St. Louis Cardinals: Lefty bullpen options away from home

The St. Louis Cardinals are in desperate need of a quality left-handed bullpen arm. Who could they pursue out of house?

For the third season in a row, the St. Louis Cardinals will not be participating in October baseball (tears are coming down my face as I am writing this by the way.). There were many things to blame for the September collapse: rookie arms giving out, offense going extinct, bullpen going back to their pre-August ways.

Something that really killed us though was not having a reliable lefty arm in the bullpen.

At the beginning of the season, the Cardinals were able to patch up the lefty bullpen woes with Austin Gomber, but after Brett Cecil made his return to the bullpen, Gomber was sent back down to the Triple-A rotation. He came back up in late July, but was in the starting rotation instead of the bullpen.

For a big chunk of the season, Brett Cecil and Tyler Lyons were our only lefty arms coming out of the bullpen, and both were putrid throughout the season.

In the Majors, Tyler Lyons had a 8.64 ERA on the season before the St. Louis Cardinals designated him for assignment in late July. He was sent to Memphis and was in the rotation, but he struggled there as well.

On the Brett Cecil side of things, he was absolutely horrendous. He finishes the season with a 6.89 ERA and a 1.98 ERA. Though he did miss a little bit of time dealing with injuries, he was still abysmal in the bullpen when he was with St. Louis, and has been since the second he put the pen to the paper to sign with St. Louis.

John Mozeilak tried to get a couple of arms to fix the lefty bullpen woes during the season, claiming Tyler Webb after the San Diego Padres designated him for assignment. Then, trading for Chasen Shreve from the New York Yankees, but it seems obvious that the Yankees won the trade. We traded Luke Voit, who has finally found his power stroke in New York. Both of these additions have been mediocre for us.

During Webb’s tenure with St. Louis, he had a 3.91 ERA. He was solid at first, the completely broke down at the end of September, when the St. Louis Cardinals needed him the most.

Shreve, on the other hand, had a 3.14 ERA with the Cardinals, but also had a 5.13 FIP, which is horrendous. Shreve is a solid one-out guy when there’s a lefty up and we are in trouble, but other than that, I don’t believe he could be THE lefty out of the bullpen for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Well, we both know that you’re not here to see me rant about how bad the lefties out of the bullpen have been this year. Which you have probably heard constantly around the baseball world. You’re here to see how we can fix this issue, and let’s see how we can.

Last time on “Extreme Makeover: St. Louis Cardinals edition,” we discussed lefty bullpen arms within the St. Louis Cardinals organization that we could use next season. Now, were going to talk about lefty’s outside of the organization. Ones that we can lure to St. Louis through free agency or even utilize the trade market to find a fix.