Cardinals need a fifth starter for their rotation. What are manager Oli Marmol’s options?

On Sunday, the St. Louis Cardinals distributed a 200-piece jigsaw puzzle depiction of Adam Wainwright to ticket holders who came to see their series finale against the Boston Red Sox.

Given how the action unfolded on the field, the metaphoric quality of attempting to turn a pile of disparate pieces into a whole starting pitcher was perhaps a touch too on the nose.

Matthew Liberatore allowed four earned runs in three innings of work in his third start of the season. He’s been pulled in the middle of the fourth in each of those starts, owing to a combination of pitch limits and ineffectiveness as he’s been tasked with transitioning out of an effective role in the bullpen on the fly.

Immediately following Sunday’s game, manager Oli Marmol conceded the Cardinals will need to re-examine their options for that spot the next time it comes up, this coming Saturday. In doing so, he acknowledged a desire to do what’s “fair” to Liberatore, which he expanded upon Monday.

“It’s a tough situation,” Marmol said. “It is. I want to do what’s right for Libby, and the first filter is do what’s right for the club. That’s kind of the way I’m thinking through it.

“It’s a tough situation. We have a need in the rotation at the moment [that] we can’t fill. Our hope is to have a decision made here in the next couple of days.”

When the pieces are dumped out on the table, the first filter is the schedule. Marmol said the team intends to honor Thursday’s off day for the rotation, giving each of Sonny Gray, Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson and Miles Mikolas the extra day of rest they’ve been anticipating rather than pushing each up a day onto a normal five day – four games, with Thursday off – turn.

The hole created by Steven Matz’s back injury led the club to Liberatore as the pitcher who “gives [them] the best chance to win,” as Marmol phrased his explanation repeatedly. That’s in part due to uneven results delivered by Andre Pallante and Zack Thompson both in the big leagues and in the minors thus far this season, and also due to a reluctance to turn to other options in the minors who don’t yet have major league experience.

Triple-A Memphis released its partial pitching plan for the week on Tuesday with their game notes, and the published schedule shows Gordon Graceffo starting Tuesday, Thompson on Wednesday, Michael McGreevy on Thursday and Pallante on Friday.

A regular rest schedule would preclude any of those four from starting Saturday for the Cardinals, assuming they take the ball as advertised. Minor league game notes are always subject to change with the whims and needs of the parent club, though it does seem worth noting that the Cardinals are sufficiently invested in building Pallante and Thompson back to palatability that they would be seemingly unlikely to force too many schedule changes upon them.

Two pitchers not yet listed for scheduled minor league outings are both on the 40-player roster and arrived in the same trade (in exchange for Jordan Hicks) last July – righties Adam Kloffenstein and Sem Robberse.

Kloffenstein has posted a 4.84 ERA in nine starts for Memphis thus far this season, but his strikeout to walk ratio is a mere 1.77 and he has just 39 strikeouts in 48 ⅓ minor league innings. Robberse’s numbers have been significantly better – a 3.29 ERA and 3.31 strikeouts per walk – but his fastball generally sits around 90 miles per hour without much differentiation from a cutter which plays in the upper 80s.

Numbers in the minors, after all, don’t always translate directly.

“They’re all options,” Marmol said of the minor league starters. “It’s just what makes the most sense, and whose development are you disrupting the most, who’s the closest to where you need them to be. But are they an option? Yes. They have to be.”

Questions about external options are the exclusive provenance of the front office, and Marmol said his job is to manage the players that are in the system right now. Pitchers on the market, though, may end up being the best fit, at least as far as the short term is concerned.

Righty Brad Keller, a long-time Kansas City Royal, was designated for assignment by the Chicago White Sox on Monday, and posted a 4.86 ERA in five appearances (two starts) in his brief stint there this season. One of those starts was against the Cardinals on May 3, in which he took the loss while striking out five and allowing three earned runs in 4 ⅔ innings. His second start was this past Saturday against the New York Yankees, and he allowed five runs in four innings before being placed on the waiver wire the next day.

He is not a perfect option. Nor are any of the pitchers in the minors. In order for a jigsaw puzzle to work, the pieces have to be properly cut so that they can be reassembled precisely into an appealing picture.

Perhaps that is where the metaphor ultimately falls apart. It doesn’t appear that the Cardinals have all the pieces they need, and instead, they’re left doing their best to push the closest thing to a fit that they can find.