Brendan Marks, Mon, 11 May 2015 15:46:00 GMT
rick hummel of the st. louis post-dispatch was in memphis over the weekend to check out rehab starts by both marco gonzales and jaime garcia, two possible 
options to fill the void in the cardinals’ starting rotation left by the injured adam wainwright.
Hummel popped in on The Ryan Kelley Morning After Monday to talk about what he saw and other topics surrounding the Cardinals.
We’ve typed out most of the major talking points. Listen to the whole thing below:
The stats from Jaime Garcia’s rehab outing aren’t good on the surface, but you think he had an impressive outing?
“Yeah, Jaime was throwing hard. Obviously he didn’t command a whole lot, his counts were behind a little bit, his breaking ball was so-so and his change-up was not very good…but the fact he threw hard was impressive to me.”
On Garcia’s and Marco Gonzales’ status:
“They can’t bring any one of those guys up when their pitch counts extend them to only one or two outs in the third inning. They’re going to have to be more efficient than that. Gonzales will have to make a couple more (rehab starts), because he only threw 56 pitches…he’s going to have to get to 80 or 85. Garcia you only have a 30-day window in theory. You can keep him on the rehab program for so long. Garcia will pitch somewhere Friday…he needs one and possibly two (more starts before he could get called up to the Cardinals).”
More on Garcia:
“This is it for him and Cardinals. They don’t see any reason to wait. If he’s getting close, they’re going to bring him up. Gonzales is future book prospect. Garcia, the future is this year for him.”
Do you think the Cardinals need to make a move right now for a fifth starter?
“I don’t think so. I’d be more concerned about the 8th inning. The 7th and 8th inning has not gone well since Jordan Walden went down. They’re going to have to do some tinkering there somewhere. The long-shot approach would be if Gonzales and Garcia were both viable starting pitchers, you could have Martinez be that 8th inning guy again.”
What do you think of the possibility of a six-man rotation?
“It’s been done before. That would allow (The Cardinals to monitor Michael Wacha’s and Carlos Martinez’s innings a little bit). Gonzales too if he’s in the mix. Even Garcia. If you have a lot of games in a row…you could do that. The bottom line on any rotation is you have to get in the 7th or 8th inning every once in a while. These five-inning and six-inning starts aren’t good enough.”
Here’s the complete segment: