St. Louis Cardinals: Trevor Rosenthal Records His First Save of the Season
The St. Louis Cardinals got a blast from the past Wednesday when reliever Trevor Rosenthal recorded the 2-1 save against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The St. Louis Cardinals turned to Trevor Rosenthal and not Seung-hwan Oh yesterday to get the save in a 2-1 ball game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Powered by the two home runs Dexter Fowler produced, the Cardinals were on the hunt for a three game sweep of the Bucs and Rosenthal secured that in the 9th inning.
Seung-hwan Oh was unavailable to pitch Wednesday after he had pitched in two straight games prior to Wednesday’s. Rosenthal was called upon in th 9th and recorded his first save since June 21st of 2016 against the Chicago Cubs.
Rosenthal got a quick first out but then allowed a single to John Jaso. He then responded by striking out Jordy Mercer and Jose Osuna. During his outing, Rosenthal threw five pitches of 100 mph or higher. He even touched 101.1 mph which is now his fastest mark of the 2017 season.
“I was able to be able to help out in that situation,” said Rosenthal. “I’m feeling healthy, feeling strong right now. I just continue to work on being effective, trying to work ahead in counts. Velocity, there’s not much to build on. I’m happy with that.”
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Through four games and 3 and 1/3 innings, Rosenthal has recorded seven strikeouts. He entered the season on the disabled list with a lat strain after tweaking it during spring training. Rosenthal’s role was ultimately up in the air because the St. Louis Cardinals didn’t know if he was going to be as effective as he once was.
Rosenthal had a very poor 2016 campaign that was plagued by injury. He lost his closer role to Oh and never seemed to recover. This season, however, he has looked like his old self and may I remind you, Rosenthal was a 40+ save reliever twice in his young career.
“It’s huge,” Matheny said. “Being able to not have to maybe push Oh on days we have in the past when Trevor’s throwing like he is …”
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Entering the 2017 season, the St. Louis Cardinals bullpen was looked as a huge strength considering it contained Rosenthal, Oh, Brett Cecil, and Kevin Siegrist. However, Oh and Cecil have both had slow starts to the season while Rosenthal, Siegrist, and Matthew Bowman have been the reliable ones. But, the Cardinals are in a good position of having depth and seeing Rosenthal perform well on the mound is a good sign for things to come.