The St. Louis Cardinals Signed 30 year old relief pitcher Brett Cecil to a four year contract worth 30.5 million dollars. Brett Cecil started his career with the Toronto Blue Jays as a starting pitcher. He struggled as a starting pitcher for the first three years and was hurt in his fourth year. This is when the Blue Jays decided to Move Cecil to the bullpen, a move that saved his career. Cecil has been a full time relief pitcher for four years and in those four years has a 2.98 ERA. Cecil has averaged less than 60 innings a year as a relief pitcher, but thats expected from a guy that is mainly used against left handed batters.
The Cardinals made this move because Zach Duke went down with an injury at the end of the year. Duke was going to be the Cardinals second left handed pitcher out of the bullpen but with him injured a move had to be made. The reason a move had to be made is because Mike Matheny is one of the worst managers at using his bullpen. Matheny loves to over use guys in consecutive days and runs them into the ground over the course of a season. In 2014 Matheny ran Seth Maness into the ground by continually using him in back to back games. Since then Maness hasn't been the same. Last year Matheny did it with both Trevor Rosenthal and Kevin Siegrist. I remember in 2015 before the All-Star break Matheny used Rosenthal 4 or 5 times in a week. The week before the All-Star break is not the time to over use your closer. Rosenthal ended up blowing 2 saves and gave up runs when he came into a tie game. Since then Rosenthal hasn't been the same. So the Cardinals made this move to make sure Matheny has plenty of fresh talented arms in the bullpen so he can't over use pitchers.
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