The Cardinals announced Friday that right-hander Miles Mikolas has been reinstated from the 60-day injured list and will start tonight’s game. St. Louis placed right-hander Ryan Helsley on the 10-day injured list with a stress reaction in his right elbow, opening a spot on the active roster. Meanwhile, lefty Brandon Waddell has been placed on the Covid-19 injured list, tweets Zachary Silver of MLB.com, which opens a spot on the 40-man roster.
Tonight’s start is not only just Mikolas’ second appearance of the season — it’s second appearance overall dating back to the 2019 season. The right-hander parlayed an excellent three-year stint in Japan into a two-year, $15.5MM deal with the Cardinals, and he showed well enough in his return to MLB that the Cards signed him to a four-year, $68MM extension that spanned the 2020-23 seasons. Forearm surgery wiped out Mikolas’ entire 2020 season, however, and he’s spent the bulk of the current season on the injured list with continued forearm troubles.
Since returning to the Major Leagues in 2018, Mikolas has pitched quite well, logging a collective 3.45 earned run average with an 18.4 percent strikeout rate, a minuscule 3.9 percent walk rate and an above-average 48.4 percent ground-ball rate. Mikolas made the 2018 All-Star team and pitched well enough that season to land a sixth-place finish in National League Cy Young voting.
He’ll return to a Cardinals rotation that has been hammered by injuries throughout the summer but is now getting as close to full strength as it’s been in quite some time. Jack Flaherty returned to the staff a week ago after missing two months with an oblique tear, and the Cards hope to get Kwang Hyun Kim back from the 10-day injured list sooner than later. He made a rehab start just yesterday.
Flaherty and Mikolas join cornerstone Adam Wainwright and trade deadline newcomers J.A. Happ and Jon Lester in the rotation for now as the Cardinals do their best to chase down the second National League Wild Card spot. St. Louis has won seven of its past ten games to trim its deficit to three and a half games.
Fragile does not begin to describe Mikolas’ right arm.
Maybe, but he does have a killer mustache.
…killer pornstache.
Fixed it for you.
Cardinals pitchers doing it with smoke, mirrors, duct tape, prayer beads, and voodoo.
Nah that’s the owner squeezing every dime outta nothing and refusing to give extensions to his pending free agents like Lance Lynn….
I have a severe case of “what have you done for me lately”. So he needs to put up or go home.
If you wanna make that even worse, if you wanna rub some salt in it, look at what Lance Lynn has done compared to Mikolas? Mikolas is the guy they gave Lance Lynn’s money to…. Instead of signing Lynn for 5-6 years for 80 million they give Mikolas 4 years 60 million…..
Now let’s see if they can stay healthy.
Maybe Ron Jeremy could throw out the first pitch…?
#PornStachesUnite
StL makes the playoffs if he and the remainder of the starting rotation stays healthy. Acknowledge that Lester is out and Happ stays in the rotation.
STL MAKES THE PLAYOFFS IF THEY GIVE LANCE LYNN THE MONEY HE EARNED AND IN A CARDINALS UNIFORM AND NEVER SIGN MIKOLAS
He’d better throw it out in a hurry because his case just went to a grand jury.
Here comes the guy they Gave Lance Lynn’s money to after one good year in a cardinals uniform vs Lynn’s 6….. SMDH they must have thought Lynn would be the one with forearm issues and elbow issues…? So they pay this guy his money for free to sit on the bench injured and meanwhile Lynn is what 12-5 with a 2.60 ERA with the White Sox? Got the Cardinals front office looking like a bunch of slap **** ************$!
This is a very poor take. Ripping a front office because they couldn’t predict that a guy would get hurt two seasons into the future makes absolutely zero sense. Rip them for giving spots to guys with poor performance, but to expect them to be able to avoid injuries with a crystal ball is ridiculous.
Did anyone complain at the time? Mikolas went 18-4 with a 2.83 ERA in his first year with the Cardinals. making the all-star team and finishing sixth in the Cy Young voting. Lynn went was 7-8 with a 5.10 for Minnesota before being traded to the Yankees, where he struggled and was accused by fans of not being able to handle pressure situations. He signed with Texas because they curiously offered him three years. No one saw his renaissance coming.
That’s the FO job. It’s called talent evaluation. Don’t they sign players because they expect positive future performance? They have hung on to Bader over other outfielders because they think he’s better. He’s not, but that’s one example of a failure to evaluate talent. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you are going to credit the FO for hanging onto guys like O’Neill, then you must fault them for hanging onto the Baders and Dejongs on this team. And please don’t tell me Bader is good. He’s a hot dog who loves himself some Harrison Bader. He’s a 4th OF. He’s Bourjos 2.0. This FO, in the last 5 years, has made numerous mistakes in building this team. Just admit it and move on.
If Mikolas was in AAA doing rehab, why did he need to come here to face another AAA team? He could have just done that in Memphis.
Nice jinx post.
The question at this point is does he have 5 injury-free weeks left in him this season? At this point results are secondary. Just get through the rest of the season without another IL stint.