St. Louis Cardinals: Is Tony Watson an option for relief help?

The St. Louis Cardinals have been linked over and over to different lefty relief options to fortify that side of the pen. Is a reliever out West and option?

Over and over and over it has been said this July that the biggest position the St. Louis Cardinals need to address is a lefty out of the bullpen. We have written here on Redbird Rants about Will Smith plenty as well as other options, but recently, MLB.com put out a Trade Deadline feeder that listed 20 players they believe will get moved.

This list included a lot of big names and small, but the one player that was listed as the best fit for the Cardinals was a name that I feel like has been overlooked. The author of the piece, Mike Petriello, said the best fit for the Cardinals was the other San Francisco Giants reliever, Tony Watson.

Watson was a longtime member of the Cardinals current opponent, the Pittsburgh Pirates before he was moved out West in the middle of the 2017 season. Since then, he has been serving primarily as the Giants set up man for either Mark Melancon or now Will Smith and has been very successful in that role.

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While his best two years were back in 2014 and 2015 when he had ERA’s of 1.63 and 1.91, Watson has actually gotten better the last two years after a brief dip in production. In his two years with the Giants, he has a combined 2.69 ERA over 116 appearances which has been good for a 148 ERA+.

Watson has never been a huge strikeout guy but his last two years, he’s sat at a comfortable 8.7 K/9 and really does a great job of limiting walks and baserunners evidenced by his 1.056 WHIP over that time.

While Watson does have a bit of a 3/4 arm slot and does a great job of hiding the ball, his career splits against lefties vs righties is just about even as he’s held righties to a .224 average and lefties to a .227. Looking at OPS he is clearly at least a little better against lefties as he has held them to a .590 OPS vs .653 for righties.

This is the most recent video (that I can legally use) to show off Watson’s repertoire, and even though it is from 2017, you can see he has a fastball with a lot of life that now sits right at about 93 MPH, a 92 MPH slider, and an 84 MPH changeup.

Watson may not be the pitcher everyone is clamoring for out of San Francisco, but for a player who, even at the age of 34, is only making $3.5M this year and has a $2.5M player option for 2020, he would be a hell of an upgrade over Tyler Webb in the ‘pen.

Given that Watson is not the closer in San Francisco, has been slightly less productive, and is not generating quite the same hype as Will Smith, I believe that Watson would be slightly cheaper than him and would absolutely be the guy that I’d pick for the Cardinals to get. He would be a great compliment to Andrew Miller and for all the gripe that’s out there with Miller being underutilized, Watson has appeared in even fewer games so he should be fresh. Get it done Mo.