The Cardinals announced today that two recently-designated relief pitchers have cleared waivers. Lefty Tyler Lyons was outrighted to Triple-A, while right-hander Greg Holland was given his release.
Both of these hurlers were trimmed from the St. Louis roster during a pre-trade deadline bullpen purge. Clearly, neither performed to expectations this year.
Lyons, 30, was one of the club’s most reliable relievers over the past few campaigns. But he dealt with injuries and struggled through 16 2/3 innings on the current season, allowing 16 earned runs on 24 hits.
Though he looks similar in many respects over that short sample — velocity, swinging-strike and strikeout rate — Lyons has given up quite a bit of hard contact. That’s reflected in the .412 BABIP he surrendered, which could reflect some poor fortune and/or degradation in the quality of his work.
As for Holland, he was off to a miserable start before hitting the DL for a hip impingement. Things were generally better upon his return: outside of one particularly awful outing, he allowed three earned runs and recorded 11 strikeouts in 11 frames.
Still, it’s hard to fault the Cards for deciding they’d seen enough, especially after Holland turned in another poor outing in his last appearance with the team. He ended up with a 7.92 ERA in his 25 frames for the St. Louis organization, which is not at all what the team bargained for when it made a late strike that promised the veteran hurler $14MM this season. The remainder of that promise will stay on the Cardinals’ books, less any pro-rated portion of the league minimum he makes with another organization.
Cardinals probably not disappointed to keep Lyons around
now just need to get rid of Fowler and Cecil.
Trade you Heyward for Fowler….
just kidding, no thanks
how about those brewers though, unreal, i think they’re almost unbeatable now with that offense.
Too many Infielders and not enough starting pitching for Brewers.
How about you wait until they actually win something.
Have you heard of the team from LA? Comparable offense & RP, far superior SP.
I’ve heard of the team from LA every year for awhile now, still waiting on a ring.
Anything can happen in October.
Playoffs are a crapshoot… But I do like the results for the Cubs when they play a team that isnt decimated by injuries in postseason..
2015 Mets 4-0 sweep
2017 Dodgers 4-1 beatdown
You know what I like? 3 straight NLCS appearances and 2 straight (gonna be 3) division titles. You know what else I like? That World Series Title, it never gets old.
Hahahahaha 1 ring in 100+ years. You better enjoy it.
Hey it’s only been 30 years when Oralsex Shesheiser was around!
Dumbass
It’s amazing how jealous ray_derek is of the Brewers
I see that you keep posting about the Brewers offense…..they didn’t have a great offense and then added Moose and Schoop. You act like they added prime Griffey and Manny
What about the pathetic up the middle defense
Yay!
Holland suddenly become one of the better relievers out of the Dodger’s pen.
If he reverts back to his normal self and now this terrible Cardinals version
I’d definitely think the Dodgers take a flyer and I don’t see Holland saying no with a shot at the playoffs
He’d have to agree to time in the minors.
Friedman and his henchman will say it’s a sneaky good move because they didn’t have to give up prospects. Cannot wait to see Axford, Baez, Fields, Chargrois, and Alexander in high leverage situations.
The amount of whining about the dodgers bullpen is pretty funny. You see how the Rockies hand out big contracts to non closer arms. Every one of them has failed. But thats what you expect the dodgers to do? get over it
Coors
It has to be more than coors. Shaw was one of the best bullpen arms in baseball and now he is the worst. Mcghee has success at coors before. Wade Davis has fallen off a cliff.
Im sort of joking but I think if you put Wade Davis back in Wrigley or Kauffman and he’s still one of the best relievers in baseball. And Shaw was never one of the best. He was solid but he was barely his old teams third best reliever.
Time in Denver worked OK for Greg Holland.
Not really. He was pretty mediocre last year
Yea jdgoat is right he started excellent but faded by the all star break
I could see him saying no…if the Cubs come calling. The extra incentive to stick it to the Cardinals
If he goes to the Cubs and has any success, Maddon will pitch him till his arm falls off.
Why do you think he would have any ill will towards the only team that would give him a lot of money, which in return, he was horrible and showed up out of shape?
The Cardinals are not contenders so it would be hard to stick it to him
Not sure what happened to Lyons this year. Last season he was almost lights out, right handed or left handed batters he faced. His mechanics must be different or he is not as deceptive this year in his delivery.
He got hurt and kept pitching.
Mike Matheny happened
I disagree with that. GMs need to be smarter. He looked awful last year.
Lyons was great last year. What are you talking about?
Giants will pick up holand as they prefer over hill players they only have to pay the minimum for.
He’s 32…
Definitely a good thing for St. Louis that Lyons cleared, now hopefully he accepts. They can try rest and heal and see if he can return to form. Very startling how steep of a cliff he fell off of between this year and last year.
I’m very surprised a rebuilding club didn’t take a flyer on him. Matheny’s reputation of chewing up relief pitchers must be pretty glaring across the league.
They said he accepted and is going to be a starter in Memphis….idea is to give him more concensity ….would be awesome if he returns to form…they were talking about him being the closer in the beginning of the year
This is great news then! He very well may have something left in the tank and just needs someone responsible in charge of his usage. Too early to write him off
Sent down for lacking “concensity”..?
That’s a new one, even for a Cards reliever.
Matheny broke Rosenthal, Siegrist, Lyons, Maness, Walden. Bowman all were young guys too.
2015 Matheny was particularly brutal on Rosie, Siegrist & Maness. Walden was used 8 times in 12 days in April and suffered career ending injury.
Only Lyons, & Bowman have avoided major surgery.
Walden? He pitched only about 10 innings with cards
Holland to the Rangers
It’s time for Holland to retire
why? the guy clearly wasnt right without ST and suffered accordingly. Still has talent, needs to get himself physically right and his confidence back..
This was about as expected as a Latin player walking up to Cardi B’s I Like It.
I looked it up and actually didn’t find much if any Cardi. Lot of Drake and Migos though, which is disappointing.
Personally- I vibe with the older stuff, Dre, Pac, Em, Jay, Snoop, Big etc. and there’s still plenty of that.
Nothing is worse than Yu Darvish’s Crank Dat though
Update
5 total players use I Like It
Drew Butera, Nick Tropeano, Jesus Aguilar, Daniel Robertson and Tomas Nido
Surprising amount of WWE entrances with a surprising lack of Kanye West. Would’ve thought Power, Stronger or Yikes would be more popular.
I wish it was September and the rosters were expanded just so the Cubs could turn Holland around and kill two birds with one stone: pay only minimum while St. Louie pays the rest and Holland will get to stick it to the Cards
That’s IF he can turn things around, which is a big IF…,I’ve just always liked the guy is all
As a Cards fan, I’d love to see the Cubs put him into a September game versus the Cards…
The Cards would have to get to the postseason first hah
Holland was pretty awful in the second half for the Rockies last year as well. It appears he is just not good anymore
Paid $14 million for Holland and let Seung Hwan Oh go. Oh is a better pitcher nothing more, nothing less, and it was only his misuse by Matheny last year that made him look bad. How the Cards ever paid $14 million for Holland is a joke, Holland must have thought all his Christmases had come at once.