Innings are the name of the game

And taking advantage of all those golden gloves

Baseball is officially back as the Cardinals began spring training games with a 4-2 victory against the Astros at Roger Dean Stadium on Friday afternoon, and then followed it up with a 6-4 victory against the Mets in Port St. Lucie. But even as games have resumed, the lockout has left us with teams still being assembled.

As I saw it in October, the Cardinals entered this offseason with two goals: First, find a starting pitcher and second, find a solution at shortstop. The front office led off the winter by bringing in LHP Steven Matz before the lockout began, but there has been no action at shortstop. Instead, the Cardinals have made a series of small deals looking to assemble some pitching depth. The bottom line in the Cardinals’ strategy is clear: They need innings.

Last season was a disaster for the Cardinals pitching-wise, and their depth was tested in ways that I don’t think anyone saw coming. It led the team to hunting for pitching and the acquisitions of Luis Garcia, Wade LeBlanc, TJ McFarland, Jon Lester, JA Happ, and Justin Miller set a template for what the organization should look for: ground ball pitchers who don’t walk a lot of batters.

Why?

Last season the Cardinals pitching staff threw 1,417 innings. And 556 of those innings were thrown by pitchers who are no longer on the roster, including the pitchers who were second and third on the team in innings pitched. That presents a problem. Mix in Alex Reyes (72.1 innings) and Jack Flaherty (78.1 innings) missing Opening Day, and the Cardinals will be without six of their top-10 in innings pitched from 2021 on their 2022 Opening Day roster. Not to mention the pitchers who started 99 of 162 games last season.

It’s tremendous turnover for a pitching staff that 21st in Wins Above Replacement last season. But with young arms on the way, the organization is looking more for innings.

The Cardinals struck first out of the lockout by giving RHP Drew VerHagen a 2-year, $5.5 million deal. VerHagen, 31, has spent the last two seasons playing in Japan for the Nippon-Ham Fighters. He had a 3.49 ERA over 208.2 innings the last two seasons in Japan, establishing himself out of their rotation. He last pitched in the Majors for the Tigers in 2019. But in his MLB career, he had a ground ball rate of 53.9% and an 8.8% walk rate. He improved that with 7.2% walk rate in Japan.

The Cardinals have had success bringing pitchers over from Asia. Seung-hwan Oh, Miles Mikolas, and Kwang-hyun Kim most recently—who also just re-signed back in Korea for an KBO record guarantee of $12.3 million. They also signed another former MLB pitcher RHP Aaron Brooks, who sported a miniscule 4.4% walk rate the last two seasons in Korea, out of the KBO to a minor league deal back in January as well. Specifically, both Mikolas and Kim have similar profiles to VerHagen when it comes to being ground ball pitchers who don’t walk a lot of batters.

He’ll come to camp as a starter and flex back into the bullpen if he’s not needed there.

Then a couple days later, the Cardinals announced a 1 year, $1.2 million contract with RHP Nick Wittgren. Wittgren, 30, was effectively non-tendered by the Indians at the end of 2021 after being projected to make $2.8 million in his final season of arbitration. His 5.05 ERA in 2021 was a step back from his previous seasons, though much of that damage was done in just a couple of rough appearances. He sports a very similar profile to Matz but got eaten up by the long ball.

Last Tuesday, the Cardinals announced a minor league deal with RHP Zach McAllister. McAllister, 34, last pitched in the Major Leagues in 2018 with a 4.97 ERA over 41 appearances for the Indians before being released and having a struggle filled eight-day stint with the Rangers. He has scuffled around the minors since. But from 2015-2017, McAllister was a key piece in the Indians bullpen, posting a 2.99 ERA over 164 appearances. Again, while his numbers aren’t as great, when his ground ball rates were high, he was most effective in Cleveland, and he doesn’t walk a lot of batters (7.8% career).

There is a common thread among all those pitchers: they are ground ball throwers with generally low walk rates. The front office has had their eyes on pitchers who fit that profile for a key reason: this team’s position player group is built around run prevention. Learn those two words and learn to love them, because that has been this team’s hallmark the last few seasons and is possibly one of the best run prevention teams the league has ever seen, as it became the first to win five Gold Glove Awards in a single season.

But the front office is building this team’s pitching depth around guys who will depend on the defense that they’ve built. They will also need more arms than they have in the past because under the new collective bargaining agreement, players can only go be sent back to the minor leagues five times during the season. Previously a player could ride the Memphis shuttle back and forth as many times as the Cardinals wanted him to. In 2018, John Brebbia had been sent back to Memphis five times before the All Star Game, and was sent to Memphis twice more in the second half.

In my opinion, this also answers a question as to why the organization hasn’t moved aggressively on a shortstop. There just isn’t really a player that brings the defensive ability of a Paul DeJong and Edmundo Sosa pairing that is a clear upgrade offensively that the team is interested in paying. Paul DeJong, despite his offensive struggles, is still a top-5 defensive shortstop in baseball, and he and Sosa teamed up to lead the Cardinals to the best shortstop defense in the National League.

Carlos Correa, was the only option out there who would have represented a clear improvement for the Cardinals on both sides of the ball. And he happened to have been the primary shortstop for one of the two American League clubs who were better than the Cardinals defensively at shortstop last season.

It’s not pretty, but this is what we can expect from the Cardinals in 2022. With some veteran arms to add security out of camp, they’ll likely look to the young players like Jake Woodford and Johan Oviedo to fill roles and you’ve also got former first round prospects like Zack Thompson and Matthew Liberatore looking for opportunities to break in as well.

They still do have some money if they wanted to add an arm to the bullpen, but with Ryan Tepera and Kenley Jansen coming off the board this weekend, I don’t see anyone out there that feels like an obvious addition any longer. Which, depending on how long Reyes is missing for, may be a mistake that comes back to bite them.