Rosenthal Back-to-Back??

(Busch Stadium) For the second time this season, the St. Louis Cardinals were able to utilize the combination of Seung Hwan Oh and Trevor Rosenthal to stagger the back-end of Thursday’s double-header.

“Yeah, Trevor looked great yesterday,” said Mike Matheny in this afternoon’s media session. “And Oh hasn’t been as good as he wants to be and believes he should be, and still has been good. I’m real happy with where they are right now.”

Regularly putting up triple digit velocity this season, Rosenthal lit up the radar gun with 102mph in yesterday’s game and picked up his second save of the year. Appearing in his first game on April 10th, Trevor has yet to pitch in back to back games. Would he have that same velocity and success if used in successive games?

“It’s a great question,” acknowledged Matheny. “And after every single one of them almost threw yesterday, it’s a tough question. It’s nice having that extra arm, now we’re talking about a potential using one of those guys here. Which we have to be careful with Tyler now, depending on how this would play out for Monday’s game. I would like to give them all significant rest and have multiple guys that could pitch in any inning–that’s the perfect world. But the game we’re in, it’s just who’s throwing the ball really well right now.

“You’re going to be tempted to use Trevor as often as you can, but there’s a plan. And the plan basically starts with the medical team. They’ve got to get their hands on him and say what they see and how they feel. Then after that, we talk about the workload and we give him some input. So far, we’ve been very conservative and it’s paid off. Unfortunately, there’s a whole bunch of other arms down there that need taking care of also.”

Due to the double-header and extra innings in Game 1, the St. Louis bullpen threw 7.2 innings yesterday. Only Miguel Socolovich, who threw 2.2 innings on Tuesday. Sam Tuivailala was the 26th man, but was unused and per the rule, returned to Memphis (AAA) after the game.

If rain were to interrupt the game early, an extended delay that would prematurely end the outing for starter Lance Lynn would lead to a tough decision of what the Cardinals will do.

“I bet they’ll be playing cards,” quipped Matheny with a smile before addressing the potential pitching problem. “Yeah, not a great plan. It’s going to be survival. Whenever you have those double-headers, putting yourself in a tough spot…it’s going to be dicey.”

photo credit: Jeff Curry, Scott Kane-USA TODAY Sports

Once the rain stops…#STLCards #Cardinals pic.twitter.com/qd1y7jZCym

— Brian Stull (@StullySTL) April 28, 2017