For a Few Strikeouts More

Baseball is changing. You don’t need me to tell you that — a simple look at basically any leaderboard in baseball will do. Strikeouts are higher than they’ve ever been. Home runs are higher than they’ve ever been. Walks? We’ve got those too. Forget the stats, even; just watch a game and you’ll see it. Contact is down, velocity is up, and when someone hits a baseball, they do it with intent. You’ll see it, that is, unless you were watching the 2018 Cardinals bullpen.

Now, was the 2018 Cardinals bullpen bad? Yeah. It was one of the worst bullpens the team has put together in the Mozeliak era, though a lot of that was down to sample-size noise and the Curse of Greg Holland. Still, though, one…