It had been a long six days for the St. Louis Cardinals pitching staff. That’s how many games they went between starts of at least seven innings, requiring the bullpen to account for 25.1 innings of work. But John Lackey gave them a much needed break on Thursday as he went 7.2 strong innings in the 5-1 victory over the Chicago Cubs.
“You’re aware of the situation lately, they’ve been used a lot for sure,” downplayed Lackey. “I’d like to finish them all. Every time I pitch, I’d like to try and get deep, so there might be a little bit more importance on it today because of the last few days I guess.”
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“We needed that from Lackey for sure–in many ways,” complimented Mike Matheny. “John did the bullpen a great favor, even though we burned through three of them at the end.”
Lackey struck out 10 batters on the day but was efficient enough to do so on 109 pitches–80 of which were for strikes.
“You’ve got different plans against different teams, today just happened the slider was pretty good,” said Lackey. “I was locating the fastball pretty good, getting ahead. Had some opportunities with two strikes and ran into a couple.”
“Location–as you watch the highlights you’ll see strike threes on the inside-outside,” assessed Matheny. “He’s moving the ball around. He had a good slider–a good feel for where he needed to start it, where it looked like a strike out of the hand and it was breaking off and below. And then he made them aware enough that he could climb the ladder at times too. He had good velocity today so, all the way around exactly what our staff needed.”
The velocity from Lackey was consistently around 93mph–which he correctly notes he averaged earlier in his career as well, but he also mixed in his curveball at about 76mph.
“I feel as good now as I have in a long time,” said Lackey. “I’m changing angles–you get as many years as I’ve got, you’ve got to keep adding things. I pretty much do whatever I can to get somebody out nowadays.”
“I did feel a little strong today,” he acknowledged. “I feel like the arm-strength is still building. It felt really good today.”
And besides his work on the mound, Lackey came through at the plate with his first hit of the season–a two-run double in the 4th inning.
“I just don’t have to look at zero on the board anymore got a hit,” laughed Lackey. “(Arietta) got great stuff. I was late and got lucky it went down the line.”
With most of his career in the American League, it was his first double and RBI since June of 2011.
photo credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports
