Mikolas fighting to finish strong, pitch 200 innings

This story was excerpted from John Denton’s Cardinals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Without question, the most essential job for the Cardinals during the offseason is addressing their pitching staff by adding three starters and at least a couple of bullpen arms via trades or free-agent signings.

Just a notch below that in importance, however, was finding a way to get workhorse right-hander Miles Mikolas back on track and in a good place mentally before a busy offseason begins for the 35-year-old pitcher.

Originally scheduled to pitch on Wednesday, Mikolas requested that the Cardinals move him up to Tuesday to make his MLB-leading 34th start in Milwaukee. That put him on track to make his 35th start by the end of the season. Mikolas has been very much a work in progress the past four months, going from a 4-1 start to a stretch when he lost eight of nine decisions.

The issues for the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Mikolas were aplenty -- his ground-ball rate had plunged, his hard-hit rate had risen and no pitcher in baseball had surrendered more two-strike hits. None of it has gone over well with Mikolas, who even tried going clean shaven to break his string of bad performances.

“I’ve been dealing with a lot of anger lately -- on the field and at the golf course -- and it’s been spilling out everywhere,” Mikolas admitted before he and the Cardinals topped the Brewers 4-1 on Tuesday.

Mikolas is the chill, happy-go-lucky type, and he’s always drawing laughs with his huge collection of comical T-shirts or his witty replies to clubhouse trash talk. But beneath that funny exterior burns a competitor who wanted nothing to do with simply mailing things in during the end of this forgettable season.

That competitive nature revealed itself on Tuesday when he allowed just five hits and one earned run over seven innings to briefly delay the rival Brewers' celebration of their NL Central Division title. (After losing 4-1 to the Cardinals, the Brewers clinched minutes later when the Cubs lost in Atlanta.)

“I wanted to do my best and make sure the Brewers didn’t get to celebrate out there on the field in front of us,” Mikolas said with a wry grin. “I think they were celebrating in the locker room. As long as it wasn’t on the field in front of us, I was pretty happy.”

Of importance from the win for Mikolas were the five strikeouts and the six swing-and-misses. The curse of Mikolas’ exceptional control, catcher Andrew Knizner said, is that his pitches often catch too much of the plate and hitters know he is going to almost always be in the zone. However, by working to reshape his slider -- which Mikolas has been experimenting with for weeks -- he could give the appearance of pitches being strikes before darting off the plate. Knizner, for one, saw a different Mikolas on the mound and he liked it.

“Miles is a happy-go-lucky guy, but don’t let that fool you; that guy wants to go out there and shove it down the opposing team’s throats every time he takes the ball,” Knizner said. “It’s nice to have a teammate and a leader like him who is able to flush the bad things and move on. It’s nice for him to have a great outing and hopefully carry it into this last one.”

With his next start on Sunday, Mikolas will become the first Cardinals pitcher with 35 starts in a season since Chris Carpenter in 2010. Also, he needs just 5 2/3 innings to hit 200 for the third time in his career. For Mikolas -- who is signed for two more seasons -- it could be a silver lining in an otherwise sour season. He desperately wants to go into the offseason, when he is planning to evaluate his pitches and his plan of attack, with some positive vibes.

“[Two-hundred innings] is maybe one number I can hang my hat on at the end of what I consider a pretty rough year,” said Mikolas, an NL All-Star in 2018 and 2022. “If I could somehow squeak out 200 innings, that’s one number I could look at that wouldn’t be half bad. … It’s important to go into the offseason with a good mindset and idea of what I need to do.”