NEW YORK -- On a day the Cardinals officially added a major piece to their bullpen picture, they lost another to injury. The club placed left-hander Brett Cecil on the 10-day disabled list with a left shoulder strain as part of a flurry of roster moves made prior to Saturday's game against the Mets.
Cecil alerted club trainers of shoulder pain after making his season debut Thursday, when he threw 10 pitches over one-third of an inning in St. Louis' Opening Day loss. After an initial MRI did not reveal anything alarming, Cecil is set to undergo another.
"Hopefully it's something we can be proactive about, get ahead of and put behind us," Cards manager Mike Matheny said.
Left-hander Ryan Sherriff was recalled from Triple-A Memphis in a corresponding move, the second of five transactions the team made Saturday. The club also officially signed closer Greg Holland, transferred injured righty Alex Reyes to the 60-day disabled list and traded right-hander Josh Lucas to the A's.
Holland won't join the team for at least 10 days, the same amount of time it'll be without Cecil, at minimum. Cecil experienced "dead arm" at points this spring after reporting late to camp due to a personal matter. But he shrugged off the feeling as normal, telling Matheny such fatigue factors into every camp. Cecil logged a 3.88 ERA over 73 appearances last season for St. Louis, the first of a four-year, $30.5 million contract.
"He obviously had a slower spring with the late start," Matheny said. "We felt like he was in as good a place as we'd seen him. He was throwing the ball well. I was getting positive reports, except for the dead arm. But he was getting outs. Yesterday when the trainer came up to me when he exited the game, that was the first I'd heard about pain."
Sherriff was one of the last cuts of Cardinals camp coming off a year in which he made 13 appearances at the big league level. The club anticipated the 27-year-old factoring into the Major League bullpen picture regularly in 2017, but it did not expect to summon him from Triple-A Memphis so soon. As a pitcher with Minor League options remaining, the Cards expect to shuttle Sherriff between levels often this season.

Lucas traded
St. Louis needed to reach a roster resolution with Lucas, who it designated for assignment to make room for Jordan Hicks earlier in the week. Saturday, the Cardinals traded Lucas to Oakland in exchange for pitching prospect Casey Meisner.
Meisner, 22, is a 6-foot-7 righty who made 12 starts last season at Double-A. Originally a third-round Draft pick of the Mets, Meisner was traded to Oakland for Tyler Clippard in 2015. He was ranked as the A's No. 27 prospect by MLB Pipeline, and he will begin the year at Double-A Springfield.
Lucas made five big league appearances after a late-season callup, his first, in 2017. The 27-year-old Lucas was one of the Cardinals' best pitchers this spring, when he threw 11 1/3 scoreless innings across Grapefruit League play.