St. Louis Cardinals: Appreciating Pitching Coach Derek Lilliquist

Since taking charge of the Cardinals Pitching Staff in 2012, Derek Lilliquist led units have a combined 3.39 ERA, tied for second-best in the MLB over that time span

Since the start of the 2012 season, the St. Louis Cardinals have eleven more wins than any other organization in baseball. At 375-273 over the past four seasons, I would say that the Matheny/Lilliquist duo is holding up just fine in their efforts to replace the legendary La Russa/Duncan tandem. Pitching has been at the center of it all in St. Louis, and Derek Lilliquist is the man that is making it all happen.

After spending seven years as a left-handed pitcher, Lilliquist retired from professional baseball. He first broke in with the Cardinals organization in 2002, when he served as the Pitching Coach for the rookie club at Johnson City.

Lilliquist spent the next four seasons at Class A Palm Beach before becoming the Cardinals Pitching Coordinator from 2008-2010. He spent most of that time helping injured pitchers rehab in Jupiter, FL.

On November 2, 2010 the Cardinals named Lilliquist their Bullpen Coach. He briefly served as the Interim Pitching Coach during the 2011 World Series run when Dave Duncan took a leave of absence to care for his wife. On January 6, 2012, Lilliquist took the Pitching Coach position permanently with St. Louis.

2012 was probably the most average year for Lilliquist’s staff in St. Louis. He did coach an 18-game winner in Lance Lynn and a 16-game winner in Kyle Lohse that season, and the Cardinals were in the top ten in most team-related pitching categories, but they didn’t really stand out in any department.

In 2013, Lilliquist’s staff had the fifth-best ERA in baseball en route to a 97-win season. Adam Wainwright won 19 games in 2013 while posting a 2.94 ERA on his way to a second place finish in the Cy Young voting. Lance Lynn won 15 games that year while Shelby Miller won 15 himself in his rookie campaign. Edward Mujica saved 37 games in 2013 before losing effectiveness and giving up the closing job to Trevor Rosenthal.

2014 saw Lilliquist’s staff post its highest ERA in his tenure at 3.50. That was still good for 10th place in all of baseball. His staff’s effort was particularly impressive considering the fact that they had neither Michael Wacha or Jaime Garcia for the majority of that season. He still saw Wainwright finish with 20 wins and a minuscule 2.38 ERA. Lance Lynn won 15 games for the second year in a row.

Rosenthal went on to save 45 games in his first full season as the Cardinal closer in 2014, and youngsters Carlos Martinez and Marco Gonzales had major impacts in the postseason.

And finally, the magic that was Lilliquist’s 2015 staff. After losing their leader to the freakiest of freak injuries when Wainwright went down in April, things looked bleak. In response, his staff went on to post a Major League best 2.94 ERA, the lowest total posted by the franchise since it had the same 2.94 team ERA in 1969.

In addition to that ridiculous figure, Lilliquist’s staff went on to allow 70 fewer total runs than the second-best team in baseball in 2015. They kept the ball in the yard, allowing the second fewest total of long balls in the Majors with 123. The bullpen led baseball with 62 saves, 48 of which came from Rosenthal. In all, six Cardinal arms posted a sub-3.00 ERA, with a minimum of 30 innings pitched.

The Starting Rotation rallied when they lost Wainwright. They were the catalyst of the beast that carried a shaky offense all season long. The combined Earned Run Average of the five Cardinal starters (Lackey, Martinez, Wacha, Lynn, Garcia) totaled 2.92. Lilliquist got 106 Quality Starts from that unit in 2016… without Wainwright. That’s incredible.

Most importantly, that pitching staff bailed out an extremely mediocre offensive unit. Heck, they took that offense and threw them on their back. And they didn’t just do it for a month or two, they did it the entire way. Unfortunately, they just didn’t have anything left in the tank in October.

Lilliquist figures to face a unique challenge in 2016. Losing the likes of Lance Lynn to injury and John Lackey to free agency certainly isn’t good news for his staff. There are real concerns about lightening the workloads assigned to Martinez and Wacha amid durability concerns, and you can never know for sure what will happen with Jaime Garcia.

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The good news, though, is that Cardinal starters may not have to go past the 6th inning in 2016 with the bullpen that John Mozeliak has assembled. If Seung-Hwan Oh lives up to expectations and guys like Jonathan Broxton and Kevin Siegrist perform like they have in the past, we could be looking at an absolute lock down bullpen covering the middle innings before they hand it over to Rosenthal.

A wild card for Lilliquist’s staff will be the health of Yadier Molina, and how well Brayan Pena is able to fill in when it comes to calling games and handling the staff. Any help from the offense would surely be appreciated as well.

While it would be downright silly to expect the pitching excellence of 2015 to carry over into the new season, at least at that insane level, Lilliquist’s track record certainly speaks for itself. I expect his proven guys to take care of business as usual. I’m looking for a breakout performance from Mike Leake, who has to be ecstatic to no longer have to pitch half his games at Great American Ballpark for a bad Cincinnati team.

Next: Adam Wainwright looks forward to 2016

What does it all add up to in 2016? Good question. All I know is that with Derek Lilliquist working with Cardinal pitchers, they are going to go out and give the club a chance to win pretty much every single night.