If the Cardinals blazed the trail with the homegrown pitching staff that lifted them to a National League pennant in 2013, the Mets paved it two years later with a celebrated, power-packed rotation of young arms that carried them to the World Series. The Mets saw that October as their arrival, the curtain-raiser on a long bask in the lights of the postseason. They had a rotation stocked with early-twentysomethings who all threw in the high nineties, and that group had a grip on the National League. Or not.
“When you look at our club there is definitely a youth factor in it,” said John Mozeliak, the Cardinals’ president of baseball operations.