The pitching revamp continues for the Cardinals

Reports at the start of the offseason stated that the St. Louis Cardinals were expected to be a popular target for rival teams looking to enhance their rosters for next season. While we are used to the Cardinals usually being the ones hoping to add to a postseason roster, the organization has fully committed to being on the other side of the negotiation table.

After last offseason was full of empty transition and runway promises, Chaim Bloom made it known he is more than just words as he dealt Sonny Gray to the Red Sox for a pair of pitchers with different profiles. One lefty, one right. One MLB-ready, another in A-ball. Both have starting potential, one could be a lockdown reliever. Who knows, the prospect projection game is one that is yet to be mastered but, on the surface, it looks like the Cardinals did well in a return for Gray and $20 million. The righty, Richard Fitts, figures to be a top contender for the major league rotation that now features Matthew Liberatore, Michael McGreevy, Andre Pallante, Kyle Leahy (all but confirmed), and Fitts. Woof.

Cardinals pitching is ugly now, but help is on the way… eventually

Obviously, that starting rotation is going to take some bumps and bruises, but the team should get some answers on the future of most if not all of those arms. Liberatore will get his chance to build off a solid first year as a major league starter and look to remain strong all season. He is far from an ace, though, as he will hope to unlock a strikeout or two more per game and become a consistent starter. McGreevy could potentially just be a younger Cardinals pitcher of old that fills up the strikezone with a low-90s fastball. I was trying to avoid saying pitch to contact but here we are. Pallante was just miserable for most of the season after a decent couple of seasons out of the bullpen. Without many other options, Pallante is going to be penciled into the rotation. Leahy will be a fun story to follow and I think he could have some success as a starter. His sweeper is elite and he has some pop to his fastball, so his durability and pitch mix will be his success-determining factors. Finally, Fitts seems like he will be fine for the 2025 season, and the scouting reports look good, but without actually seeing him throw and not doing a deep dive yet, I don’t want to say too much good or bad about him.

Okay, we all knew it was going to be ugly on the mound next year and the Cardinals were not blind to that either. At the draft last year, we got to see that the Cardinals finally realized that they were falling behind in pitching development and their zone-filling way of pitching resulted in way too much “soft contact” and middling ERAs. Out of their 21 selections in the 2025 draft, St. Louis selected 12 pitchers, all from the college ranks. Beyond the age, these arms all possess high-powered fastballs and/or elevated strikeout rates. Even if half of these guys show some level of success, it was great to see the organization truly commit to this way of pitching. Of course, high-velocity tends to get negative views as 100mph fastballs are met with “when is his TJ surgery” or “can he throw strikes” types of comments, and these prospects are not immune to those questions. We won’t get an answer on the majority of these guys in the next 3-5 years, but again, seeing this shift in thinking leads me to believe the Cardinals will continue to be aggressive to get a new archetype of pitchers in the organization.

I wanted to do a quick look to see if my thoughts on the Cardinals’ lack of strikeouts was just recency bias, as my philosophy and thoughts towards pitching and strikeouts has changed. A decade-long dive, though, showed it has been mediocre for awhile. Since 2015, the Cardinals organization ranks 9th in ERA and 10th in total fWAR as a pitching staff, but as we have learned, the peripherals can tell a better story. St. Louis pitchers have an 8.04 K/9 since 2015, good for 24th in baseball, and I was surprised to see that they were worse at commanding the zone than I thought, with an 18th-best 3.22 BB/9 rate. As I moved things to the last five years, it got worse all around. The strikeout rate dropped to 29th, ERA went to 16th, and fWAR fell all the way to 19th. All that improved was the walk rate, moving up the ladder to 16th. FanGraphs also sorts by pitching staff’s average fastball velocity and the Cardinals checked in at 93.8 mph, good for 20th fastest in baseball.

How do we know things are going to be different? Beyond the team’s best pitching prospects and all their draft picks featuring fastballs that would make Miles Mikolas double-take, they all seem to have at least two pitches they can use to put hitters away without contact. While the Cardinals always had pride for ground ball rates and stellar infield defense, hitters have adjusted. They are more willing to strikeout if it increases their possibility of putting the ball in the air since a homer is worth more runs than any other hitting outcome. There’s a reason Kyle Schwarber gets paid way more than Luis Arraez. I remember Mikolas was on an episode of Cardinal Territory with Katie Woo early in the year and he talked about this. After his initial success, he said that hitters are more willing to take their “A”-swing on two-strike pitches, rather than shorten up and make contact. For guys like Mikolas, this hurt big time because they did not have that put away pitch to really put hitters in defensive mode when down in the count. The Cardinals have finally punched back at hitters, targeting a new type of pitchers for the organization dating back to the 2025 draft and continuing on through the Trade Deadline and into this offseason.

Now, guys like Liam Doyle, Tanner Franklin, Quinn Mathews, and potentially Brandon Clarke taunt hitters with their imposing stuff. Whether it is a power fastball or a devastating breaking ball, the Cardinals are clearly putting strikeouts to the forefront of their pitching staff. And it’s about time.