The Cardinals announced that they’ve designated left-handed reliever Tyler Lyons for assignment. St. Louis also formally announced the previously-reported DFA of right-hander Greg Holland and placed Brett Cecil on the 10-day DL with right foot inflammation. Combined with an out-of-the-blue trade of Sam Tuivailala to the Mariners, the series of moves marks a dramatic shuffling of the St. Louis pitching staff.
In a series of corresponding moves, the Cardinals promoted top prospect Dakota Hudson (as had been previously reported) and recalled lefty Tyler Webb and righties Daniel Poncedeleon and Luke Weaver from Triple-A Memphis.
Just a few short months ago, a DFA of Lyons would’ve been unfathomable. The 30-year-old Lyons steadily elevated his status with the Cards from 2015-17, improving his ERA and strikeout rates each season along the way, culminating with a 2017 campaign that saw him pitch 54 innings of 2.83 ERA ball with 11.3 K/9, 3.3 BB/9, 0.5 HR/9 and a 41.9 percent grounder rate. Lyons’ swinging-strike rate (10.3 percent) and chase rate (27.4 percent) weren’t as impressive as his K/9 mark might’ve led some to believe, but he nonetheless looked like a legitimate left-handed weapon out of the St. Louis ’pen.
This season, though, he’s missed time on the disabled list with back and elbow injuries, pitching to a dismal 8.64 ERA through 16 2/3 innings when healthy enough to take the mound. That said, Lyons’ average fastball velocity has hardly plummeted (90 mph in 2017, 89.2 mph in 2018), and he’s still punched out 19 hitters in those 16 2/3 frames — all while maintaining similar swinging-strike and chase rates.
Today’s decision to designate Lyons for assignment, then, registers as a fairly notable surprise. Given that he’ll finish the season with four-plus years of MLB service time and can thus be controlled through the 2020 season before reaching free agency, it’d be even more stunning if Lyons weren’t ultimately traded to another club — or at the very least claimed off outright waivers. He’s earning just $1.2MM this season and, given his recent success in the Majors, should draw interest from both contending clubs and non-contending teams alike.
I think Cardinals are going to try all rookies for the bullpen they are just trying out stuff now that the seasons over
To be fair, this bullpen actually makes me yearn for Trevor Rosenthal and Seth Maness again.
T-rose is looking for work. I say give him a minors contract and see what hes got left.
Not quite. They still have Norris and Gregerson and a couple guys in their sophomore seasons (Mayers and Brebbia), but you aren’t far off.
Wouldn’t be supposed to see a Norris trade next
Today, Cardinals relievers are leaving faster than Cardinals fair weather fans. Slightly anyway.
I bought stock in Red Sox pink jerseys in May.
No national league team is more talent or celebrated than the cardinals remember that
Outside of the Yankees of the al nothing touches these two
Living in the past is not a good thing.
Which is why the Cards are elevating the kids.
Being proud of that success is. I find it funny when people say “living in the past” 99% of the time it comes from a “fan” of a team that hasn’t accomplished much. Since when did have a successful past become a bad thing? Must have checked your logic at the door.
It isn’t bad to celebrate a historic franchise, but when fans neglect to talk about their franchises current level of success, or lack thereof, and instead refer to past success, it just makes them sound as if they are living in the past solely to avoid their team’s current struggles…
That’s all I can think of..other then that, celebrating a historic and classy franchise like St.Louis, I don’t see anything wrong with it..
Then again, I’m sure you know how forgetful “fans” are these days..It’s all what have you done for me lately, and sports, now, is overwhelmed with bandwagoners and fair-weathered fans…No loyalty these days, it’s a shame..
I’m ready to see as much of the kids for the future as possible… We will be a very good pitching team as long as we play our Cards right, Pun intended, and we get the outfield worked out and bring in a real SS and move DeJong to 3rd which is where he needs to be and let’s hope Mo makes better decisions, we might be trending in the right direction. Go Cards!
Lowtalker1, that is exactly the problem with the Cards and their GM. They still feel they are the best and are in denial that the game has changed and other teams have much smarter owners/GMs than Cards do.
Fair weathered fans? We have only been under 3 million fans a year at Busch once since 98’. On pace for 3.4 this year with this .500 club….yeah sure bud.
I didn’t say ALL of them were, just the ones that are only fans when you win. St. Louis has some great fans, but the fair weather fans of EVERY team give the real fans a bad name. Just ask the Cubs.
Cubs fan my entire life, I hate all the “NEW” ones/ And the jagoffs that don’t shut up about how great the Cubs are
Exactly my point. I have tremendous respect for anyone that was a Cubs fan before 2013. Same with Red Sox fans before 2004. I am a Rockies fan and have been since 1993. We don’t actually have fair weather fans, because the weather is not fair often here.
3.4 m fans who stay home rather than using their paid tickets to attend! I’ve seen all the empty seats. If actual people in the house were counted rather than tix sold, it would not be pretty!
Just fyi, the vast majority of butts in the seats at stadiums are not filled by a team’s actual fans..
There are countless other factors to consider rather than just equating tickets sold to legitimate fans…
No clue what happened to Lyons. I thought he had it all figured out once he got into the lefty role in the bullpen. This was a flat out terrible year for him.
Matheny ruined him. Luckily they’re both gone now
Matheny has ruined Lyons and it’s a shame because he was really putting it together… hopefully he can get rested, well and get his career back on track which is more than I can say about Matheny.
I think hes hurt. Whether it’s the knee or arm I don’t know. But velocity is down, control isn’t there, and hes not missing bats. I don’t know if hes one I would have gave up on unless they know hes more hurt than leading on, but they could have shut him down for the year. With the lack of LH pitching in the system, this surprises me.
Same thing that happened to Siegrist, Maness,, and perhaps Bowman,
Cards RPs dropping faster than my boys and me out of the battle bus in fortnite
If anyone wants to see a compilation of all my wins just pipe up
Nerd!!
Bro tell that to my 29 matches on Tinder. Most of them even gave me the link to their webcam site without me having to ask.
You suck cack with your b hole noob
Another arm ruined by Matheny’s mismanagement of the bullpen.
It’s sad, he was so good last year.
The fish stinks from the head down, Mo needs to go!
Mo isnt going anywhere, and to think so is foolish. And before you pull out Lunhow, FYI Lunhow was never Mo’s boss. Mo was Lunhow’s boss. Yes Lunhow deserves major credit for his work in STL, but Lunhow was never the MAN there, Mo was the guy who got Lunhow;s ideas combined with old school baseball minds.
Mo has missed on a few FA lately, all GM’s go thru this. Theo, Lunhow, Moore have never built championship teams on the fly. They all had owners willing to lose big for multiple years to build championship clubs.
We saw how long it took DeWitt to make a decision on Matheny. To think DeWitt is gonna fire Mo today is dumb.
Well the Cardinals seem to be getting ready to wave the white flag.
How is getting rid of horrible relievers waving the white flag…I admit it really doesn’t matter because the Cardinals aren’t winning anything this year, but it just doesn’t make since that getting rid of bad players is a sign of surrender
*sense
Ok so getting rid of bad relievers excluding Brett Cecil isn’t a sign of surrender. So how do we fix this problem @cards81 ? We already saw the cubs make an addition, the brewers have made an addition, the pirates are probably gearing up for an addition while the cards are subtracting.
Subtracting bad players and replacing them with promising young arms…those young arms are the addition…lol every arm the Cubs and Brewers have made I guarantee that either team would take a cardinals young arm over their addition
They are doing the right thing…the year is lost for sure…hence te tulo trade for a younger promising arm…but imo this subtracting is what was needed to let the young ones have a shot…now release Fowler and Cecil and let more young guys have a shot…make good trades in the off-season and bring in a better lineup..I would love to sign Machado but we all know that isn’t going to happen…but with all the talent they should be able to make some trades…and if they want to dangle c. Martinez out there and try and get a return that would be ok…just have to hope Reyes is the real deal and healthy
Also releasing Fowler is not a sign of surrender considering you have Oneil raking in triple A
They won’t release Fowler. They still owe him 3+ more years on his 5 year deal at $14.5m per year. They’re not just gonna eat that much. I was really surprised that they DFA’d Holland, still owing him almost 5 million.
I wouldn’t think they would but I believe he is auditioning for a release…in other words they are going to let him play now and if he doesn’t turn it around or show promise by the end of the year…who cares release him…he will never be good defensively and if he can’t hit then why not? So you want to run that player out there and lose because you owe him money? Plus you have Oneil ready to go and Bader…not to mention other young outfielders pushing…
The Cards have are starting pitching talented for years to come and with a few good F/A moves and more tinkering with the bullpen we will be back on track… believe it. Go Cards!
I don’t follow the Cards much, so I had no idea how bad they’ve been. I looked it up after seeing these moves, and man, this is atrocious. A snippet from 101sports:
“During the Cardinals’ 3-5 road trip to Chicago and Cincinnati, their relievers labored through 27.1 innings and were savaged for 23 earned runs, a .347 batting average, .944 OPS, 1.32 homers per nine innings and had a pathetically high walk rate (13.2%) and weak 16.8% strikeout rate.
The overall bullpen ERA during the eight-game trip was 7.57. But in the five losses, the St. Louis bullpen had an 11.05 ERA in 14.2 innings and got smashed for a .403 average and 1.101 OPS — and with as many walks (12) as strikeouts (12.).”
That is borderline historically awful. They are on track to finish with the 7th worst ERA of all time for the team, but really entries 2-6 are all within .2 of the current mark, so I would only call the 1954 Cards ‘pen as being significantly worse statistically than this year.
Though to be fair, the ‘pen has also accumulated something like 440 days man lost due to injury. That’s hard to deal with.
Amazed a team allowed results like that to continue this long regardless.
Too much money invested in players who have been clogging up the roster in front of younger, more talented players. Things are finally changing. I don’t know if they’ll do enough before *next* season but these baby steps are finally giving Cardinals fans a tiny bit of hope for 2019 or 2020.
This season has been over for a long time. I’m just glad Dewitt, Mo, and Girsch did something.
Operation blow up in full effect! Holy heck. Can’t imagine they wouldn’t dangle Carlos Martinez now. All the kids are being brought up, new manager, bullpen completely re-shaped.
Could see a team like Oakland come out of nowhere and snag Martinez. Shoot maybe even Arizona if they are willing to part with Duplantier.
Carlos would cost a lot…
Oakland has the farm to get something done.
Luzardo is a starting piece…
C-Mart isn’t going anywhere. The Cardinals still need him in order to contend in 2019 and beyond. Even if they’re surrendering for this season, they’re not about to start a rebuilding phase.
Bring him to Cleveland
Gregerson can’t be far behind, although he is signed to a two year deal, and the Red Birds don’t have any more viable options at AAA. Maybe time to elevate Stubby Clapp. He knows these guys, and has lead Memphis to almost 80 games over .500 the past two years!
Gregerson has actually been pretty decent since coming back from the DL. Most of his bad numbers came at the beginning of the season.
No he has not…what games are you watching?
Cards may be throwing it in, but jettisoning parts of a historically bad bullpen isn’t really evidence of that.
Should’ve been Cecil.
A while back, one of the Cardinals announcers (might have been Ricky Horton) related a story about a manager being fired and the front office staff came into the locker room to inform the players. He said the GM told them that the manager was fired because the team was doing poorly and pretty much it was the fault of the team. Kind of a wake-up call that if things didn’t change soon, then heads could roll. It appears it has started.
I know that Mozeliak is on a lot of Cardinals fans’ hit list, but today proves that at least Mo for one didn’t just can Matheny thinking as the old adage says “you can’t fire the players.”
Mo has made some bad moves of late…I’ll let Fowler go because it was what was sensible at the time…but the bullpen additions have been Horrendous…they actually thought Gregerson was going to be the closer before they signed Holland…
Well, Holland and Gregerson were sensible signings at the time, too. They also expected Leone to be a quality setup guy instead of being hurt for most of the season. Meanwhile, Mo and Girsch nailed it on the Mikolas and Norris signings.
Cecil was definitely given too many years and too many dollars, though.
No way…Holland I actually understand a little but I will never get behind the Gregerson signing…they actually thought he would be a closer? There were plenty of bullpen arms that all was needed was a little more money…should have never signed Gregerson and should have figured out a closer before giving a “why not” contract to Holland
I’d like to preemptively welcome you to the Angels, Mr. Lyons.
Hope your arm survives it
Would’ve held on to Lyons longer than I would gregerson.
Why? Gregerson has actually been decent since returning from the DL, while Lyons has definitely not.
I’d like for my team to claim him. It seems fairly likely that his struggles this year have at least partly came from an injury. He’d be a nice low risk, high reward pickup
which team do you own?
I don’t own a team
If he were injured, he would’ve just been stashed on the DL like Cecil was. Sorry buddy, but the guy’s just plain awful this year.
Good moves. I’d just as soon they eat Cecil’s contract too but hope he rebounds next year. As for Holland, it was worth a shot. In my view there are no bad one year contracts. You are out some money but there is no hangover as there is with Cecil
What’s so surprising about designating Lyons for assignment? He’s been either hurt or absolutely horrible all season long, even against other lefties, and the Cardinals still have hopes of contention.
The only reason for a contending team to claim him is so they can stash him away at AAA for the rest of the season and then see if he can fix himself over the offseason and see if he can make the team out of Spring Training next year.
He was out o options and the cardinals didn’t want to hang on to him…just like Tulo