St. Louis Cardinals filling up the Disabled List with their best men - MLB News
The Cardinals announced on Thursday that their outfielder Matt Holliday has been placed in the 15-day Disabled List with quadriceps injuries. He isn’t the only one going down though, Kyle McClellan, their ace pitcher went on to join Holliday on the List
as well. As damage control St Louis are calling two of their top pitching prospects to fill in the gaps left by these two players.
Since the 2011 season started, Major League Baseball has seen top players of league-leading teams make their way to the Disabled List. Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers, Roy Oswalt, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino of the Philadelphia Phillies and very recently
Buster Posey of the reigning World Series Champions, the San Francisco Giants were put on the Disabled list. It took a while but looks like the curse has befallen on the St Louis Cardinals as well.
Even though the best are being brought out to cover up for the players, their absence will defiantly be felt. Holliday has six home-runs under his belt along with 31 RBIs and was batting at .342 in the duration of 44 games. In 2007, he was leading all batting
statistics when playing for the Colorado Rockies. Holliday was not playing much for the Cardinals in the last six games because of his troubling quadriceps. He has already missed 10 days this season after he had to undergo an emergency appendectomy after an
impressive Opening Day performance. At the time however, Holliday wasn’t put on the Disabled List.
McClellan has a hip strain that is the cause of his trip down to the Disabled List. He was 6-2 and has an ERA OF 3.86 in the 11 games he played this season, where he started in 10 of them.
The pitching prospects that are set to replace the pair are Lance Lynn and Maikel Cleto. Lynn was purchased by the Cardinals from Triple-A Memphis and this will be his first Major League appearance. When he was with the Memphis he accumulated an ERA of 4.06
within 10 starts and was going 5-3.
Cleto is being recalled from Double-A Springfield and has previously had a combined 2-2 with an ERA of 2.55 at Springfield and Single-A Palm Beach.
This leaves the National League’s leading hitter and the Cardinals second best winner on the Disabled List but their team isn’t expected to suffer like any other team would’ve done under the circumstance. They have had a fantastic track record since the
season kicked off and are leading the National League Central. They have the largest lead out of all the National League leaders and things won’t change drastically for the team that still has Albert Pujols on board.
Even with him not performing that well this season, he is miles better than players who are putting forth their best performances. Tony La Russa has been doing an exceptional job managing the team and being ever ready for a crisis. A ‘Manager of the Year’
could be up for grabs by him in the future.
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