Maness The Closer??

The question before yesterday’s game was that despite his valuable role earlier, could Seth Maness’ stuff make him a candidate to move to more of a set-up role with Jordan Walden on the disabled list. The answer from Mike Matheny foreshadows Maness getting loose in the Cardinals bullpen to come for the 9th inning of work as Trevor Rosenthal appears to be unavailable tonight…

“Art of getting outs, right–Seth gets outs,” said Matheny. “I think he’s gonna have to be maybe more intentional about what he’s doing to lefties–that’s usually that differentiator for me. That lockdown-8th inning guy has a comfortable repertoire against a left-handed batter as well–which he should. He can locate up, his slider and he has a real good changeup. We’ve used him so much against righties, I think he’s felt very good against righties and he’s seen so few lefties. You tell Seth that he needs to do something or manipulate a little bit his stuff, he’s a pitch-maker, he can do that. So, I’m not ruling out he could be one of the guys considered for that.”

For his career, lefties are hitting .298 (57-191) against Maness while right-handed batters are .259 (97-375). Thus far in 2015, Maness has faced 13 left-handers (4-13) and 28 righties (8-27).