Thursday night the Boston Red Sox were beat by a bunch of kids, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.
With his victory in game two, starter Michael Wacha, only 22, did something no rookie in history before him ever had: Win four post-season games.
Carlos Martinez, also 22 years old, picked up right were Wacha left off, putting in two innings of one-hit ball before passing things off to Trevor Rosenthal, who only needed 11 pitches to K the side in order.
Rosenthal is only the second pitcher in history to record a one-inning save in the World Series by K’ing the side in order. He didn’t throw a pitch below 95mph. He was also the oldest pitcher the Cardinals sent to the mound at age 23.
Impressive.
Yet, if you’ve been following along with what the Cardinals have been doing during the 2013 regular season, you’d know game two was just the natural conclusion to a St. Louis formula that’s been working so well: Trust young talent to carry the load.
This year the Cardinals have used more pitchers under the age of 25 than any other team in baseball with 12. All told, those 12 pitchers of 24 years and younger have 31 wins and are responsible for 489 and 2/3 innings pitched, 468 strikeouts and a 3.31 ERA. That does not include the amazing post-season numbers they’ve put up, including Wacha’s brilliant 25 inning scoreless streak.
Very impressive.
And yet, as impressive as all these young hurlers have been, the story that may be overlooked in the urgency and finality of October baseball is this: holy-moley are the Cardinals are going to be good next year!
In fact, you could extend that to the next several years when you consider that Wacha, Martinez, Rosenthal, Kevin Seigrest, Shelby Miller, Seth Maness, Tyler Lyons, Joe Kelly, Mike Blazek and Keith Butler aren’t free agents until 2019. That’s 648 innings of work this season alone.
Next year, Wacha and Miller could account for 450 themselves.
Of course, this is just on the pitching side of things. The core of the Cardinals’ position-player cast is under control until dates between 2017 and 2019, including Yadier Molina, Matt Carpenter, Matt Adams, Allen Craig and Peter Kozma.
That doesn’t mean the Cardinals won’t have their holes to fill in the immediate future. Carlos Beltran’s contract with St Louis is up at the end of this year, and when he goes, his .296/.339/.491 and post-season magic go with him.
But the great thing about having so much young, controllable talent in your system is that you can let a superstar walk and use the talent you already have to either directly replace him, or make trades to find someone who can.
It also means that you’re not leveraged by large contracts. It gives you flexibility. Having so much success from so many young faces means your wins-to-dollars-spent ratio is amazingly lean. If you need to ink a star for a longer term, you have the freedom to do so that many other teams do not.
It’s hard to say if you’ll get used to the idea of the Cardinals winning the World Series. Baseball will always be the fickle, chaotic game of chance no matter how talented the team that plays it. However, the idea of seeing the Cardinals in or knocking on the door of the post-season isn’t. Especially since much of the work that has propelled the Cardinals to where they are this season was done by young, controllable talents who are just getting started.