Cardinals primed for a dramatic makeover of their starting pitching rotation

Less than a year ago, the St. Louis Cardinals executed a hasty rebuilding project of their starting rotation which saw them blitz the free agent market prior to Thanksgiving and come away with three veteran starters around whom they structured their competitive hopes in 2024.

Now, with a much longer term and more dramatic rebuild rushing in from the horizon, it’s possible that none of Kyle Gibson, Sonny Gray and Lance Lynn will pitch for the Cardinals in 2025. All three are under team control; Gibson and Lynn have team options and Gray is under contract for two more seasons.

Lynn’s option was not expected to be picked up even prior to the Cardinals announcing a new direction, and the accompanying payroll trim seemingly turns what was a no-brainer decision to bring Gibson back into an ominous forebear of the coming state of the team’s major league payroll. Gray, who is owed $65 million over the next two seasons and possesses a no-trade clause, will be asked about his preferences by the team and shopped on the market accordingly.

The two remaining members of last winter’s planned rotation remain under contract for one more season, though it’s not certain that either of Steven Matz and Miles Mikolas will return. Of the two, Mikolas is by far the more likely, given that he’s owed more money than Matz and has turned in measurably worse results – though he has been much more reliable about staying on the field.

Signed to a four-year, $44 million contract ahead of the 2022 season, Matz’s results as a Cardinal to date land somewhere between incomplete and insufficient. Injuries restricted him to just seven starts in 2024, saddling him with an ERA north of 5.00. In three St. Louis seasons, Matz has mustered just 34 starts and 197 ⅓ innings pitched; those numbers are closer to Mikolas’s Cardinal average over just a single season.

Still, Matz is left handed, and he has historically featured a pitch profile which projects as more successful than Mikolas’s. Crucially, he has also flashed success and uptick in stuff when pitching out of the bullpen, and he does not have any trade protection. Mikolas, with a no-trade clause, could pick his destination, whereas Matz would be at the whims of whichever team was willing to dream on the potential of what he could provide if healthy.

Erick Fedde, acquired at the trade deadline, was perfectly adequate over his 10 starts, posting a 3.72 ERA and averaging just over five innings per outing. He’s also owed just $7.5 million next season before reaching free agency, and his trade value could tempt the Cardinals into a quick flip.

Ironically, perhaps the most likely player in the organization to make starts for the Cardinals in 2025 is Andre Pallante, who entered last winter as a reliever on the bubble with an uncertain future. After making the team, he found himself searching, and came to the coaching staff with a request to be sent to Triple-A Memphis and given an opportunity to start, figuring the structured schedule would be to his benefit.

It most assuredly was, and Pallante was the team’s most consistent and successful starter throughout the second half of the season. He held opponents to an OPS of just .603 over 12 second half starts, leaning heavily on the development of a sinker that jumped from just 2.6% of his pitches in 2023 to 19% in 2024. Deployed heavily against righties, he held down his OPS allowed against those batters to .742. In 2023, that number was a non-competitive .881.

Outside of Pallante, the internal rotation options for the Cardinals come with a raft of uncertainty. President of baseball operations John Mozeliak named righty Michael McGreevy as a pitcher whom the Cardinals view as having earned a real shot at a place in the rotation on the back of three successful starts in the big leagues and improved results at Memphis. McGreevy, too, added and refined a pitch; building in a cutter put him in a position to neutralize lefties, who had previously punished him.

Gordon Graceffo made a couple cameo appearances for the Cardinals in 2024 and pitched well, but his innings total jumped by 50 year over year and came with an ERA approaching 5.00 in the minors, with his expected ERA and fielding independent pitching totals exceeding that mark.

Zack Thompson entered the winter with big league experience, but he was sent down in mid-April despite breaking camp in the rotation and was not called up for the rest of the year. His Triple-A numbers bested Graceffo’s, but he turns 27 at the end of the month and is out of minor league options; consequently, he could well be a candidate to be outrighted off the 40-player roster in order to free up a Rule 5 protection slot.

Top pitching prospects Tink Hence and Tekoah Roby will both require that protection this winter, though both lost significant time to injury in 2024 and neither can be fairly counted on to provide big league starts next season. Fast-rising Quinn Mathews will be invited to his first big league camp in the spring and may well be the first man up for any rotation vacancies once the year starts; with sufficient cleanout of veterans, he may even be in the mix to break camp with the big league team.

If last winter’s work was about a search for pitching certainty, this winter appears to be geared toward opening up opportunities. The Cardinals will play 162 (or thereabouts) games in 2025, and someone will take the ball first in each of them.

This year’s team, striving for the postseason, was determined to feel secure heading into each start. Next year’s is far more likely to be up in the air; filling the innings will yet again be a significant burden.