St. Louis Cardinals: Five things we’ve learned so far this spring

3. Mike Leake has a chance to be pretty darn good

This is going to be a pre-mature love piece for Mike Leake, considering he’s only thrown six innings in a Cardinal uniform, in spring training games that “don’t matter.”

But I can’t help but to be at least a little bit excited about what Leake has done so far. In his two starts, he’s recorded eight strikeouts without surrendering a single walk.

It’s taken Leake just 38 pitches to record 18 outs thus far this spring. That’s just over two pitches per out, or just over six per inning. And, he’s got that low pitch count despite having to work around three hits.

Leake looks really, really sharp so far this spring. I think that he is going to benefit in a huge way from working with Yadi this year, as most guys do.

Leake reminds me a lot of Adam Wainwright thus far in the sense that he doesn’t have overpowering stuff, he just knows how to pitch.

It will be interesting to see how he responds when guys start to hit him a little bit. It’s going to happen. The key will be how he rebounds from start to start.

I could see Leake winning 15 games very easily this year. 200+ innings should be in his arsenal. If he does both of those things, he’ll give the rest of the Cardinal pitching staff a big time boost.

Next: In-house options should be enough at shortstop