There’s a reason professional baseball teams keep between 12 and 15 pitchers on their rosters. They don’t need that many until arms and shoulders and legs start to break down.  A pitcher who hasn’t fallen to one of these injuries is a rare specimen indeed. That’s why the Cardinals need to start the season with six or seven reliable starting pitchers.

Every member of the Cardinal starting corps was down with an injury for a week or more last year: Adam Wainwright, Jack Flaherty, Steven Matz, Dakota Hudson,  Miles Mikolas, Andre Pallante,  and Jordan Montgomery (when he pitched for the Yankees).   Flaherty, Matz, and Wainwright can still be considered recovering from those injuries.  Flaherty and Wainwright are predicted to be the top of the rotation, but their status is questionable. Matz has yet to prove he can be reliable for a month’s worth of pitching.

That’s why I concur with Ben Fredericksen, who, in today’s Post-Dispatch, made the case for the Cardinals to trade for a top-of-the-rotation starting pitcher. Of the seven starting pitchers mentioned above, I consider two reliable for 75% of the 2023 season: Mikolas and Montgomery.  The rest should be taking out insurance policies on their arms.

If all seven of these pitchers reliably pitched for 75% of the season, the Cardinals would be set. That is theory that management appears to be working from.  It would be great if Jack Flaherty and Steven Matz rebounded to pitch to their potential, but the experience of 2022 gave no evidence for their resurgence.  It would be great if Adam Wainwright finished with the kind of flourish we saw from Albert Pujols, but experience suggests he might finish like Yadier Molina.  This is a vulnerable corps of pitchers.

Pitchers are often compared to quarterbacks in football, since they throw for living and employ strategic wisdom. But a quarterback is nothing without an offensive line, and these are the most vulnerable positions on a football team. The cry in every game when an offensive tackle or guard goes down is “Next man up” and a 300-lb hulk rises from the bench to replace another 300-lb hulk. No one is surprised if that hulk goes down in that game or the next, and the cry goes out again “Next man up.”

The punishment these giants take by slamming themselves into defensive linemen play after play can hardly be compared with repeated force of throwing a 100 mph fastball, but repetitive trauma on the body makes these football and baseball torsos and limbs the most vulnerable in professional sports.  The coaches and players have learned the litany of “next man up.”

Because of this replacement litany, an endless supply of pitchers and offensive linemen is necessary to legitimately field a contender. No one believes the early starters are going to carry their team from season’s beginning to season’s end. It’s not biologically tenable. The depth of the bench (or bullpen) will determine who emerges in the playoffs and the ultimate games.

And come the baseball playoffs, you are depending on whoever are the current starters to get from one round to the next.  You probably need three strong arms to keep you in contention in a five-game series in baseball. Who will be the last three standing of the “next man up’s”? That is a question to be answered now, even if you make some brilliant moves at the trade deadline, as the Cardinals did for Jordan Montgomery and Jose Quintana in 2022. Despite their shrewdness they could not launch themselves past the Phillies.

So Ben Fredericksen’s plea for a reliable starting pitcher is wise and reasonable. He mentioned the Florida Marlins pitcher Pablo Lopez as one frontline starter. The Cardinals have plenty of young talent they could exchange. Indeed they have an embarrassment of riches. Not reliable starters, but good prospects, both offensive and defensive.

While optimism is good practice in Spring Training, the vulnerability of pitchers should always balance the equation. Maybe there is a great rookie pitcher who will rise to the occasion, but that hasn’t happened since 2018, when Jack Flaherty rose to fame.  In last half of 2019, he was the best pitcher in baseball. Since then, not so much. The man has heart, mind and often a good arm. Like all pitchers, however, he has vulnerability.