Sonny Gray's hamstring injury reminds us that the Cardinals' rotation is still missing something

Regardless of how serious the injury turns out to be, the Cards still need another frontliner in the rotation

What is the above image? I think it’s self-explanatory. The lidless eye that is the Instagram algorithm confronted me with it on the very day that Sonny Gray succumbed to injury while wholesomely playing the only game he every loved. Whether this constitutes malice aforethought or unsparing coincidence hardly matters. 

I had planned to get into previewing the Cardinals’ NL Central rivals for the season to come, but on Monday Gray, the team’s ace and marquee offseason addition, left his Grapefruit League start with right hamstring tightness. This, to state the bleedingly obvious, is a concerning development and one that cries out for my lovingly crafted prose. Gray was set to undergo an MRI Monday afternoon, which should reveal the extent of matters. 

No, it’s not an arm issue, and hamstring maladies can be minor things. However, they can also be nagging things and even serious things. Regardless of whether Gray makes his next scheduled spring turn or misses significant time, his current straits raise a couple of considerations. I say “regardless” because pitchers get hurt, perhaps especially in this era of velocity and stuff maximization. 

The first is that Gray has a history. Yes, he’s coming off a 2023 season in which he made 32 starts and worked 184 innings, but such a workload is a recent outlier for Gray. In his age-24 and age-25 campaigns with the A’s he clocked back-to-back 200-inning seasons. He hasn’t reached the mark since then. He dealt with hip, back, and shoulder issues from late 2015 through much of the 2017 season. In late 2019, he had bone chips removed from his elbow as a member of the Reds. Then came injured-list stints for a back strain, back spasms, a groin strain, a ribcage injury, a hamstring strain, a pectoral injury, and another hamstring strain. 

(Relevant aside: Those two right hamstring strains occurred in 2022, and each kept him on the IL for about three weeks.)

Throw out the abbreviated 2020 season, and Gray over the last seven “normal” MLB seasons has averaged 146 innings per campaign. As he moves deeper into his mid-thirties, all of this perhaps becomes more of a worry. 

Don’t mistake this is a criticism of the decision to sign Gray. He’s a worthy and needed addition, and I think when healthy he’s going to be in the second tier of aces across the game, at least for the near- to mid-term. As well, the contract from the club standpoint was an eminently reasonable one. The point, though, is that eyeballing Gray’s workload from last season doesn’t give a full picture of his health and durability, and that full history and trendline suggest he probably won’t match that workload again. This brings us to the remainder of the rotation.