ST. LOUIS — Paco Rodriguez had a locker full of clothes in the visitors’ clubhouse at Busch Stadium, but he wasn’t there Sunday morning. So we were denied the chance to ask him about going on the 15-day disabled list with what the team is calling a strained left elbow.

Right-hander Matt West is up from Triple-A and wearing number 76. West is available out of the bullpen today; manager Don Mattingly described the 26-year-old as a possible multi-inning pitcher with a “live arm and good stuff.” That’s better than a dead arm, of course, and it seems Rodriguez might have one of those.

What’s interesting is that Rodriguez never mentioned this Saturday when we spoke in excess of six minutes about his drop in velocity. I went back over our interview, and this is the closest he came to admitting an injury:

“Not every day you’re going to be — your arm’s not going to feel as great as it does other days. You’ve got to work with what you’ve got.”

Hindsight being 20-20, I probably should have asked a follow-up question, but that’s the kind of banal statement any pitcher might make. The larger takeaway is that Rodriguez never mentioned anything specific about his elbow, or even so much as an inability to finish some of his pitches. A bit later in the interview he said, “my arm feels good. It’s just a matter of being able to get it out of me.”

That simple observation could point to a larger problem, Mattingly said.

“He just feels like he doesn’t have true finish on the ball,” the manager said. “He doesn’t have any pain per se, but we know he’s having trouble getting extended and finishing pitches. We’re going to try to catch this before it gets to anything.”

So, why the elbow exam? Mattingly explained that when pitchers complain about an inability to finish their pitch, the problem is often traced back to the elbow. And when a player flies to Los Angeles to get his elbow examined, it’s usually team physician Dr. Neal ElAttrache doing the examination.

Since Rodriguez hasn’t reported any specific pain to the team, the level of concern isn’t too high.

“Like most of our guys, we’ve tried to get it early at this point in the season,” Mattingly said. “We’re not going to try to push anybody. We’d rather get on top of it now and have him for the latter part of the year instead of trying to pitch through something right now and end up being a long-term problem. We hope we’re catching something on the front and not let it get to being a big thing.”

As I mentioned last night, all credit goes to Jeff Zimmerman for tabulating the day-by-day velocity data for every major-league pitcher and linking it to his Twitter account yesterday. That’s what first tipped me off to Rodriguez’s downtick.

Putting Zimmerman’s data into words, Rodriguez’s average velocity is down 2.3 mph since April and 3.0 mph since 2014. Those figures rank third and fourth in the majors, respectively. That doesn’t automatically make a pitcher a Tommy John surgery candidate, but it’s a good reason to get your elbow checked out at the very least.