Cardinals Show Off Young Power Arms

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

There will be plenty of people talking about the breakdown of how the Cardinals stayed alive in game 4 in the best of 5 in the NLDS.  They now get to go home to St. Louis and in game 5 turn the ball over to the ace of the staff Adam Wainwright.   Win or lose game 5, the Cardinals are coming out of this series as a winner in the long run.

With the season on the line today manager Mike Matheny sent out three pitchers to get a 2-1 win combining to give up only one hit.  All three are rookies, they all three throw fastballs in the 95-100 mph range and they are 22, 22 and 23 years of age.  Michael Wacha, one of the 22 year olds started the game and went 7 and 1/3 innings of no hit ball.  Oh yea that is following up his 8 1/3 no hit ball on his last start.  Another great nugget of information on Wacha is that he was the 19th pick in the 2012 draft.  That was supposed to be the California Angels pick, but when they signed Albert Pujols as a free agent, that pick became the Cardinals as compensation.  Not only did the Cardinals not owe Pujols $252 million for 10 years, they got Wacha.

Then the Cardinals went to  Carlos Martinez in the 8th after the no hitter was broke up by a Pedro Alvarez solo home run and then a walk.  Martinez was signed as a free agent back in 2010 out of the Dominican Republic.  The interesting part of his story is he was signed the year before by the Boston Red Sox as a free agent for only $160,000, but that deal was voided when there was an identity issue with Carlos.  So a year later the Cardinals signed him for $1.5 million.

Then the Cardinals turned the 9th inning over to their new closer, Trevor Rosenthal, 23 years old.  Trevor was selected in the 21st round of the 2009 draft and had only pitched 4 2/3 innings for his community college and was primarily a shortstop.  The Cardinals started teaching him to pitch in the minors in 2009 and by 2011 he was a star and rising quickly in the minor leagues.

In the upcoming off season we will have plenty of time to talk about ALL the amazing young arms the Cardinals have.  But today just imagine what this experience and success will do for these three young guns in the years to come.  The future is very bright and going to be a lot of fun for Cardinals and their fans.