St. Louis Cardinals: Evaluating All the Relief Pitchers in This Year’s Camp
18 relief pitchers will attend major-league spring training with the St. Louis Cardinals. Which ones have the best chance to crack the opening 25-man roster?
St. Louis Cardinals pitchers and catchers will begin official spring training workouts this week, and we’re rapidly approaching the beginning of spring training games, with Opening Day 2016 not too far off in the distance. As is always the case with major-league teams, there will be enough players around to fill roughly three full teams as spring training gets underway. The Cardinals can carry only 25 players on their major-league roster as they head north, though, so which of the 18 relief pitchers in camp figure to make the cut as the team begins the regular season?
While conventional wisdom dictates that the Cardinals would keep seven relief pitchers on their opening day roster, the landscape across the National League has changed over the past couple years, with most teams now opting to keep eight relievers and a four-man bench, rather than going with seven and five, respectively. Though it may have been partly due to the position player injury crisis that occurred in the Cardinals organization during 2015, the team spent most of the season carrying eight bullpen arms, so guys like Mitch Harris and Miguel Socolovich who previously would have had virtually no chance at the opening day roster now seem to have a better shot.
On the following slides, we’ll rank all 18 relievers attending major-league camp on a three-grade scale, determining whether they’re “safe and sound” (virtually assured to be on the opening day roster unless they get injured), “on the bubble” (meaning that they’ve got a shot, but will have to compete for a job during spring training), or “not likely” (meaning that it would take an absolutely unbelievable spring training performance for the player to have even a minuscule chance of cracking the opening day roster).
We’ll lead off with those who appear to be safe heading into camp:
Next: Safe and Sound