St. Louis Cardinals Player Projections: Miles Mikolas

Miles Mikolas was more or less the best pitcher on the St. Louis Cardinals last year. After the ‘Lizard King’ came out of nowhere last year, can he continue in 2019?

Who could’ve guessed the year that Miles Mikolas would have. After more or less failing in the major leagues after coming up with the Padres and the Rangers between 2012 and 2014, the St. Louis Cardinals signed him as a lottery ticket last offseason and definitely hit the jackpot. From zero to hero, Mikolas quickly cemented himself as a pillar of stability in the rotation.

Mikolas finished the year last year throwing a hair over 200 innings over 32 starts sporting a 2.83 ERA with a 137 ERA+ and leading the league with a miniscule 1.3 BB/9. That last stat was the biggest surprise for Mikolas who earned his first career All-Star nod. After not truly being known as a control guy his first round in the majors, Mikolas couldn’t seem to throw a ball last year.

With that big flip, a regression to the mean could be very likely for Mikolas, at least in terms of walks. As far as other indicators of regression, his BABIP of .279 doesn’t necessarily mean he will regress, but the difference between his 2.83 ERA and 3.28 FIP could signal his ERA may jump up just a little bit. If Mikolas puts up an ERA of 3.30 in 2019, the Cardinals will be just fine.

Let’s take a look at what ZiPS is thinking about Mikolas’ 2019:

So unfortunately ZiPS doesn’t think that Mikolas will be able to replicate his 2018 performance and really projects him to take a large slide backwards. In these projections, his ERA jumps up almost an entire run, his ERA+ drops by 20 and he doesn’t make as many starts. Not a great projection.

Now, so far in this article series I have not said that any one player will under perform his ZiPS projections. I am very obviously a homer here and once again I really can’t say that I think Mikolas will be this bad in 2019.

I do not think that he will be as good as he was last year, but there’s no reason he should be about 2 WAR worse in 2019 than last year.

My Prediction: 30 GS, 195 IP, 3.35 ERA, 128 ERA+, 4.0 WAR.

Hopefully Mikolas doesn’t pitch at the level that ZiPS projects. Mikolas will be slotted in at the 1 or 2 spot in the St. Louis Cardinals starting rotation and they need him to be a pillar of stability like he was last year.