St. Louis Cardinals: Looking At The Future Of Matt Bowman

St. Louis Cardinals relief pitcher Matt Bowman emerged as a reliable arm out of the bullpen during last season. The upcoming 2017 season will be the follow up to his successful rookie season.

Matthew Bowman, who is with the St. Louis Cardinals now, was originally drafted by the New York Mets in round 13 of the Amateur Draft in 2012. He made it to Triple-A with the Mets going 7-16 with a 5.53 in 2015. Despite that down season, the Cardinals selected the then 25-year old in the Rule 5 draft last year. This meant that Bowman was required to be on the Cardinals MLB roster for the whole season.

In the 2016 season, Bowman broke out as a successful bullpen pitcher. He took on a similar role to what Cardinal fans were accustomed to seeing Seth Maness be used for. Both proved to be guys that can come in and produce ground balls. With more years of control and his successful season, Bowman looked like the stronger option for this role going forward. This resulted with the St. Louis Cardinals deciding not to tender the contract of Maness.

Last season Bowman ended with a 3.46 ERA in 67.2 innings while striking out 52. But those numbers don’t show the true value added by the righty. When a ball was hit off of him, 61.7 percent of the time they were ground balls which is exactly the type of production the Cardinals wanted.

The success of Bowman creating ground balls comes from smart use of his four pitches. His main ground ball pitch is his two-seam fastball. This pitch will come in at around 91 MPH and will move away from a left-handed hitter and into a right-handed hitter. He also features a slider that will has an average velocity of 86.6 MPH that moves more than the two-seamer with the opposite action.

He uses his four-seam fastball to set up these pitches while also creating outs with his change-up. However, the change-up was only thrown 14.5% of the time. The knock on Bowman is his relatively low velocity. His fastball doesn’t have the velocity of relievers like Trevor Rosenthal or starters like Carlos Martinez and the current game has a standard of a mid-90s fastball out of the pen.

Forbes contributor Marc Edelman recently wrote an article recently that uses Cubs pitcher and Harvard graduate Kyle Hendricks as an example of what smarts on the mound can do. He cites Bowman as another Ivy League graduate (Princeton) who can use their brain power to out-do what their physical tools may allow.