging. The cancelled 2020 year came right when he finished up high school, and it sounds like that helped direct him into JUCO.
Its unusual for a power pitcher like him to reach MLB and not have had any arm trouble so far. Good luck to him even though he is a Brewer.
You remember in the old days when your TV went out you would call the repairman to come and replace the tubes or whatever was needed to keep it going. I know that my grandparents had the same TV for at least 30 years if not longer. Nowadays when your tv goes out there is a good chance you just toss it and go get another one at Best Buy. They have become disposable items.
That is is how pitchers are viewed now. Have them all throw 100mph knowing full well they are going to blow up and need to be replaced. Of course to do that you better have a large stockpile. In 2024 the Dodgers used 40 different pitchers. In 2025 they used 33. The Brewers used 32 pitchers in 2024 and 36 in 2025. The Cardinals don’t have that kind of depth yet but I am sure that is why just about every trade Bloom has done there was pitching coming back in return. I don’t like the fact that baseball has evolved that way but it is what it is.
Seems like year after year, there’s very little good starting pitching to go out and get at the trade deadlines or in the off-season, so that’s probably not going to change. Even the mediocre pitchers on losing teams who would have been readily available in years gone by, are now busy filling in for the injured stars.
At the point we’re at, major league experienced decent pitchers who are sound and might be available are usually beyond sensible contract reach, so sounds like we better keep trying to draft well and develop from within. I wish it could be improved in a quicker way, but I don’t see it.I am not ready to write off Libby yet. Would like to see him be more consistently effective, but I am willing to keep running him out there in regular rotation.
If we get to September and have a legitimate shot at post season and Libby is still struggling, then I would need to seriouly think about starting him of other options are available. But for now I keep him working.
I think we have to be liking our starting pitching. I’d like to grade them. I am grading on expectations versus results.
Liberatore C-/D+
Leahy C+/C
Pallante C
May B, maybe B+
Dobbins B- or Incomplete
McGreevy A-Overall grade B-
Would be nice if the Blue Jays fell out of the wild card next few weeks and they could go get Gausman….that would help the rotation and the bullpen as they could drop one of Leahy or Liberatore to the pen.
May is good as gone. They have dobbins in AAA. Noot might be as well.They won’t get much for JOJO. Keep him!
If we are in it at the deadline i don’t think they will ‘go get’ anyone. They might sacrifice whatever a May rental would fetch and keep him for the run. He will be able to get more $ and years than the Cards will go, so he won’tbe back. All that good to my thinking.
Agreed with Bling here. The options are sell, hold, or buy. They aren’t going to buy this year, except maybe some minor piece that doesn’t fit in the long term plans, like Prieto or Pozo, would land. The question is if they sell or hold, and I’d think if they are still at or near the front of the wild card race they will hold. They could trade Noot in the offseason. He’ll probably have more value then as there will be a longer track record of his playing healthy. May is the other main guy who could bring some interesting prospects, but that would really give their chances this year a hit.
I think they are going to sell regardless of the standings. Our chances in August and September are going to be up the Memphis Mafia.
Indeed we do need starting pitching. The question is whether Marhews is part of the equation this year or not. Beyond May and Mcreevy it’s not good enough.
We need starting pitching for the future. With the way things have been lately, I think the Cards FO is going to commit to selling and May, Romero, and Stanek will be gone. Maybe they could resign May in FA as I do like him but at least for this year the rotation should start becoming about building experience for young guys.
I think whether Mathews is performing well or not by the time May is traded, I call him up and pitch him every 5th day the rest of the year. It can’t hurt and gets him experience and tests him.
Yeah Dobbins is low upside though and maybe a back of the rotation guy. If we aren’t trying to make the playoffs, I am fishing for upside for the future and at least putting Mathews to the test. If he fails, it is okay to me as Mathews is 25 years old and is at the point it is put up or shut up.
ATM said:
If he fails, it is okay to me as Mathews is 25 years old and is at the point it is put up or shut up.
That seems impatient to me. He hasn’t even needed to be added to the 40-man yet, so he wouldn’t exhaust his options until the end of the 2028 season at the very earliest. Time is on his side.
It feels like Mathews’ special 2024 season led us all to expect him to make that last step faster than his body is allowing him.
As a recent reminder, McGreevy was in the Memphis rotation for almost three entire seasons, making 66 Triple-A starts before he received his chance with St. Louis. And once he did, he showed he was ready. I like it better that way compared to him getting knocked around because he was up too soon.
Theoretically, Mathews should be promoted when he pushes up rather than being sucked up due to a talent vacuum above. It is hard to argue organizational need during a season where system development is the priority. It would make more sense to bounce around a low ceiling guy like Dobbins than disrupt the development of a high ceiling guy.
I don’t know if Mathews has a control problem in general or if he is forcing the use of secondaries that he does not have command of. Either way, it would be a bigger problem in MLB than in AAA. They seem to be holding him to 80+ pitches for whatever reason. Bottom line, he needs to get through 6 IP, or at least through the lineup twice.
That seems impatient to me. He hasn’t even needed to be added to the 40-man yet, so he wouldn’t exhaust his options until the end of the 2028 season at the very earliest. Time is on his side.
Maybe. But the 40 man timeline is the same for college juniors and seniors like Mathews. Mathews is in his 3rd calendar year at Memphis albeit just 1 month there in 24 and a half injured year last year. The Cardinals to me are snail pace on challenging pitchers and promoting them. I say that and Doyle to AA to start the year was the exception and I wouldn’t have done that one.
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