Cardinals pitching prospect having bounce-back year with Springfield

The Cardinals are seeing one of their former top draft picks have the looks of a bounce-back season early on in 2025.

Brycen Mautz was selected in the 2nd round of the 2022 MLB Draft by St. Louis out of the University of San Diego, where he had a standout final season in their starting rotation. After having a solid season in Low-A in 2023, the left-hander struggled and seemed to take a step back in High-A in 2024.

The struggles in Peoria sparked an offseason of change that were much needed.

"I did have a little bit of a velocity jump over the offseason," Mautz told Redbird Rants. "I am sitting more in the 93-95 range versus sitting in the low 90s last year. That has definitely helped me this year. I added a cutter this offseason to help neutralize righties more and then just continued working on keeping the slider my main pitch and building up the curveball to continue to be a good strike-stealing pitch. I have also had a big jump with the changeup with both the shape and being able to consistently throw it in the zone."

After an offseason of adding velocity and adding and refining existing pitches, the 23-year-old knew the upcoming Spring Training would be one of his biggest yet in his professional career.

"I have now had a few Spring Trainings under my belt, so I knew what was coming," Mautz said. "We had some changes to our farm system in terms of front office staff and new coordinators. There was a few new things to learn, but I am really happy with the people that were brought in and the new philosophies that we have going in the organization now. The biggest thing was to push myself this spring and do things I wasn't necessarily comfortable with. In the past, it was all about just trying to perform the best I could in spring. This one, I put myself in some uncomfortable scenarios where in early counts, I was only going to throw changeups and really force myself to do things that I know are going to help me down the line. In the past, I would have shied away from that just because I wanted to dominate in that moment."

Last season, Peoria had an all-lefty starting pitching rotation at one point during the season. While some might see that as a disadvantage since lineups could stack a righty-heavy lineup, the young southpaws used it to their advantage of picking each other's brains.

"I had a really cool opportunity last year in High-A when we had Cooper Hjerpe, Pete Hansen, Quinn Mathews, and myself all in the same rotation," Mautz noted. "Opposing teams were seeing five lefties a week, which is not too fun for them. We had a good time with it, and having that many lefties in a row approach the same lineups was good to bounce information off each other. It was good to hear how the other guys were handling certain situation against similar lineups I was going to face next."

Mautz ended his 2024 year with a trip to the Arizona Fall League, where he was able to face plenty of opponents at the Double-A level. After six official starts for Springfield this year, including a week where he won a Pitcher of the Week award, the California native has learned a few of the biggest differences between the levels.

"I got a little taste of what Double-A hitters were like in the Arizona Fall League coming into this year. That gave me an idea of where I needed to improve. The hitters are better every level you move up. Your margin for error just shrinks and shrinks. So, just learning where I need to make sure I'm in the right places and not giving them the opportunities that maybe I could have got away with at lower levels."

To watch the full interview with Brycen, check out my interview on "To the Show Baseball Podcast" YouTube channel below!