Temperature Check

[jagtrader]

One more Dustin May level starter and aiming a little higher than Stanek could’ve made a huge difference.

[phins]

Was looking at some of the relief stats on BB ref. To jag's point:

Among all teams using pitchers on zero days rest, we're tied for second with 3 other teams at 26 times each.

JoJo has been used 5 times on zero days, and Graceffo, O'Brien, and Stanek have all gone 4 times with no rest.




Went over to fangraphs to look at them individually because they separate relief appearances out a bit more neatly. Still a little tricky to fairly parse out because you have guys in long relief at the top, and we haven't had many of those situations. Lots of guys with 7,8 and 9 games and about 4 innings per appearance. Cards' relievers are more like 15-18 games, and 1 inning each.

Accounting for a lot of ties, Graceffo and Svanson are tied at 14th for most innings pitched. And then there's 3 Cardinals close behind. JoJo, O'Brien, Bruihl.

Doesn't seem like too big a deal yet. I assume we'll see some more guys going up and down soon. And they've been able to spread usage out pretty evenly



Also - as bad as they've been, we're dead last in losses in relief. At the bottom with 3 while the Astros have the most with 11.

The luck in close games will undoubtedly turn. The hope is other changes on the positive side help mask that regression. And as you mentioned, the hope is reinforcements come that fare better than some of the current guys.

Many of us are probably quite pleased with a .500 season, which obviously means playing well under .500 from here on.

[CardsofSTL]

[Radbird]

Not a surprise but this is….not good.

[Popeye_Card]

I am actually surprised that 9th inning ERA’s are generally poor across the league, other than San Diego. Given that you can make the best matchup with your best pitcher(s) - I would have thought a 2.00-ish ERA would be the norm.

[haltz]

I am actually surprised that 9th inning ERA’s are generally poor across the league, other than San Diego. Given that you can make the best matchup with your best pitcher(s) - I would have thought a 2.00-ish ERA would be the norm.

Flipside is that a lot of ninth innings are garbage time, take Svanson out of the equation and the Cardinals 9th inning ERA drops by 2 full runs.

[phins]

I am actually surprised that 9th inning ERA’s are generally poor across the league, other than San Diego. Given that you can make the best matchup with your best pitcher(s) - I would have thought a 2.00-ish ERA would be the norm.

Flipside is that a lot of ninth innings are garbage time, take Svanson out of the equation and the Cardinals 9th inning ERA drops by 2 full runs.

Good call out.

Save situations in 9th inning still have an ERA of ~5.69 in 2026, which I found to be pretty high as well.

143 ER in 1,009 batters faced, or 226.33 IP.

Driver appears to be a LOB% of only 58.5%. Probably because the value of a run goes up in those situations and teams play for one run more often, but you'd think that might be offset some by the opponent also knowing the value of a run and playing defense to prevent that. Maybe there is an opportunity to study more if the trying to prevent the one run actually leads to the runner scoring at a slightly higher percentage? That's merely brainstorming there.

[st.lewis11]

The next 12 games are all against teams within our division. 4 upcoming series of 3 games each, vs. Pirates/Reds/Brewers/Cubs, in that order. A huge stretch for this team.

[jagtrader]

I hope the ride lasts all season. The pitching has been better lately. But the team is very young and the bottom third of the roster is dreadful. Feels like it’s unsustainable to me. We’ll see.

[ghostrunner]

Don't want to put too much stock in it, because it's both hard to know for sure and hard to believe it improved so fast, but I wonder if our coaching/training staff is now just really good. Just adding things up like Herrera's improvement at catcher, Walker's all around improvement, our pitching staff being lemons made into lemonade for a pretty long stretch now, lots of improvement in the minor leagues - Baez, Blaze Jordan, Crooks. Then there's other stuff like us leading the league in extra bases taken and all the other little things we're seeing day to day.

Another related thing, and a LOT of this is luck, but our overall roster health is really good. Three years running we're at or very near the bottom of the league in total injuries. Not sure about total days, but over the last three years we're last at 42 and the Dodgers are tops at 90. The Astros this year have had 21 injuries, and we've got 22 last year and this year combined. To be fair three years goes back to 2024, so not sure if recent hires have necessarily had a major impact.

Obviously this was Bloom's whole job the previous two years and I know we brought a bunch of people in from elsewhere. This is what i know of the bigger roles:

Joe Douglas (Pirates) - director of pro acquisition
Jacob Buffa (Astros) - director of int'l scouting
Rob Cerfolio (Guardians) - assistant GM
Larry Day (Guardians) - director of player development
Matt Pierpoint (Mariners) - minor league pitching
Carl Kohan (Dodgers) - director of performance (seems like this is strength and conditioning)

Beyond that I know there's been a lot of lower level hires who those guys have brought in.

It's not like it's all good. There's been dropoffs or non-movement for a lot of quys, but some of that is up to the player and some of it is just their ceiling.

Time might level some of this stuff a bit, but something I've been thinking about.