Spring Fever Fuels Hot Streak: Liberatore, Baez, and Gorman Smash Records
More than half the Spring Training games are in the books. The Cardinals have played to a winning record, showed off some top prospects, and avoided catastrophic injuries. This is the first year that all spring games have been Statcast tracked, giving us plenty of data to keep an eye on while we wait for the real games to begin.
Today I’m checking in on a few early Statcast indicators to see which Cardinals might be showing real underlying changes. As always, small-sample-size, spring training caveats apply to every word of this article! Starting Pitchers Counter to most of our offseason discussions, Oli Marmol has repeatedly mentioned that he sees the pitching as the strength of the Cardinals.
Early spring Statcast numbers offer at least a little support for that optimism. Velocity As has been widely discussed, Dustin May and Richard Fitts rolled into camp ready to rip the fastball as both are averaging above 97 MPH on their four-seam fastballs at 97. 7 and 97.
4, respectively. Matthew Liberatore’s velocity has hovered around 94 MPH on both his fastball and his sinker, but his stuff has looked great overall (more on that shortly). Kyle Leahy’s velocity is down about 1.
5 MPH as he ramps up and moves from the bullpen to the rotation. Andre Pallante started off the spring in the low 90s, but was up to 94 MPH in his last outing, so probably nothing to be concerned about there. Michael McGreevy’s fastball is down almost 2 MPH and it has actually gone down each of his last two starts.
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