St. Louis Cardinals: Miles Mikolas suffers setback in spring training

Not even a week into the start of the St. Louis Cardinals spring training, the first injury bug has bit Miles Mikolas. What do we know so far?

This week has been so so so very nice. Getting videos every day of our favorite St. Louis Cardinals players hitting and smiling and laughing in the idyllic Florida weather has gotten everyone who has a pulse excited for baseball.

Unfortunately, the start of each season comes with the risk of injury and there is very rarely a year that goes by without each team losing at least one player (usually a pitcher) to injury by the end of spring.

For the Cardinals last year, it was Carlos Martinez and Brett Cecil who went down. This year, Miles Mikolas may end up being the first player down.

This report seems like nothing right now and hopefully, it is, but less than a week into the start of workouts is not a good time to have a setback.

Miles Mikolas had a down year last year after the success he had in his first year back stateside but the Cardinals are really counting on him in 2020.

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The reason that the rotation was so good for the Cardinals in 2019 was that nobody got hurt for an extended time. Michael Wacha was in and out a couple of times, but he was also the 4th/5th starter. Jack Flaherty, Miles Mikolas, Dakota Hudson, and Adam Wainwright all stayed healthy and shouldered the load of anyone else’s inconsistencies.

In 2020, Kwang-Hyun Kim is the backup option but given the fact that there is still over a month before the start of the regular season, there’s a lot of time for more injuries to occur.

We’ve seen small soreness like this develop into full shoulder impingement before but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s how this will end for Mikolas. Mikolas has not missed significant time before with the Cardinals but this is certainly something to watch.

Unfortunately, that’s all there is to know for now, the Cardinals have no reason to push the 31-year-old as even if he misses the first few Grapefruit League games, Mikolas will still be fine to start the regular season healthy. Until we know more though, it’s scary to see this setback so early.