Here’s my Stat of the Day:
Here is a pitching injury damage report on each of the five teams in the National League Central division.
Since the start of the 2025 season, here’s a list of how many times the five NL Central occupants placed a pitcher on the Injured List – followed by the number of in-season days collectively missed by the hurting hurlers: ‘
CHICAGO CUBS
Injury Tracker: 22 pitchers and 1,110 days missed.
Notable Names: Justin Steele, Cade Horton, Matthew Boyd, Jameson Taillon, Shota Imanaga, Javier Assad, Danny Palencia, Andrew Kittredge, Phil Maton.
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CINCINNATI REDS
Injury Tracker: 17 pitchers and 1,224 days missed.
Notable Names: Hunter Greene, Andrew Abbott, Nick Lodolo, Chase Burns, Rhett Lowder, Brandon Williamson.
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MILWAUKEE BREWERS
Injury Tracker: 22 pitchers and 1,299 days missed.
Notable Names: Brandon Woodruff, Jacob Misiorowski, DL Hall, Robert Gasser, Nelson Cortes, Tobias Myers, Logan Henderson, Trevor Megill, Jose Quintana, Grant Anderson.
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PITTSBURGH PIRATES
Injury Tracker: 11 pitchers and 1,187 days missed.
Notable Names: Jared Jones, Johan Oviedo, Dauri Moreta, Chase Shugart. Jones and Oviedo have missed an extensive amount of time.
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ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
Injury Tracker: 4 pitchers, 296 days.
Notable Names: John King, Zack Thompson, Hunter Dobbins, Matt Pushard. Thompson wasn’t in the STL’s plans. Pushard was a Rule V draft pick, selected from Miami’s roster. His future with the Cardinals is uncertain – but only because the Cards could offer him back to the Marlins. (His knee tendonitis isn’t serious.) Dobbins missed time while rehabbing from knee surgery but the injury occurred when Dobbins was with the Red Sox. King, a useful left reliever, was lost in late July to a strained oblique and was signed by the Marlins last offseason.
This is crazy. Can you believe the pitching-health disparity between the Cardinals and their rivals?
And if we include 2024, here are the number of pitchers put on the IL by each team from ‘24 through this point of the current season:
Brewers 39, Reds 36, Cubs 27, Pirates 26 and Cardinals 13. Again, we see a huge difference between the Cardinals and their brethren.
As a neutral observer put it when I solicited an opinion on the topic: “The rest of the division is operating a triage center, while the Cardinals are essentially running a pitching wellness retreat.”
Why? There is no definitive answer here, but I’ll offer several theories. And there is a combination of factors. Derrick Goold of the Post-Dispatch has done some fine reporting on this.
1. The Cardinals have a rep for taking good care of their pitchers in an attempt to keep them healthy. Dustin May cited that reason when choosing the Cardinals over the other teams that pitched a contract offer.
2. Five … make it six. In 2025 their five regular starters benefited from a recast rotation that used an occasional sixth man during busy stretches – either Michael McGreevy or Steven Matz. Their five main guys got five days rest (instead of four) more often than most other teams. Sonny Gray, Matthew Liberatore, Miles Mikolas and Andre Pallante worked on an extra day of rest a combined 75 times last season.
Erick Fedde did that 11 times before the Cardinals released him in late July to give the slot to McGreevy. After joining the rotation, McGreevy started five times when operating with the extra day in between starts. I didn’t include Matz because he made only two starts, and was on a different schedule because of his work as an effective reliever. All in all, Cardinal starters made 91 starts last season with an extra day of recovery before their next assignment.
3. Less strain per start: This was a regular feature in how manager Oli Marmol and pitching coach Dusty Blake handled the starters. St. Louis starters faced the 10th fewest number of batters when facing a lineup for the third time in a game. The team’s average of 84 pitches per start was the 13th lowest in the majors. And a STL starter threw 100 or more pitches in only 10 starts – the fifth-lowest total among the 30 teams.
4. Credit to Dusty Blake. The pitching coach was at a disadvantage because the Cardinals were pathetically behind the industry trends in using technology to diagnose pitchers. Blake kept pushing for the Cardinals to modernize, the tech arrived over time and the Redbirds began to narrow the gap. I don’t understand any of this but the Cards have made use of biometrics and other advanced technologies to analyze biomechanics to help prevent injuries. Force Plates. Arm Care Sensors. Perhaps injuries are preventable to a certain extent.
5. Dave Duncan approves. Cardinal pitchers have the fourth-highest ground-ball rate this season and were No. 2 for most grounders last season. Everyone knows the STL staff – especially the starters – don’t have wicked-velocity arms, don’t have high-octane strikeout stuff. The Cards’ arms currently have the lowest strikeout rate in the majors – and had the second-lowest punch-out rate last season.
Ground-ball outs lead to efficiency and less stress on the arm. Overpowering hitters is generally a max-effort strain, and that leaves many hard-throwing pitchers vulnerable.
Dave Duncan, the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame pitching coach, was a big proponent of getting hitters to smack sinking fastballs into the ground to get quick outs. It’s a different time now, but the Duncan Way can still be effective. Just ask Michael McGreevy.
Studies have shown that pitchers with superior “Stuff+” are at the highest risk for “catastrophic structural failure.” The pitchers who underwent surgery were consistently the guys throwing harder, and with higher spin rates.
The Cardinals are not obsessed with power-arm domination – which increases risk – so they’re doing it a different way. That gives them more of a chance to keep their shoulders and elbows healthy.
This will change, however. The new baseball regime has put more emphasis on drafting pitchers who can sling the rock at higher speeds, and win the power vs. power showdown with the hitters. In the coming seasons, the Cardinals may experience a rise in the number of pitching injuries. We’ll have to wait and see.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach. Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil on a daily basis.
Bernie has covered and written about many great St. Louis sports team athletes including Albert Pujols, Kurt Warner, Brett Hull, Yadier Molina, Adam Wainwright, Jim Edmonds, Marshall Faulk, Scott Rolen, Mark McGwire, Orlando Pace, Isaac Bruce, Torry Holt, Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter, Al MacInnis, Brian Sutter, Bernie Federko, Chris Pronger, Dan Dierdorf, Jackie Smith and Aeneas Williams. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues, Saint Louis U, and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.