Amid standout years, Cardinals prospects Quinn Mathews and Jimmy Crooks form batterymate bond

Among the 26 starts he made spanning four levels of pro baseball this past season, Cardinals prospect Quinn Mathews casually shook off the suggestion that his Aug. 28 start for Class AA Springfield as one he may have felt stood out to him in 2024.

That night, with fellow top prospect Jimmy Crooks behind the plate, Mathews allowed one run and struck out 12 batters in 72⁄3 innings. He carried a perfect game through 61⁄3 innings before it was broken up by a solo home run.

It marked one of the lefty's 14 quality starts, one of his six double-digit strikeout games and his last in Class AA before a third promotion of the season.

"Not really. It was just a start, to be honest with you," Mathews, 24, said on Wednesday via Zoom. "The good ones are whatever. The bad ones, if you want to ask me about the bad ones, we can talk about those because I remember all those."

Mathews' take on how he views his "good ones" vs. his "bad ones" could come off to most as telling of the left-hander's mentality. That is unless you know him as well as Crooks does.

"No, that's all bullcrap to him. I know him. I know him too well," Crooks, 23, joked moments later during the Zoom session.

Mathews and Crooks — two former fourth-round picks drafted a year apart — shared time together this past summer with Double-A Springfield (Missouri) amid parallel breakout seasons. They were named Cardinals minor league pitcher and player of the year earlier this week.

Mathews, a 2023 draftee and Stanford University product, sported a 2.76 ERA and struck out a minor league-leading 202 batters across 1431⁄3 innings across Class Low-A, Class High-A, Class AA and Class AAA.

Crooks, a 2022 draftee from the of Oklahoma, batted .321 with a .908 on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS) in 90 Class AA games. Crooks caught 81 games behind the plate and had a .996 fielding percentage while posting a career-best 33% caught stealing rate. The 23-year-old's .908 OPS paced Cardinals minor leaguers with 350 or more plate appearances, helped him earn Texas League MVP honors and aided Springfield in finishing the season with a franchise-best 79-59 record.

The start to Mathews' minor league season and career began with Class Low-A Palm Beach in April. He reached Class High-A Peoria by mid-May and joined Crooks on Springfield's roster by the end of June after he posted a 2.18 ERA and struck out 110 batters in 13 starts between the two levels.

The two formed a battery for the first time in an official game on June 30.

"When he (Mathews) first got up there, he made a joke to me," Crooks recalled. "He's like, 'Ah, it's the worst day of the week.' It's like, 'What do you mean by that, Quinn?' It's like, 'It's start day.' It's like, 'Oh, my God, you're not going to be that type of guy.' But no. I love catching Quinn. I love talking to Quinn. He's the homie. He's just fun."

Crooks, who batted .355 with a 1.018 OPS in the final 46 regular-season games he played in for Springfield, caught eight of Mathews' nine starts in Class AA before Mathews was promoted to Class AAA Memphis on Aug. 28.

The 24-year-old lefty posted a 2.41 ERA and struck out 70 batters in 521⁄3 innings he logged for the S-Cards.

"Like, I said, I know he's going to go out there and dominate. I know he's just bullcrapping all the time," Crooks said. "That's just how he is. He's a robot on the mound. He's pretty steady-paced here. He doesn't show any emotion. He just goes out there and pitches his (expletive) off."

Across their breakout years, they felt the benefit from working with one another as batterymates. The same could be said of their experiences forming a battery with other Cardinals prospects.

"I was fortunate enough to have the catching that the Cardinals system has, which made a lot of the transitions a lot easier," said Mathews, who was also named Baseball America's minor league pitcher of the year. "I mean, Jimmy could speak on that too. When you have such quality players around you, especially at the catching position ... it made a lot of the first-year problems that I think I could have had in terms of pitch-calling games and just games speeding up, games slowing down — a lot of that is dictated by catching. Pitching does it too, but the catchers in the group did a great job. I think that, as a whole, just made my first year a lot easier.

"Yeah, to piggyback from that, Quinn had a really good year," Crooks said. "I mean, I loved catching that dude. He made my job really, really easy. Same with the whole pitching stuff up there in Springfield."