St. Louis Cardinals: Cardinals bullpen stretched too thin

The St. Louis Cardinals pitching staff has caught the injury bug of late. This has caused our bullpen to eat up a few more innings than they bargained to pitch.

It is hard to be optimistic with the St. Louis Cardinals after a 2-3 week so far. Especially with a struggling bullpen that gave up one lead to the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday and almost another on Friday night against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Trust me, I even have to remind myself not to panic.

It can be easy as fans to ride the roller coaster so-to-speak when it comes to games in the short term. Being the long-term projector that I am, I am telling you we will be just fine. Clearly, losing Trevor Rosenthal will have its impact on the bullpen, and I think we can already see that. However, I argue not to take it out of proportion.

The first reminder I wish for us all to recall is that for a better part of the season Trevor Rosenthal was part of the bad-news-bears bullpen the St. Louis Cardinals put together for the season. It has only been recently that he started to find some success.

I should also mention, that it was not just him who started to figure it out either, but rather a collection of arms.

Trevor Rosenthal started his epic comeback of the rough season on the fourth of July. Prior to his injury game against the Boston Red Sox he had only given up one run in the fifteen appearances since.

Obviously he has played a major role for the St. Louis Cardinals being ranked 6th in ERA since the All-Star break, but he is not the sole reason. The only huge problem we are seeing now with him out is that there are more innings to fill for the others and our bullpen looks tired.

Rest is not easy to come by when our starting pitchers have only totaled 25 1/3 innings pitched the past five games. This has left our bullpen to cover the remaining 17 2/3 innings.

Matt Bowman is a great example. In twenty-two appearances since July 3rd, he has only given up five earned runs. Three coming just this week, one in the Boston bullpen meltdown game on Tuesday and the other on Friday struggling against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

I give the benefit of the doubt to him in the Friday game. I mean come on, he surely could not have expected to pitch in a close game after being up 11-3. It was apparent he was either mentally or physically worn out. His control was not where it has been, but walking people is a sign of being tired.

Another great example has been the quality stretch run by Tyler Lyons. A surprising post all-star success story. Tyler Lyons has gone fourteen appearances since the All-Star break and has given up a goose egg. Yes, zero runs. Not pitching in Friday night’s game was probably due to the fact that we need to have arms for the rest of the series this weekend.

Seung-hwan Oh has continued to have his ups and downs, but has at least been somewhat reliable when in need. In his first game post-break he gave up three runs. He then went on a decent scoreless streak in ten straight appearances.

He has given up runs this week, but when needed, he has come through. In the Boston bullpen meltdown he threw a scoreless inning. Even better, he closed out a bases-loaded, one-run lead on Friday night. He struck-out the only batter he faced. Not saying he has been great, but somewhat clutch in big games.

Seung-hwan Oh is another primary example of being stretched thin on the back end of games. This was his third straight game to pitch in with no rest. The day before he threw 28 pitches and before that he threw 10 pitches. Now after pitching another nine pitches on Friday night, I do not expect him to be available on Saturday.