Baseball is the ultimate war of attrition; the duration of the Major League season favors the consistent, shuns the sprinters, and is agony for the middle-of-the-pack clubs. The cellar dwellers that struggle to win games are the teams that acquire the top young talent out of high school and college. Baseball is cyclical like that; the bad get better, and the great get older. This explains the rise of teams like the Washington Nationals, and the demise of clubs like the New York Yankees.
If there is one team that has learned to buck that trend, though, it is the Saint Louis Cardinals. World Series Championships take years of building, and are frequently the result of young talent rising to stardom. The Cardinals won the 2011 World Series against the Texas Rangers; inexplicably, they still have the top farm system in all of baseball. Frankly, even the second best system pales in comparison to what the Cardinals have built.
The Cardinals reside at the top of the loaded National League Central, leading the upstart Pittsburgh Pirates by one game. The infusion of young talent that Saint Louis has seen this year has been nothing short of astounding. Matt Carpenter, in his second full season at Busch Stadium, will be one of several Cardinals that represent Saint Louis in the 2013 All Star Game. Heading into Saturday, the 260 pound Matt Adams has blistered the baseball in limited action, posting a .361 on-base percentage and seven home runs in 133 at bats. More remarkable than the young hitting has been the pitching, and that is exactly where the Cardinals blow the doors off of any other team in the majors.
The Cardinals do not have the elite arms that the Pirates have in Gerrit Cole and Jameson Taillon; the do not have the elite lefty pitching that the Mariners have drafted in James Paxton and Danny Hultzen. What the Cardinals have on both of those teams, though, is depth. General Manager John Mozeliak and his front office have commodious amounts of young pitching in every level of their farm system.
At the Major League level, young studs like Shelby Miller have taken the league by storm. Miller has been struggling of late, though it seems to be just a slump. Young fireballer Trevor Rosenthal has been everything that the Cardinals could have hoped for in the bullpen thus far, striking out 65 batters over 43 innings, and allowing just nine runs. Another young pitcher, Joe Kelly, has a sub four era, something that most teams dream of from a back of the rotation starter. The current Major League pitching domination is only scratching the surface of what is to come for Red Bird fans, though.
As far as the minor league teams are concerned, Cardinals pitchers have been giving hitters nightmares as well. Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha have each been called up the the big leagues; Wacha is currently lighting up the Pacific Coast League in Memphis, and Martinez was recently called back up to Busch. Wacha willbe graduating from Auto Zone Park fairly soon, and that should be unnerving for the other teams in the Central. Another pitcher that is tearing it up in Memphis is righty Michael Blazek, who currently owns a .92 ERA in 19 innings of Triple-A ball.
With all of the Major League and Triple-A talent that the Cardinals have amassed, they have earned the opportunity to take time developing lower level talent, not promoting pitchers until they are good and ready. For that reason, talented young pitchers like Tyrell Jenkins and Seth Blair are taking the long road through the system, and will continue to develop until they are capable of dominating upper levels.
The adage about pitching being more valuable than hitting certainly has proven to be the right recipe for the Cardinals, and looks like it will be for years to come
