Rob Rains Inside Baseball: Lance Lynn’s Start On Wed. Critical For Himself, Cardinals

Lance Lynn has made important starts before in his career, including two games for the Cardinals in the NLCS last year against the Giants.

The start he makes on Wednesday night at Busch Stadium, however, could be even more significant – both for his short-term and long-term future.

It is apparent from comments made to the media by general manager John Mozeliak that he and manager Mike Matheny have a different opinion about whether Lynn should retain his spot in the starting rotation. In discussing Lynn, Mozeliak made an unsolicited remark about the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

Clearly, Lynn’s recent starts have not produced good results, and even though it would be hard for the Cardinals to blow a postseason berth at this point in the season, the team does not want to just throw away a chance to win when it comes to that spot in the rotation. 

The Cardinals also have more at stake than merely a playoff berth in the 19 games left in September. They want to win the Central division for the first time since 2009 and avoid the one-game wild-card showdown. They also would like to finish with the league’s best record, which would give them home-field advantage in the Division Series and the NLCS.

Mozeliak deferred the decision of whether Lynn should start Wednesday to his manager, who in his short tenure of being in charge has seemed to err on the side of loyalty to a player more than once.

That loyalty has to be rewarded at some point, however, and if Lynn wants to make the three additional starts that would fall to his spot in the rotation the rest of the season, he needs to reverse some alarming trends when he pitches against the Brewers.

Lynn has lost his last five decisions, in a span of six starts, since Aug. 9. In his last five starts, Lynn has allowed four or more runs in each game. The only time the Cardinals have won when Lynn started in that span was on Aug. 15 when they rallied from a 4-0 deficit to beat the Pirates 6-5.

Since the All-Star break, Lynn has gone 2-6 in 10 starts while compiling a 5.10 ERA.
In his eight starts since July 30, the only time he has won came when his teammates scored 15 runs to beat the Reds on Aug. 4. 

Lynn’s biggest problem in the last month has been his inability to avoid a big inning, and the inability to shake off a mistake by one of his fielders or himself, compounding the physical or mental error. 

For whatever reason, his teammates also have gone through a stretch of not scoring many runs when Lynn is on the mound, the opposite of what happened in the first half of the season. In Lynn’s 13 wins this year, the Cardinals have scored 93 runs, an average of 7.15 a game. In his 10 losses, the Cardinals have scored 20 runs, or two per game.

Lynn has only won two games this season when the Cardinals scored three runs in the game, a 3-2 win against Miami on July 7 and a 3-1 win against the Phillies on July 25.

The other factor which makes Lynn’s start on Wednesday so important is that the Cardinals do have other candidates to fill his spot in the rotation. What Matheny, Mozeliak and company have to decide is if starting Jake Westbrook, Carlos Martinez or Tyler Lyons would give the team a better chance to win than starting Lynn. Some ineffective starts already led the Cardinals to move rookie Michael Wacha into the rotation instead of Westbrook. 

Matheny has said often this season that the Cardinals are in the performance business. He, and the players, are judged on results, which should be the case at this level. He said again over the weekend that now is the time the team needs to push.

Unless Lynn delivers a quality start against Milwaukee, it seems very unlikely he will get another chance. And if he is dropped from the rotation now, it also seems unlikely that the Cardinals would trust him to make a start in the postseason. He might not even earn that postseason start even with one, or more, good outings. 

The way Joe Kelly has pitched has earned him the second spot in the rotation behind Adam Wainwright, and the other two starting spots seem set with Shelby Miller and Wacha. All Wacha has done in his two starts after replacing Westbrook is pitch six and seven shutout innings against the two teams the Cardinals are battling in the division, the Reds and Pirates.

Wacha’s win on Sunday was the 30th by a Cardinals’ rookie this year, and that is the highest total of wins by rookies for the team since the rookies on the 1952 team combined to win 34 games.

Matheny has shown the confidence in using rookies in key situations, both in the rotation and in the bullpen, and replacing a faltering Lynn with either Martinez or Lyons – even if it is only for the three starts that will go to that spot the rest of the season – just seems to make sense.

Matheny talked again over the weekend about how impressed he has been by the attitude of the team’s rookies, who just could have enough naiveté that they don’t realize they are supposed to be nervous pitching in a pennant race.

“I want the expectation level to be there for our young guys,” Matheny said. “I want them to feel like they can do this, they’ve done it and they are going to continue to do it. I want it to be a little bit of arrogance instead of ignorance, controlled arrogance.

“It’s not arrogance, it’s confidence. It’s because our coaches have done a really nice job of putting these guys in a spot and giving them a clear direction and them getting some good feedback by results. That’s kind of helping them grow. They get outs, it’s being reinforced that what they have is enough and that’s all we want from them.”

Even though Matheny’s immediate concern is with what happens in the next six weeks, it also is easy to look ahead to next season and question whether Lynn will remain part of the Cardinals’ plans – unless there are some dramatic changes in his performance.

The way Kelly and Wacha have pitched shows that both deserve to head to spring training next February as viable candidates for the rotation, along with Wainwright and Miller. With Jaime Garcia also expected to be recovered from surgery and ready to pitch, that adds up to five starters.

Even if Garcia is not ready, both Martinez and Lyons also could be candidates to become the fifth starter.

If Lynn wants to change that scenario, and show that he deserves to be included in the group, he has to start doing it with his performance on Wednesday night.
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