St. Louis Cardinals: Evaluating All the Relief Pitchers in This Year’s Camp

The Cardinals need more effectiveness from their bullpen after a down 2016 season.

Considering their lack of depth, the St. Louis Cardinals probably should have expected some struggles from their relief corps. With 2015 All-Star Trevor Rosenthal anchoring the ‘pen heading into the year, though, it would have been difficult to guess just how bad the Cardinals’ bullpen would be for much of the summer.

Before being diagnosed with shoulder and forearm injuries in July, Rosenthal struggled immensely, and he ended the season with career worsts in ERA (4.46), WHIP (1.91), batting average against (.293), walks per nine innings (6.47). While Korean free agent addition Seung-Hwan Oh did an admirable job of stepping up and filling the closer role, Rosenthal’s struggles and subsequent disabled list stint–along with season-ending injuries to Jordan Walden, Seth Maness, and Tyler Lyons–forced the Cardinals to give innings to quite a few relievers who weren’t projected to contribute.

While a few of those pitchers were pleasant surprises (Alex Reyes, Matt Bowman, Miguel Socolovich), just as many were disappointing and weakened the team’s relief corps (Dean Kiekhefer, Jerome Williams, Sam Tuivailala). Instead of hoping to avoid the injury bug entirely in 2017–as seemed to be the plan last year–the Cardinals instead seem to be focusing on assembling greater bullpen depth this year. While the stable of full-time relievers–the guys who appear on this list–isn’t exceptionally deep, the Cardinals have a surplus of Triple-A relievers, such as Luke Weaver, Marco Gonzales, Mike Mayers, and John Gant, who could contribute out of the big-league ‘pen if necessary this season.

Over the next few slides, we’ll take a look at every reliever in the Cardinals’ major-league camp and examine their odds of contributing in the majors this season. We’ll start off with those who are assured of spots entering the season: