Minutes after the Greg Holland signing became official, the Cardinals placed left-hander Brett Cecil on the 10-day disabled list with a left shoulder strain, and recalled left-hander Ryan Sherriff from Triple-A in a corresponding move. The club also transferred right-hander Alex Reyes from the 10-day DL to the 60-day DL in order to make room for Holland.
The news of Cecil’s injury comes as something of a surprise, and is upsetting news to a Cardinals club that’s currently without Luke Gregerson and will need to wait for Holland to work his way back into game shape. The lefty’s 2017 performance was middling, as he pitched to a 3.88 ERA and 3.65 xFIP with just 8.82 K/9 after exceeding 11 K/9 in each of his previous three seasons. Hope for a another strikeout-heavy campaign isn’t off to a good start with news of a shoulder injury about which we don’t yet know the severity.
The 31-year-old Cecil has been a reliable setup man since his first full season as a starter-turned-reliever in 2013. In the past five seasons with the Blue Jays and Cardinals, the southpaw owns a 3.14 ERA with 327 strikeouts in 272 2/3 innings to go with 12 saves and 66 holds. Cecil also sports an impressive 48.2% ground ball rate during that time.
For Reyes, being transferred to the 60-day DL means the Redbirds’ top prospect won’t be eligible to pitch for the team until at least May 28th. It’s a quick change of heart for a team that only recently said that the fireballer, who underwent Tommy John surgery last year, wouldn’t be moved to the 60-day DL. The club doesn’t have much rotation depth beyond Carlos Martinez, Michael Wacha, Luke Weaver, Miles Mikolas and Jack Flaherty, particularly following an offseason trade of Sandy Alcantara to the Marlins as part of a package for Marcell Ozuna.
Sherriff, 27, has just 13 major league appearances to his name, all coming in the latter half of 2017. The lefty showed well in a small sample, striking out 15 hitters while allowing just five earned runs. For his MiLB career, Sherriff has proved something of a ground ball phenom, topping 56% in three of his past four seasons. He’s spent his entire career in the Cardinals organization after being selected in the 28th round of the 2011 draft.
Cecil is a bust….he sucks.
No he was unspectacularly average. Overpriced, but to say he sucks is grossly ignorant and provides nothing to this forum.
Bravo! Nice reply!
Reyes wasn’t throwing until, at the earliest, May 1 anyway. He can still start a rehab around that time and come off the DL after having some AAA time, which is what they had planned on anyway.
Its a temporary fix though as they will still need a 40 man spot.
What do they mean, Cards don’t have much pitching depth?? We are loaded with depth
Like who?
Hicks, Hudson, Helsley, Gomber, Gant are all at least serviceable.
I’m thinking we have different definitions of “serviceable”, considering Gant has 9 MLB starts and a 4.81 ERA, and the others have a combined one day of major league service time and fewer than 40 combined innings above Double-A.
Better than Gallardo or Lohse who are signing deals or what a lot of teams can call upon in their minors.
That’s true. But pointing out the poor depth for non-contending teams doesn’t magically make the contending Cardinals’ terrible SP depth good.
I hope they prove me wrong but I see a 2nd wild card contender at best, and not many contenders have the options to call upon the Cardinals do.
The Cardinals have no starting pitching depth? Lol. I guess all of the young starting pitch depth that was touted all winter isn’t real. Next we are going to hear that St. Louis doesn’t have enough outfielders…
Let’s play a game… name a Cards starter not currently in the rotation who has more than an inning of MLB experience.
Or show me a link saying who was touting their depth?
How long is waino on the shelf for?
How much can they rely on a lot of the youngsters to eat innings though? I think Hudson is the ext rotation option and hes not on the 40-man and they are struggling now as to who to remove. To me Voit is tradeabe and expendable.
It’s just not depth that the national prognosticators have handy ML projections for. So basically, they don’t exist.
Looks like the Sheriff is back in town! Man that’d be a sweet last name to have haha
Hope he winds up on the Yankees this season. They could have Sherriff, Judge, Drury, and maybe even Justus gets the call this season. Too bad Jon Jay retired, if he was on the team, the Yankees would look more like the Justice Department than a baseball team.
I thought Jay was with royals
I think he is…. 1 yr 2 mil deal if i remember
Good grief, this season sure hasn’t started very well for the Cards, so many injuries
The Cards signing Brett Cecil for four years continues to make little sense.
Alex who?
Gant as the next SP in line (SP7), but after that i’d prefer emergency starts by norris (SP8), with brebbia filling his pen role.