Ready or Not, Michael Wacha to Make Debut for St. Louis Cardinals

Image: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

The St. Louis Cardinals seem to be the perfect franchise. Blessed with a tremendous fan base and ownership to match, the Cardinals have been able to maintain excellence at the major league level while also building one of the most highly respected farm systems in the game at the same time. It seems whenever the Cardinals have a hole to fill in their lineup on on their pitching staff, the player they bring up from the minors is ready to step in and perform well.

The next in line for the Cardinals is right hander Michael Wacha, who will make his big league debut on Thursday versus the Kansas City Royals.

Wacha burst onto the prospect scene after the Cardinals used the 19th overall selection on the Texas A&M product last June. He signed in time to work 21 professional innings, almost all of them in relief, and couldn’t have been more dominant. Wacha allowed a mere eight hits and four walks while striking out 40 hitters in that time.

As if to prove it was no fluke, Wacha took the Grapefruit League by storm during Spring Training. Splitting his time between Major League and Minor League camp, Wacha wound up yielding a single run across 24.2 innings of work, and that was unearned. He allowed just 10 hits and fanned 26.

Assigned to Triple-A Memphis to start the season, Wacha has been working exclusively as a starter and the results have been stellar. Wacha is 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA through nine starts and 52.2 innings of work. Strangely, though, Wacha has done this without benefit of the high strikeout rates that were expected. In fact, Wacha has fanned just 34 hitters this season, or just 5.8 per nine innings. That’s the kind of rate you’d expect from a sinkerballer, not from a guy who had fanned over 17 batters per nine innings a season ago (albeit in a small total of innings).

Wacha has out-performed his peripherals by stranding a high rate of baserunners and benefiting from an opposing BABIP of .197 and those numbers are unsustainable. Combine those with the low strikeout rate and there is every reason to believe that Wacha will struggle against the highest level of competition.

On the other hand, Wacha has most certainly been trying to work within the frameworks of pitch counts and trying to work deeper into games. Getting outs earlier in counts is a smart way to maximize innings, but if he is attempting to pitch to more contact it doesn’t show in the numbers. Wacha has averaged 93 pitches per start and under six innings per outing. His averaging 16 pitches per inning. While that isn’t horrible efficiency, it’s not exactly economical either.

There have been recent strides made in the strikeout department. Over a two start span on May 10 and 16, Wacha struck out 13 batters in 13 innings. Unfortunately, he slipped back to just two K’s in a five inning start at Salt Lake in his last AAA start.

Anytime you’re dealing with a Major League debut, it’s nearly impossible to know what to expect from any player in that situation. Wacha could very well feed off the emotion of the day and rack up a dozen strikeouts in seven strong innings. Of course, the Royals have struck out fewer times than any American League team, so Wacha may be relying on his defense quite a bit on Thursday.