Cardinal News and Notes for Opening Day: Rules Changes, Jordan Hicks

The Cardinals season starts today at 3:15PM CST, and with it the hope for a 12th World Championship. The team has a strong core, but did little to upgrade over last season’s team who squeaked into the playoffs. Here’s a few things before todays game.

Rules Changes for 2022
One of the big holdups of the CBA negotiations was rule changes. They agreed to a few, but the bigger ones will go into effect in 2023, like the shift ban. There are a few minor ones for this season.

• Universal DH: As we all know by the signing of Albert Pujols, the Cardinals will have a DH this year (and moving forward). This was wanted by the players to ensure more hitters have jobs. A player like Pujols is limited in the field and only would have had 15 teams to play for without this change. The down-side is it will kill the professional pinch hitter; teams will not have to use pinch hitters very often and there will be very few double switches.
• The Shohei Ohtani Rule: If a team uses their pitcher as the DH (aka, when the Angels start Ohtani as their pitcher and DH), they can continue to use him after he’s replaced on the mound. This one shouldn’t impact the Cardinals, since they are not likely to use a pitcher as a DH.
• Active Roster Expansion: The active roster was going to stick with 26, which was moved up in recent years. Since there was an abbreviated spring training due to the lockout, the active roster will start at 28 until May 1st; it’ll drop back to 26 after that.
• Roster Manipulation Limits: After May 1st, rosters may only have 13 pitchers on them. Players who are optioned more then 5 times during a season can be exposed to waivers. Pitchers placed on the IL cannot return before 15 days (up from 10). These rules are in place to limit roster and service time manipulation.
• The Ghost Runner is Back: The ghost runner, introduced in the 2020 shortened season, will be back. In the start of extra innings, the last player who made an out will be placed on second base. This is to essentially end tied games earlier then before the rule; having a runner on second base with no outs increases the odds of scoring substantially. According to Baseball Prospectus, in 2019 (the most recent year available) teams had a 60% better chance of scoring a run with a man on second and no outs. I’m not a fan of the rule, but I understand why players wanted it; it doesn’t tax the bullpen to have an extra inning game and reduces the potential of injuries.
• Extended Post-Season: 12 teams will now make the post-season instead of 10. The 2 division winners with the best records in each league will have a first round bye. The remaining 4 teams will match up in a best of 3 series to determine who plays in the division series.
• Payroll Changes: There are changes to the luxury tax thresholds, but those will have little impact to the Cardinals. Teams will also have a pool of money for performance bonuses for players under team control (aka, those that haven’t made it to arbitration yet). Teams have a pool of $50M per season to reward players at the low end of the pay-spectrum.

Next year we’ll see things like elimination of the shift, lottery draft picks, and the removal of free agent compensations (Qualifying Offers to free agents).

The Fifth Starter
The team announced yesterday that Jordan Hicks will be the team’s 5th starter. I’m not crazy about this idea right now; Hicks pitched 73 games his first season (2018), followed by seasons of 29, 0, and 10. He hasn’t stayed healthy as a reliever, and I don’t think the stress of 100+ innings is going to help that. Granted, he’ll have to cut back on the velocity as a starter to go longer into games; this will preserve his arm to some degree, but it won’t balance out the potential of 150 innings (5 innings over 30 starts).

Hick will also need to work on his secondary pitches. As you can see below, he throws a sinker between 60-75% of his pitches; that works when it’s hitting 105 MPH. His cutter and slider had been used double digit percentages in the past, but never in the same season. He’s dabbled with 4-seam and a change up, but never used them for over 5% of his pitches in a season.

The common theory if you need 3 pitches to be a successful starter. Hicks will need to mix in some pitches with his sinker. Unfortunately, it’s hard to look at previous usage to see what he’s still got available.

Opening Day Notes
Yesterday, the Cardinals released the timeline of opening day festivities. Today, they released the official roster.