Locked On Cardinals - Daily Podcast On The St. Louis Cardinals - McGreevy And Mathews Sparkle In Debuts

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

- Michael McGreevy Impresses - Tink Hence Struggles - Offensive Woes - Quinn Mathews - ABS System Follow & Subscribe on all Podcast platforms… 🎧 https://link.chtbl.com/LOSTLCardinals?sid=YouTube Locked On MLB League-Wide: Every Team, Prospects & More 🎧 https://linktr.ee/LockedOnMLB Follow on Twitter/X: @JDSPORTSRADIO Follow the show on Twitter/X: @LO_Cardinals Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Wonderful Pistachios Looking for a snack that’s both delicious and nutritious? Get snackin’ and get crackin’ with the snack that packs a protein punch. Visit WonderfulPistachios.com to learn more. FanDuel Right now, new FanDuel customers can get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Bonus Bets if your first FIVE DOLLAR bet wins!Download the app or head to FANDUEL.COM to get started. Bet with FanDuel—Official Partner of the NBA. FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) #ForTheLou #stlcards #mlb #lockedoncardinals Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael McGruevy got the ball today against the Yankees and continues to prove why he belongs in the starting rotation. This is Locked on Cardinals. You are Locked on Cardinals. Your daily St. Louis Cardinals podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey there, Cardinals. I'm J.D. Haffern and I'm your host for Lockt on Cardinals, part of the Lockedon Podcast Network. Covering your team every day, you can follow me on X at JD Sports Radio and follow the podcast at L.O. Cardinals. We're available on YouTube. Make sure you like, subscribe and comment and hit that

notification button so you know when new episodes are posted. We're also available on TikTok and on Instagram at Locked on Cardinals. Appreciate all the new followers on that. I'm figuring out this whole TikTok thing. I'm going to get good at it. You watch, you watch. This is the show serving Cardle Nation and giving the best fans in baseball all the info about the birds on the bat. So one of the big questions coming into the 2025 season for the Cardinals is who exactly is going to make up the starting five for their rotation. Your contestants are, Sunny Gray, Eric Fetty, Miles Michaelis, Andre Palante, Stephen Mats, and Michael McGreeby. Now I'm not going to go out on a limb here and say, by saying that, you know,

Gray and Fetty and Michaelis and Palante are all but safe, barring any injuries. Those are going to be four of the five. So that leaves us with the competition between Stephen Mats and Michael McGreeby. Now, one of those guys is a veteran who makes $11 million this year is in the final year of his contract and gets hurt a lot. The other one is a former first round pick who made four appearances on the big club last year and looked really, really good. And in his first appearance of the spring, Stephen Matts also looked good. Two winnings, no runs, no hits, and a walk. But Wednesday, it was Michael McGreevy's turn to take the Hill. First started the spring and he looked a lot like the same guy that we saw in those four

appearances last season in a Cardal uniform. He goes two winnings allows no runs, no hits, strikes out two. And not just any two. It wasn't like some scrubs that were just happened to be playing in the lineup. We're talking about Jazz Chisholm Jr. We're talking about Anthony Volpe, two of the better hitters in the Yankees lineup, two of the guys that are going to be a part of that Yankees line. up pretty much every day, as long as they're healthy.

McGreevy has done everything the Cardinals have asked of him since getting his call up last year. And if this is indeed the year that the Cardals have said it's going to be where they're going to let the youth get the quote runway and take the spotlight. They're going to ride or die with these guys. Then McGreevy definitely deserves that fifth starter spot. And it's not just the tools on the field that has impressed me so far, although that's the most important thing, right, is what are the results? What's he getting done on the field?

We know he's been pretty good. He's got a lot of pitches that got a lot of movement. He's got the sinker, the slider, the cutter, the change. He's got the four seat. He's got a curveball when he wants to throw it. But he's got movement. And that's obviously key in this day and age. If you throw a straight ball more times than not, people are going to tee off on that.

But the guy off the field that we're starting to learn about has been very impressive as well. In an interview that he did with Corey Miller from KSDK, Channel 5 in St. Louis, you know, I picked up on his personality when he was on the morning show at 101 ESPN. I'm picking up on a really fun personality. He's got confidence that I'm picking up on that. You know, after last year, he realizes that, you know, even though he's young, he can still compete at the major league level. Like he feels like he's where he belongs. And he's happy to be competing for a job. He loves it, man.

He's playing ball. He's happy to be competing for a job on the Cardinals roster this year. He doesn't have this worry about having to start at Memphis. You know, he feels like he belongs in the major leagues. And he's also one of these guys, you know, that's part of this youth movement. He's embracing this youth movement that the Cardinals got going on in 2025. And no, it's not a it's not a, it's not a, a, a retool or, you know, whatever the words you want to use for it.

That's not what it is. It's just that we've got a lot of young guys that are in this organization that deserve a shot to see what they can do at the major league level. And he talked about how it's kind of cool being in the clubhouse with all of these guys that, you know, a lot of them have grown up and played together in the organization. And how that, you know, playing with these guys for a couple of years, he's like, I believe in these guys. They're going to find a way to win.

Maybe this year will be a tougher year for the Cardinals because of this because it's a lot of guys getting used to the major league level. And that could very well be. But he says they're going to find a way to win. They're going to find a way to win. He likes the veterans that are in the clubhouse. But, you know, it seems like a nice group of guys that play well together. You know, they all get along together.

They've grown up together. And that's good for the clubhouse. He doesn't sound intimidating. or nervous about things. And I like that a lot. I like that in my young players, specifically pitchers, you know, because they're going to go out and get some big names

that they grew up going, you know, watching and idolizing as they were kids. And now they're going to be pitching against them. So you have to have to have some backbone. Stephen Mats will continue to get starts this spring. I have no doubt about that. But here's my thing. My argument for why Michael McGreevy should be in the rotation is that

Matt, we already not. know can be a starter or a reliever at the major league level. We know this about him. So why would you stunt the growth or the confidence of a Michael McGreevy, a former first round pick by just not making him a member of the rotation? Okay. I don't understand that. Like, why would you even think about moving him to the bullpen?

Just because Matt's is a veteran, I don't think it should give him a leg up. If anything, it should give you the track record where you know better already. what Stephen Mats is capable of and what he's not capable of. He is capable of when healthy of being able to pitch out of the bullpen as well as pitching in a rotation if you need him to be. The injury bug, though, is something that will probably bite him at one time or another. It's just the way it's been for him. Unfortunately, this is nothing against Stephen Mats.

Stephen Mats is not a bad guy. It's not his fault that these things keep happening. It just is what it is. and if the injury bug does get him again this year, which go look back at his injury history, it's probably going to happen. You're just going to have to pull McGreevy in to be a starter anyway. So why even screw around with it, right?

That's just my thoughts anyway. Why fight it? If McGreevy gets shelled or something this spring over his next few starts, okay, perhaps we revisit this. But for now, and after seeing what I saw, again today, I'm sticking with my initial thoughts that this offseason that Michael McGreevy should be the one getting the spot in the rotation and mats as your long man in the pen or sixth starter. And if something happens to one of the first five, then you can reshuffle things.

But I don't want McGreevy in the bullpen. And I don't think he needs to be at Memphis anymore. He should be in the starting rotation. But we'll see how the rest of the spring training plays out. again, injuries and stuff, it'll happen. So now after McGreevy pitched today, which he threw those two winnings, things went south very quickly for another one of the Cardinals' top pitching prospects. We're going to talk about that. And of course, the offensive woes that continue to follow the Cardinals around. That's coming up next on Locked on Cardinals.

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where it was me and Chuck, Chuck Freeman from the Locked-on Brewers. He gave me a call. It was like, hey, you want to just talk some ball today? And so it made sense. So didn't get a chance to talk about Quinn Matthews and Victor Scott from Tuesday's game. So we are going to talk about that later on in this episode. But I want to focus on what happened in today's game against the New York Yankees because Team Kent's got to take the hill for the Cardinals today.

The second best pitching prospect behind Quinn Matthews, who, like I said, we'll talk about in a little bit. But hence, coming off a solid year, right? When he was healthy, he was very, very good last year, had some injuries. But when he was on the mound, not bad. 20 games for double A Springfield, 4 and 3 record, 2.71 ERA, 109 strikeouts and 79 to 2 thirds innings. That's a 12.3 case per 9 average.

You're going to take that. That's pretty darn good. He is scheduled to be a big part of the Cardinals' future. But today was not his day. Teen Kent's had a rough day at the office today. When it comes to like pitching in spring training games, you're going to hear this over and over from a lot of people. But sometimes they're working on certain things.

They're working on certain pitches. And that very may well be the case today for Teen Kent. I don't know, but the Yankees tagged him. They tagged them pretty good on Wednesday, knocking them around. for six runs on five hits with one home run and just a third of an inning pitch. He did get pulled after facing just seven hitters. And the biggest thing that I noticed about Tink in today's game was that he was missing up and over the plate with the fastball.

And that's just a really, really bad place to be at against Major League hitters. They don't miss that pitch very often. And it just kept happening. The ball was just, it was coming in at, what, 96 right around there. and it was just getting, it was getting smashed. And that's what was happening today. They ended up bringing him back in for the next inning. And things were much better, much better.

He got a strikeout, ground out, pop out. He was in and out very quickly. All in all, he goes on inning in the third today. But at least it didn't go down the road that it went for Sim Robbersa earlier, where they took him out after he got hit around a bit. And then he just got hit around even more when they brought him back. Again, it appears that Hince was able to make some adjustments and things got better, obviously. And hopefully he was able to walk off the mound feeling good about himself today because

that was tough to watch the way things went for Sim Robbersa the other day, who's another one of the Cardinals' top prospects pitching wise in the organization. So you hate to see things go south and then go way south after that. But, you know, Tink made some adjustments. So he looked better, but you can see why, you know, the people are excited about what team Kent has to offer. Again, we're not going to get overly worked out about, worked up about things, whether it's on the offense, whether it's on the defense or the pitching side of things. But, you know, these are things that I'm just going to point out to you. You know, other Cardinals pitchers of note in today's game, Ryan Fernandez, wow, looked awesome, struck out the side in his one inning of work.

Riley O'Brien allowed two hits, but he also struck out two in his lone inning. Chris Roycroft came in, had a shutout inning as well. Fernandez attempting to fill the vacated role by Andrew Kittridge as kind of that right-handed setup guy. My in a perfect world, it's it's Jojo Romero, Matthew Libretour, and Ryan Fernandez as your three big set up guys leading into Ryan Helsley this year. Your other righty could be Riley O'Brien. He's trying to stay healthy after someone lost season last year due to the

injuries, but you see the stuff that he possesses, and you're like, wow, like he could be special. He could do some serious damage late in games, but we got to keep him on the field. You got to stay healthy, and we weren't able to see that last year. And then you got Chris Roycroft, who's just a monster of a man on the mound. And he's open to make the roster out of camp and be one of those depth pieces in the bullpen as well. The offense was bad again on Wednesday. The Cardinals had just three hits on the day.

And it's, you know, it's the big guys that you see and they're just like, you know, Mason went, 0 for three, two strikeouts, Brennan Donovan, O for three, two strikeouts, Jordan Walker, O for three, two strikeouts. Nolan Aronado, O for three, two strikeouts. Yvonne Herrera, O for two, two strikeouts. Again, we're not going to get worked up about this, but they are observations. And you got to point it out, wind does not have a hit yet in the spring.

Now in his last at bat, he hit a ball hard over to the third base side and the third baseman made a nice play and kind of robbed him of a single there. But he's now 0 for 9 with three strikeouts so far in the spring. Brennan Donovan is 0 for 8 with two punchies. Walker is two for eight with four whiffs. Aronado is one for seven with two strikeouts. Looking at Jordan Walker and I saw this, I believe Kareem was the one that posted this where he was talking about the differences between Jordan Walker. their batting stance. Remember how Walker had that really wide open stance. And this year, it's more straightforward. It's a little bit open, but a little more straightforward. So obviously,

he's working on some stuff with a new hitting coach, Bram Brown. So, you know, you're okay. This is what spring training is for. It's to work on stuff, get through some stuff, get used to new things. And that's why you're not overly concerned with what you're seeing thus far. Arnado is one for seven with two strikeouts. Yvonne Herrera. O for four with three strikeouts thus far. Your team leader in hits in the spring at this point. Anybody? Anybody?

Matt Coperniac. Four for nine now. And again, nobody should be flipping out about this stuff. But to me, it just seemed like watching today's game, the Cardinals just, it seemed like they had a tough time picking up the ball. There was a lot of awkward and very late swing. So I don't know if they're having an issue with. that. Clearly the Yankees weren't having a problem with that when Tinkins was in the game.

But they didn't do all that much outside of that either. So Cardinals fall today to the Yankees by a score of 7 to nothing. I do want to go back to Tuesday's game against the Blue Jays and talk about the spring debut of Quinn Matthews. Show a little love to Victor Scott the second as well because that was a lot of fun to watch. So we'll tell you why you should be excited about these guys coming up next on Locked on Cardinals. Thank you again for making Locked on Carle's your first listen today for your second listen. You can find Locked on MLB with our baseball guru solely bringing you a daily blend of humor in baseball, keeping you updated on all the teams during spring training. You can find Locked on MLB on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcast.

So after a season that saw Quinn Matthews just fly through the Cardinals organization in 2024, top pitching prospect was on the bump against the Blue Jays on Tuesday in his spring debut. and it's not as if we haven't seen footage of Quinn Matthews pitching before. I've seen plenty of it before. But this was against major league hitters. You know, last year he's your minor league pitcher of the year for the Cardinals and in the minor leagues all together. Like he was outstanding. But that was against all minor leaguers.

Now you're going to see him against some major league hitters here in the spring. And he was up for the challenge. on Tuesday. He goes to shut out innings. He throws 33 total pitches. 15 fastballs, 11 sliders, seven change jobs. He strikes out three headers, including Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who could, I mean, certainly one of the best right-handed hitting bats in all of baseball. Going to cash in on a monster deal in this upcoming offseason, whether it's with the Blue Jays or with some other team. But struck him out, made him look silly on the chain job. up what I noticed most about Quinn Matthews.

And, you know, I noticed it last year, too, but watching this game is just how well he hides the ball. It's an underrated aspect of pitching. Not all pitchers can do it very well. But for those of you who played ball growing up and you would go to the batting cages, you know, you have a, you have different types of pitching machines, right? You've got the one that's got like an arm. And you see the arm go down and it rotates and it scoops up the ball and you can time it. pretty good as to when it would release the pitch, very similar to, like, a pitcher's arm,

you know, wind up. If you can see the arm moving and you can see the ball, like, it makes it easier. Then you have the ones like, if you guys remember Ozzie Smith's baseball academy in Westport back in the day, that basically just, boom, they just spit the ball out at you without any real warning. There was no arm to kind of time things up. Like, it made it very, very difficult. That's kind of what. Quinn Matthews windup does. Like you can't see the ball. He hides it so well where it just explodes from his arm slot,

which makes him where he's throwing 95 miles per hour, which is obviously very good. But it makes it look even faster. It's on top of you so much quicker. And it also makes that fabulous change up, all that much more unhittable. Like it's just, it's tough. He was very impressive.

And I can see why hitters have such a hard time against him. really enjoyed watching him and his two innings. The rest of the sap wasn't so bad. Cooper Jerpy followed Matthews with one inning where he did give up one run on three hits. He strikes out one, but you can see why him and his funky angles, the left-hander jerpy, why he would be difficult to hit. He reminds me a lot of Chris Sale, just the way, obviously, he's not as good as Chris Sale yet by any means. I'm not saying he is Chris Sale, but just kind of where the arm slot and the angle is coming from. You can see why he'd be a pain of the butt, specifically for left-handed hitters.

2023, Cardinals minor league pitcher of the year. Max Rajic goes two innings, allows one run on two hits with a walk and two strikeouts. Ian Bedell, who was recently on this podcast, joined us on the show, got an inning allowing run-run on one head. He walked two, which, you know, it's always bad. Did strikeout one. And you saw Bailey Horde and Michael Gomez toss two shutout innings as well. Bailey Horton did not look good in his first outing with the Cardinals. this spring, but much better this time around.

The real issue against the Blue Jays was no offense. Again, where outside of Victor Scott, the boys got nothing done. You know, Victor led the game off with that triple, very painful looking play in center field where the center fielder hit the wall kind of awkwardly after stumbling by the track. Victor gets the triple. He scores on that Alec Berlinson sack fly. Then Victor hits a solo blast to right field in his second. which gave the Cardinals a two to nothing lead at the time.

And then that was it for the office, man. They just packed it up. They threw all their clothes in a suitcase and said, we're done for the day. The rest of the team goes hitless. 0 for 23 on the day. They did draw three walks. They struck out seven times.

Max Scher looked very, very good in his start for the Toronto Blue Jays. I will continue to say I really, really wish we would have seen Max Scherzer in a Cardinals uniform at one point in his career. I feel like that was one of the biggest letdown. It would have been nice to bring the St. Louis guy home. But he looked very strong for the Blue J. He struck out four and two winnings, allowed just the leadoff triple two, Victor Scott.

We also got to see a little bit of his Mad Max persona pop out against Lars Nupar, who had a strike called against him. He challenged, Newbar challenged the strike and won, which had not sit well with Scherzer, who struck him out looking anyways. And I didn't notice it, but we had one of the listeners say that he kind of said challenge that or something to that effect after Newport struck out, which I didn't notice that. But Scher ended up challenging a pitch in the second inning that he thought was

a strike, but was correctly called the ball. And after the game, Scherzer kind of spoke out about this ABS system saying, we're going so far down the wormhole, can we just play baseball? We're humans. Can we just be judged by humans? Do we really need to disrupt the game? I think humans are defined by humans. Now, the ABS system, which you've probably noticed if you've watched a game so far, will not be in place in the regular season at the Major League level. It's being tested in spring training like it has been tested in the minor leagues. Ian Biddle, when he was on the show, talked about the ABS system and how it was, you know,

it was a little different for pitchers who thought that certain pitches were strikes and they weren't. Personally, I love this thing. I freaking love it. You get the calls right. And that is the point, right? Just like out or safe on the base paths where umpires were making terrible mistakes and calling certain people out and certain people safe when they weren't. I mean, we will not forget the 1985 World Series, will we against the Royals where that

call went against the Cardinals and perhaps cost them a world championship. That shouldn't happen. That kind of crap shouldn't happen. you shouldn't have pitches that are two or three inches off the plate called strikes. You know why? Because they're not strikes. Those are balls. Like that's the rules.

That's the rules of the game. That shouldn't be a thing. If a pitcher is consistently hitting the outside corner and getting strikes, he shouldn't be able to get another inch and then another inch. And it shouldn't stretch. No, no, no, no. Those are balls. Why are we punishing the hitters on that stuff?

And then, of course, you know, we turn it around. Why are we missing pitches that are strikes, you know, where they're right over the heart of the plate or something and right at the knees and they're being called balls? The pitcher shouldn't have to put up with that either. And I'd get it if like this whole ABS thing was taking a long time to check the call, you know, where some of the, you know, you see some of the replays that, you know, the video replays and they're checking out or safe.

And they take a little while and you're like, what are we doing here? Like, well, this is clear, right? That's not the case with this. It hasn't been taking long at all. It basically takes as long as it does to ask the first or third base umpire whether or not a hit or swung on a check swing. Did he go? Safe. No, he went.

It's almost that quick. It's quick. It's easy. And it's getting the calls right. which is what we want. You know, Lars Nupar has notoriously gotten rung up on crappy strike calls since he's been in the major leagues. You've seen it all the time and we're like, Newpar's got such a good eye that he knows that that pitch is an inch and a half outside. So he's not going to swing at it, but you've got umpires who are calling that strikes and it's going against Lars. And he's now won at

least two challenges that I'm aware of. The point is to get the calls right. I don't want to see umpires like Angel Hernandez and C.B. Buckner and Hunter Wendellstead and Las Diaz and Larry Van over, you know, these guys that are notoriously terrible behind the plate. I don't want, and I want to say this too, because it's a small percentage of umpires who continually make disastrous calls over and over. It's, It's the same guys. It's the same usual suspects, if you will. I don't want them changing the course of games anymore. I just don't. We have the technology to stop that crap from happening anymore. And it's not like you get unlimited challenges. It's not like you can just do this every bat. You know, you have to pick your spots just like with video replay.

You got to pick your spots when you think that's important or not. There are a lot more good umps than there are bad umps in the league. promise you, but you just don't hear about them as often because nobody's bitching and complaining about them because they're actually good at their job. So why should we live in the past and allow the dumb calls and the bad umpires continuously make egregious mistakes behind the plate or out on the base pass when it's safer out when we can prevent it from happening and get the calls right. That's the idea. in every sport. Get the calls right. That's what we're trying to do. So I, the fact that Scherz was

like popping off about it, I'm just like, shut up, shut up. Sound like the old man. Get off my lawn guy. Don't, don't be that guy. Embrace the change because it's making the game better. It's getting the calls right, which is the whole point. Cardinals are back at Roger Dean Stadium tomorrow to face the Marlins, Andre Palante, will be your schedule. starter set to make his spring debut. So we look forward to seeing that. It'll be a first pitch is scheduled for, what, 1205? 1205, St. Louis time. All right. Thank you for making Lockstone Cardinals, your first list in every day.

If you haven't already, give us a follow on X at L0 underscore Cardinals and at JD Sports Radio, TikTok, Instagram at Lockedong Cardinals. We're there. Appreciate all the new followers. Appreciate all of you. We're hitting the like and the subscribe button on YouTube. You guys are awesome. You're helping our channel and our love for the Cardinals grow. You guys are the best fans in baseball for a reason. We will see you next time on Lockdown Cardinals.

Hey, leave your comments down below on YouTube about your feelings on the ABS system. You like it. You dislike it. Some extra are there need to shut up. What do you feel about that? All right. We'll talk again tomorrow on Lockdown Cardinals.