Cardinals need these 4 players to step up during Ivan Herrera's injury absence

The starting pitching staff

A week ago after the first stretch of games, I wrote that the starting pitchers did their job to keep the team in games thanks to the offensive outbursts up and down the lineup. Oh how the tables turned...

Since that writing, the Cardinals' starting staff is last in the majors in ERA and, outside of Matthew Liberatore's and Sonny Gray's most recent starts in Pittsburgh, the pitchers have been unable to work deep into games because of constant hard contact and inability to strike hitters out. Gray, the de facto number one in the underwhelming rotation, continues to struggle with keeping the ball in the ballpark and allowed another home run on Tuesday but was solid overall in his five innings of work to tally the win. Erick Fedde was unable to build off a quality start in his season opener and was lit up in Boston. The same goes for Miles Mikolas, who will continue to be a piece of the rotation despite numerous calls from fans for him to be immediately removed completely from the roster even with his high-cost contract.

While Herrera's shortcomings on the defensive side relate to his throwing ability, there has not been much feedback regarding his ability to receive or call a game, but his limited sample size on Baseball Savant shows that he had been at least average in framing and blocking before the injury. If Pages truly is a better game-caller, then the pitching staff could see a bump in performance, but, of course, placing blame or giving props to the catchers is a slippery slope. Either way, though, Herrera's absence from the lineup gives the pitchers even less breathing room if the rest of the offense cannot pick up the slack.

Even with the current performance of the rotation, it does not look like there are any reinforcements for the starters coming in the near future. It is believed that the team will be moving to a six-man rotation next week with Steven Matz slotting in to that newly created spot, but that leaves the bullpen a man down, which could be damaging with the way the pitchers have been allowing runs. Gordon Graceffo was the 27th man in the doubleheader in Boston but was torched for seven runs and also failed to give the bullpen a breather. Michael McGreevy appears the closest to Major League-ready, but his call-up to the bigs will only be if he is receiving consistent innings out of the rotation.

No matter who has the ball to start the game, the team needs a massive bump in performance, and that was the case even before the Herrera injury. Another issue is that Herrera contributed for 17 of the 66 (26%) runs the team has scored before he hit the shelf, and the entire team is going to be missing that production. In order to remain competitive, both the offense and defense have some work to do if the St. Louis Cardinals want to make noise in the NL Central.