Reader Mailbag, Part 1: The challenges of modern pitching, mascot fights, Herb Alpert, 1998 Cards talk, immediate-impact prospects to watch, and more

Readers have questions, writer has answers -- some of them possibly correct and coherent

You responded to the recent call for mailbag questions with zeal and abundance, so I’ll be breaking up my replies into two posts. The first one is just below.

Jibby writes:

If all 30 MLB mascots had to participate in a WWE style Royal Rumble, who wins and why?

This is a compelling hypothetical. Are we talking about the actual/anthropomorphic versions of these mascots – i.e., an actual Tiger versus an actual Texas Ranger and his trusty sidearm – or the costumed mascots as they confront us in reality? The mind reels at such possibilities.

I’m partial to the first set of guiding parameters, so I’ll proceed under those assumptions. It’s right and proper to dismiss pairs of socks, whether red or white. I’m likewise not impressed by the product of the Kansas City peerage system or the city-dwelling dandy in Queens. Alas and alack, the suite of birds in MLB aren’t equipped to thrive in this particular cauldron. But an actual giant? That’s an imposing thought, the occasional Biblical defeat notwithstanding. The supernatural powers and lofty affiliations of the angel must also be given high regard. The elephant in Sacramento must be respected, especially if he’s as dogged and vengeful as this one. All hail the defensive capacities of a mountain range, but what kind of offense can the Rockies muster? The pirate is a thought but would be limited by the weaponry of the applicable era. All hosannas to the native warrior in Atlanta, but the same concern is noted. A unionized beermaker? One can see the vision.

I suppose I’ll take the angel, assuming it’s learned combat skills from the Archangel Michael and is in close cahoots with the jurisdictional celestial authorities.

JT writes:

This is more of a comment than a question. I find myself pretty confident that the Cardinals are now capable of developing pitchers under Bloom. I say this mostly because I’m reading about them helping even established pitchers change their mechanics and repertoires and so forth. This feels like progress, even though the season hasn’t started.

If you’re of a certain vintage, then you can probably relate to the impression that things were less complicated when contemporary technologies weren’t so ubiquitous or weren’t even around at all. All these pathways to information mean more time sorting them out, learning what they mean, prioritizing them. It’s easy to get nostalgic for simplicity, even if going back in time would mean giving up the conveniences, mobility, gadgetry, and knowledge sources of modernity.

This general notion is applicable to pitching. Like almost everything else, it’s much more of a thicket than it once was. Time was when you kept one eye on fastball velocity with the other on the breaking ball – curve or slider – and, for starting pitchers, the platoon-busting changeup. You worried about fooling hitters with changes of speed, location, and pitch type. That was pitching. Those elements are still there, of course, but there’s so much more to it, what with the countless lab tools and metrics of the contemporary era. We moved on to spin rate and tunneling, and those are still there, too, but then the world became a universe.

Nowadays, yes, you must cultivate and wield those above skills and traits, but that’s just a sliver. You must tailor your arm slot and vertical approach angle to, ideally, get hitters to swing over or under your hard stuff. You chase induced vertical break on your fastball while at the same time hoping that vertical movement doesn’t too closely mirror your horizontal break, which could lead to the dread “dead zone” fastball. You assemble your arsenal while at once adhering to the limits of whether you’re a natural pronator or supinator and trying to defy those limits. It’s not enough to develop movement on your pitches – an onerous task in itself – it needs to be unexpected movement from the perspective of the hitter. You’re not just developing pitch types, you’re developing shapes of pitch types. You then must balance the relentless pursuit of maximized velocity with the just as relentless pursuit of sustained arm health.

Imagine, if you will, what the internal monologue of cues might be like for a current pitcher before each pitch. “Do I like the catcher’s pitch call … Is my grip proper … Am I tipping … Hit that arm slot … Remember the kinetic chain, get those hips and shoulders rotating in the right order, as fast as you can without getting out of synch … Nail that wrist action, let the pitch leave your hand off the right finger … Hurry up, there’s a pitch clock … Should I use a disengagement here to check the runner?”

And so on. Circling back to those burdens of emergent technology, yes, pitchers have benefited more than hitters have thus far, but hitters are catching up with tracking tools and force plates and high-speed cameras trained on their swings and implements of pitcher mimicry like the Trajekt machine (of which the Cardinals now have one!).

This is a league that in recent seasons has gotten, oh, 400 home runs or so from No. 9 hitters each year. Maybe the arrival of the automated ball-strike system in the majors accrues to the benefit of hitters (I have a suspicion that the uncertainty of the human strike zone aids the pitcher), in part by blunting the impact of catcher framing. To repeat the point, pitching is more complicated than it’s ever been.

This is why I’m glad that the Cardinals at long last have a pitching braintrust in place that seems to be up to that many-tentacled task. Chaim Bloom, Rob Cerfolio, Matt Pierpoint, Larry Day, Dusty Blake (now with more tools and resources at his disposal), and the greatly expanded developmental-and-prep staff all inspire confidence. As well, many of those new hires hail from organizations that have been industry pacesetters when it comes to pitching development. As you intuit, they seem to be doing their work.

Baseball, of course, isn’t a sport of adjustments. It’s a sport of adjustments to the adjustments – i.e., it’s an unceasing process of remaking one’s deployable skills in response to an opponent doing the same, over and over again. The cycle never ends, and these micro-competitions hum in the background of not just every game, but every sim game, every bullpen, every cage session, every appraisal of video footage, every germane conversation.

We’ve seen a lot of it already, even in early March. Matthew Liberatore is working on a splitter. Kyle Leahy is working in a changeup. Andre Pallante is busy adding a kick-change to his mix (the cambio can be a challenging pitch for a pronator like Pallante). They targeted reliever George Soriano largely because they saw opportunities for pitch-mix adjustments. Tink Hence is Tinkering (sorry). Richard Fitts, who may be bullying his way into the rotation, has flashed a pair of new offerings this spring, and that’s after spending his pro career to date with the Yankees and Red Sox, two pitching-forward organizations (the Red Sox in large measure because of Bloom’s work there). As I write this, Dustin May appears to be toying with a slightly raised release point. This is a partial listing, and it speaks to the idea that the Cardinals handle and develop their pitchers with a plan and the means to execute it.

This has been a torturously long-winded way of saying I agree with you. As a fan, I have a great deal of hope on this front.

Jibby writes:

Which MLB player current or past is most suited to walk up to “Tijuana Brass” by Herb Alpert?

All hail “Spanish Flea”:

Anyhow, it’s either Rickey Henderson, Tim Lincecum, or Dick Allen.

Cardinal70 writes:

What player that starts at Memphis or lower but will have the greatest impact on the Cardinals?

This is a really interesting question for 2026, especially since we’re all assuming that JJ Wetherholt cracks the Opening Day roster and thus removes himself from this discussion. I’m boringly tempted to say a churn reliever who may not be in St. Louis to start the season – Luis Gastelum and his space-invader changeup would be my pick – but let’s be at least a little bold and interesting. With that in mind, I’ll go with 22-year-old outfield prospect and former second-rounder Joshua Baez. For reasons previously laid out in this space, I’m quite bullish on him. The athletic Baez made major strides last season at Double-A with his plate discipline, and a leading subplot down on the farm in 2026 is whether he sustains those improvements at Triple-A, where he’s presumably ticketed. Like many of you, I was excited by his recent hairsbreadth-margin ABS challenges during spring training – challenges that hinted at the current quality of his eye and plate discernment.

If Baez fares well in Memphis, then perhaps he’s the call-up when/if Lars Nootbaar is traded. Perish the following thoughts, but Baez could also be an option in the event of injury, Jordan Walker’s ongoing difficulties with strikeouts and low launch angles, or perhaps continued offensive struggles by Victor Scott II in center (Baez can play a little center). Whatever the specifics, I won’t be surprised if Baez, who’s already on the 40-player roster, is a lineup fixture in St. Louis in the second half.

Levi writes:

So I will soon be starting a Strat-o-Matic replay of the 1998 season. While acknowledging that no actual manager of the era would have done this: Can I bat Big Mac leadoff and see what happens, or is that too gimmicky for belief and I should bat Lankford first and McGwire in the 2 slot?

Ah, I do enjoy thinking and talking about lineup construction. I realize the value of getting your best hitter as many plate appearances as possible, but, man, I’m not sure I can get behind batting that much power in a non-RBI spot. I think there’s a balance. Lankford in ‘98 had plenty of thump and a terrific OBP, so he’s my leadoff guy. McGwire in the two hole strikes a balance, in my opinion, between maximizing his number of trips to the plate and having him come up pretty often with Lankford and his .391 OBP somewhere on the bags. The Cards that year didn’t have an optimal number of lefty bats, so I’m slightly hesitant to “burn” a lefty in the leadoff spot, but these are the sacrifices we must make. Maybe you split the difference and give the McGwire-as-leadoff experiment a spin versus lefty starters.

I look forward to your decision and also hearing how you utilize those 229 Fernando Tatis plate appearances, assuming you’re limiting yourself in such ways.

OK, that’ll do it for this episode. I’ll be back soon with the rest of those mailbag questions.