This season proves to be 'real step forward' for Cards' pitching

ST. LOUIS -- Though this is a second straight season missing the playoffs for the Cardinals, manager Oliver Marmol points to one crucial sign of progress in 2024.

“When we talk about development, I feel like our pitching has taken a real step forward, in real time, at the highest level,” Marmol said before Saturday night’s 6-5 win over the Guardians.

Admittedly, the Cardinals had plenty of room to grow after last year’s pitching performance was among the worst in franchise history. That was the primary reason the Cardinals finished in last place in the National League Central, something the club hadn’t done in 33 years.

The Cardinals had a 4.79 ERA last season, the 24th-best mark in the Major Leagues. Their xFIP, a measure of pitching performance that removes fielding from the equation, was 4.54, ranking 23rd, and their K/9 ratio was 7.66, second-worst in MLB.

With an emphasis on improving the staff’s ability to get swings and misses throughout Spring Training and the season, the Cardinals saw appreciable gains this year. The club ranks 16th with a 4.07 ERA, eighth with an xFIP of 3.94 and has seen its K/9 rate jump to 8.16, good for 26th. The last uptick might sound modest, but it is notable considering the lack of traditional strikeout pitchers on the roster.

“In my seat, taking a step back and removing the wins and losses and just looking at progress organizationally, that is a high point,” Marmol said.

Hours after Marmol’s comments, Miles Mikolas pitched six strong innings, giving the Cardinals their fourth consecutive quality start. Despite a 9-11 record and 5.35 ERA, Mikolas leads the Cardinals with 15 quality starts. Closer Ryan Helsley secured his 46th save, leaving him two shy of the franchise’s single-season record, by striking out the side in the ninth inning.

A lack of pop -- a lineup that ranks 21st in slugging and 23rd in home runs -- has the Cardinals just above .500 at 78-77. Should they finish with a losing record, they would have had back-to-back sub-.500 seasons for the first time since the late 1950s. Saturday offered a hint of relief on the offensive side as well, as young hitters Jordan Walker and Iván Herrera both homered.

Not all of the pitching gains can be attributed to the acquisition of three veteran starting pitchers over the offseason, though the additions certainly helped. While one of them, Sonny Gray, has traditionally been an above-average strikeout pitcher, none of the three -- Gray, Kyle Gibson or Lance Lynn -- has a career strikeout rate of as high as 25 percent. This season, there are 17 qualified Major League pitchers with a strikeout rate better than 25 percent.

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Gibson, who throws a sinker as his primary offering, is a groundball pitcher with a career K rate of 18.9 percent and Lance Lynn falls somewhere between the two.

Gray, in fact, saw his K rate increase significantly since joining the Cardinals, from 24.3 percent last season in Minnesota to 30.3 percent this year. This season’s K rate for Gray was his best since 2020 and the second best of his career.

Much of the Cardinals’ approach, executed by pitching coach Dusty Blake, has been finding a pitcher’s best swing-and-miss pitch, syncing it with the rest of his repertoire and then encouraging the pitcher to alter his pitch usages to feature that pitch more often.

The shining example is Helsley, who has thrown his slider 48 percent of the time this season, more frequently than his fastball (45 percent) even though his fastball averages an electric 99.6 mph. This season is the first of Helsley’s career in which he has featured his breaking ball more often than his fastball.

Helsley’s slider ranks in the 99th percentile for run value, per Statcast. Helsley was an All-Star and leads the National League in saves, with a chance to eclipse the Cardinals’ single-season saves record of 48, set by Trevor Rosenthal in 2015.

“If you look at when the Yankees had 14 closers in their ‘pen, they had the highest velocity and the least amount of fastballs,” Marmol said. “When you have to be ready for 100 [mph] and you never get it, when you do get it, it makes it pretty difficult to hit.”

Presuming the Cardinals don’t elect to ditch their pitching program in favor of new coaches and philosophies this offseason, this group thinks it can extend some of the gains they’ve seen to the Minor Leagues, perhaps helping fuel the pitching renaissance in St. Louis at the same time.

“It’s sustainable and a process I feel like we can replicate moving forward beyond this level,” Marmol said.