There is a bit of surprise in which starters will be involved in the expanded rotation, as the Cards optioned Michael McGreevy to Triple-A Memphis today.  McGreevy is one of the Cardinals’ top pitching prospects, and after impressing in his first 23 MLB innings last season, seemed poised to break camp with the team after posting a 1.08 ERA over 16 2/3 spring innings.

However, Matthew Liberatore also turned heads in camp, with a 1.62 across his own 16 2/3 frames of work.  As a result, Liberatore was named as one of the initial starting five (along with Sonny Gray, Miles Mikolas, Erick Fedde, and Andre Pallante), with Steven Matz slated to work as a long man before becoming the sixth starter.

Obviously, a single injury could change these plans considerably, and some other health issues in camp also perhaps factored in the Cardinals’ plans.  Zack Thompson and Drew Rom are both dealing with injuries, so McGreevy became needed as a Triple-A depth arm given the lack of other ready options.  Given how rare it is for a pitching staff to get through a season in one piece, it might not be long before McGreevy gets another opportunity in the Show.

The “you can never have too much pitching” mantra looms large in what is technically a surplus situation for the Cardinals pitching staff.  Yet the number of arms available also relates to a strangely quiet offseason, as the Cards ended up retaining most of their veteran talent despite their stated goal last fall to view 2025 as something of a re-development year.  The team’s inability to trade Nolan Arenado garnered the most headlines, yet on the pitching end, St. Louis also opted to keep Fedde, who has only one year remaining on his contract.  Gray had no interest in waiving his no-trade clause to go elsewhere, and trading Mikolas or Matz (also free agents next winter) could’ve probably required the Cards to eat some money since both pitchers are coming off down years.

Mikolas or Matz could be more plausibly moved closer to the deadline, perhaps in salary-dump fashion once some of their salaries are already doled out over the first half.  Fedde might be one of the most sought-after rental pitchers at the deadline if he matches his 2024 form, though naturally the Cardinals are hoping they can return to contention this year, rather than look to sell at the deadline.

Marmol also announced the rest of the Cardinals’ roster for Opening Day, including the news that Victor Scott II won the team’s center field competition.  Scott was battling with Michael Siani for the job, yet Scott outhit not only Siani (who struggled badly) but also just about the rest of the team by posting a 1.225 OPS over 49 plate appearances.  Scott may not play every single day since Lars Nootbaar also figures to get some time in center as the Cardinals juggle around their lineup, but Scott has put himself in position to get the lion’s share of playing time up the middle.

Arenado, Willson Contreras, and Masyn Winn will be the only true lineup regulars for St. Louis, and Brendan Donovan is also expected to play every day but at multiple positions.  Moving Arenado would’ve helped open up third base and a lineup position to get more players onto the field, yet Marmol said he is confident of the team’s plans to rotate players around without necessarily adhering to strict platoons.

“I’m going to do my absolute best to get everybody the necessary amount of at-bats for us to know what we have at the end of the year….We’ll see what this looks like in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.  But we’ll have a [lineup] rotation that while we’re all healthy, still gets guys at-bats,” Marmol said.

Infielder Jose Fermin won’t be part of this mix in the early going, as Fermin was optioned to Triple-A today.  Woo notes that Fermin was told earlier this week that he would be part of the Opening Day roster, yet the Cardinals’ plan apparently changed in the last few days.  Without Fermin, the Cards don’t have a proper backup shortstop, yet the versatile Donovan will handle that role if Winn is given a breather.

St. Louis has a veteran-laden rotation that includes two pitchers (Gray, Mikolas) who might’ve been trade candidates this winter were it not for full no-trade protection in both of their deals. Matz’s $12MM salary made him difficult for the Cards to move as well, and the team chose not to deal Fedde despite the right-hander having just one season left on his contract as the organization enters something of a transition year that was intended to focus on developing younger players.

McGreevy, 24, was the Cardinals’ first-round pick back in 2021 and made a brief MLB debut in 2024, tossing 23 innings with a 1.96 ERA and an 18-to-2 K/BB ratio. He also pitched to a 4.02 earned run average with a 21.6% strikeout rate, 6.9% walk rate and 49% ground-ball rate in 150 Triple-A frames. He currently ranks 10th among Cardinals prospects at Baseball America and 11th at MLB.com. He’s also already made 51 starts at the Triple-A level over the past two seasons and thus has little left to prove at the top minor league level.

So far in camp, McGreevy has pitched 11 2/3 innings and held opponents to a pair of runs on nine hits. He hasn’t walked any of the 43 batters he’s faced and has kept the ball on the ground at a nice 47.1% clip, though his 18.6% strikeout rate is a ways below average. Be that as it may, it’s been an undeniably strong camp for a former first-rounder who looks largely ready for an earnest big league audition.

There are obviously factors that could yet change the composition of a potential six-man group. Injuries are abundant this time of year and could impact any rotation at any point. The Cards were at least reported to be “open” to offers on Fedde earlier this month, though there’s no real indication they’re seriously pursuing a trade of the affordable right-hander, who’s earning $7.5MM this year. They’ve also been considering left-hander and former top prospect Matthew Liberatore for rotation work, although president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said late last week that at least initially, the expectation was that Liberatore would break camp as a reliever (link via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

St. Louis has a trio of controllable pitchers in the mix for the last couple rotation spots. Andre Pallante turned in a 3.78 ERA behind a massive 61.8% grounder rate in 121 1/3 innings last season. Former first-round pick Michael McGreevy debuted with four appearances. He worked to a 1.96 ERA over his first 23 major league innings. The Cards used left-hander Matthew Liberatore in a relief role down the stretch, but he’s not locked into the bullpen for the upcoming season.

Katie Woo of The Athletic writes that the Cardinals have been encouraged by Liberatore’s stuff this spring and are considering giving him another rotation opportunity. The 25-year-old southpaw has worked in relief for all four of his Spring Training appearances, but that’s not especially meaningful when all pitchers are throwing in short stints as they build into game shape. Liberatore has tossed 9 2/3 innings of two-run ball with five strikeouts and a pair of walks.

Liberatore made 60 appearances last season, all but six of which came out of the bullpen. The former top prospect allowed 4.40 earned runs per nine. His 21.2% strikeout rate was a career high but still checked in a bit below league average. Liberatore showed solid control and got grounders at a roughly average 42.2% rate.

With one option remaining, Liberatore can head back to Triple-A if the Cardinals want to allow him to continue building as a starter. It’s also possible he slots back into a bullpen role. The latter outcome doesn’t seem to be on the table for McGreevy. Manager Oli Marmol said over the weekend that the Cards weren’t interested in pushing the right-hander into relief to ensure he snags an Opening Day roster spot.

“I don’t see him as a guy who will benefit at all by going to the ’pen and breaking with us in that type of role,” Marmol said (link via Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch). “My preference would be for him to start. When you go into the offseason and a lot of the messaging is around opportunity, then you want to keep guys in the role that they see them being in long term. And for him, we see him as a starter.”

McGreevy has a pair of minor league options. There’s a decent chance he’ll open the year in the Triple-A rotation. The UC Santa Barbara product spent most of last season at that level. He made 27 starts and worked 150 innings of 4.02 ERA ball. McGreevy kept the ball on the ground at a near-50% clip with slightly lower than average strikeout (21.6%) and walk (6.9%) marks. He could probably hold his own at the back of a major league rotation, but the options afford St. Louis flexibility to keep him stretched out in the minors.

Assuming Pallante has a leg up on the fourth starter role, that’d leave Liberatore and McGreevy competing with veteran lefty Steven Matz for the final spot. Matz isn’t a controllable long-term piece, but the Cardinals would love to see him create some level of trade value. He’s owed $12MM in the final season of a four-year deal that hasn’t panned out. While the Cards aren’t going to get any kind of significant return, a solid first half could allow them to offload part of his contract around the deadline.

Matz suffered back injuries that limited him to 44 1/3 innings last year. He allowed just over five earned runs per nine with a modest 17.4% strikeout rate. Matz has tossed nine innings of three-run ball over three appearances in exhibition play. He’ll be on the MLB roster in some capacity but could work in long relief if he doesn’t win the fifth starter job.

Gray, 34, joined the Cardinals after signing a three-year, $75MM deal with the club on the heels of a dominant 2023 season that saw him post an MLB-best 2.83 FIP as a member of the Twins and finish second in AL Cy Young award voting to Yankees ace Gerrit Cole. Gray’s start to the season was slightly delayed by injury but he started strong overall, with a 2.60 ERA and 2.84 FIP in his first nine starts with the club that made it look as though Gray might be able to deliver more of the dominance that he flashed in Minnesota with St. Louis this year.

The results have left something to be desired for Gray ever since the calendar flipped to June, however, as he posted a 4.92 ERA in a 15-start stretch from early June to late August before managing to finish the season strong with a 2.55 ERA and 1.91 FIP in his final four starts of the year. That leaves him with a relatively pedestrian 3.84 ERA overall in 166 1/3 innings of work, though the underlying metrics suggest he’s been a good bit better than that. After all, even that aforementioned stretch of 15 starts where Gray struggled saw him post a solid enough 3.63 FIP while striking out an excellent 29.3% of his opponents. Looking at his full season stats, he’ll end the year with a 3.13 FIP that ranks seventh-best in the majors, a 30.3% strikeout rate that’s tied with Tarik Skubal for the second-best figure in the big leagues behind likely NL Cy Young award winner Chris Sale, and 3.8 fWAR that’s good for seventh-most among NL pitchers this year.

Unfortunately, those promising peripheral numbers neither translated to elite production on the field for Gray nor wins for a Cardinals club that was recently eliminated from playoff contention and has a 77-77 record with eight games left to go in the regular season. With that being said, those strong underlying numbers do provide reason for optimism that better days ought to be ahead for the veteran in the future. That’s good news for fans in St. Louis, as Gray is sure to be a key fixture of the club’s starting five next year. As noted by Jones, Gray underwent an MRI recently that came back clean and would likely still be pitching if the Cardinals remained in the playoff hunt. That makes it seem unlikely that Gray’s current ailment will have any sort of impact on him when camp opens up for Spring Training next year.

Looking ahead to 2025, Gray figures to anchor a rotation that seems likely to include deadline addition Erick Fedde, veteran innings eater Miles Mikolas, and youngster Andre Pallante but still features some uncertainty due to the fact that the club holds team options on the services of both Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn for next year. While both veterans have been perfectly serviceable back-end arms for the Cardinals this year, with the aforementioned quartet and Steven Matz all expected to return in 2025 it would hardly be a shock to see the club decline the options of one or both players in search of an upgrade to either the rotation or lineup elsewhere on the market.

As for replacing Gray in the short term, Leahy returns to the club’s roster as a multi-inning relief option after posting a 4.02 ERA and 3.62 FIP in 47 innings of work earlier this year. Meanwhile, McGreevy made his big league debut in a spot start back in July and impressed with seven innings of one-run ball and currently sports a 0.90 ERA in ten innings at the big league level along with a 4.02 ERA in 27 starts at Triple-A this year.

11:02 AM: The Cardinals have formally selected Michael McGreevy’s contract from Triple-A Memphis, the team announced. To make room on the 40-man roster, Jacob Bosiokovic has been designated for assignment. Bosiokovic, 30, had his contract selected at the end of June, but while he spent four days with the big league club, he did not get into a game to make his MLB debut. In 33 appearances this year for Memphis, he has a 3.95 ERA and a 29.4% strikeout rate, though his 14.1% walk rate is a cause for concern. He will now have a week to pass through waivers. If he clears waivers, the Cardinals will have the option to send him outright back to Triple-A.

In additional Cardinals news, the team placed Lance Lynn on the 15-day injured list with right knee inflammation. Lynn pitched well against the Rangers last night, limiting Texas to one run on three hits over five innings. However, he told reporters after the game (including Woo) that he was nursing pain in his knee. Woo noted that he was walking with “a pretty noticeable limp.” John Denton of MLB.com suggests that Lynn’s injury is “pretty serious,” and that the veteran fears his right knee could be “severely damaged.” However, Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat reported last night that Lynn and the Cardinals will “monitor” the injury and “see how he recovers.” While Lynn is out, St. Louis could choose to give McGreevy a couple of extra turns in the rotation. Alternatively, they could push back Andre Pallante’s move to the bullpen.

By placing Lynn on the IL, the Cardinals made room for McGreevy on the active roster. St. Louis also recalled right-handed reliever Ryan Loutos from Triple-A and optioned fellow righty reliever Chris Roycroft.

July 30: The Cardinals are planning to promote pitching prospect Michael McGreevy to start Wednesday’s game against the Rangers (per Katie Woo of The Athletic). It will be the right-hander’s MLB debut. St. Louis will need to make corresponding moves to make room for the rookie on the 26 and 40-man rosters.

McGreevy, who turned 24 earlier this month, was the Cardinals’ first-round pick in the 2021 draft. His prospect stock has fallen significantly since he was drafted 18th overall, but he remains a consensus top-30 prospect in the Cardinals’ system. Keith Law of The Athletic remained particularly high on McGreevy entering the 2024 season, ranking him at No. 8 in the organization. Law made note of his durability and suggested, “He would be an easy No. 4 starter if he could get left-handed batters out.” Unfortunately for McGreevy, he has continued to struggle against opposite-handed opponents during his second season at Triple-A. While he has held righties to a .628 OPS in 207 trips to the plate, lefty batters have torched him for an .839 OPS in 261 plate appearances. Thus, his overall numbers have been lackluster. In 20 starts, he has a 4.45 ERA and a 4.31 FIP, only a slight improvement upon his 4.49 ERA and 4.52 FIP in 24 starts at Triple-A last season. Nevertheless, the Cardinals have decided he’s ready to give it a go in the majors, at least temporarily.

McGreevy’s debut will likely just be a spot start. Jeff Jones of the Belleville News-Democrat explains that the Cardinals are looking to get their starting five a little extra rest amid a stretch of 16 games in 16 days. Lance Lynn is starting for St. Louis tonight, and after McGreevy’s turn on Wednesday, the rotation will line up as follows: Sonny Gray, recent trade acquisition Erick Fedde, Kyle Gibson, and Miles Mikolas (per Jones). It is unclear how Andre Pallante, who has been in the Cardinals’ rotation since the end of May, fits into this equation. According to Lynn Worthy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, manager Oli Marmol has “not sat down yet” with Pallante to discuss his role moving forward. However, Marmol did confirm that he plans to return to a five-man rotation after this week (per Worthy). Thus, Pallante will most likely head to the bullpen. While the right-hander will surely bolster the team’s relief corps, it is noteworthy that the Cardinals are presumably choosing to promote McGreevy for a spot start rather than giving Pallante one last look in the rotation.

JULY 16: The Cardinals announced this evening that they’d come to terms on a contract with first-round pick Michael McGreevy. Terms of the deal remain unclear. The slot value for the #18 overall selection, with which McGreevy was selected, is $3.4813MM.

McGreevy dominated hitters over his three-year career at UC Santa-Barbara. The righty worked to a 2.33 ERA across 189 1/3 innings as a Gaucho, striking out 25.1% of batters faced while walking only 4.0% of opponents. The Big West isn’t among Division I baseball’s few best conferences, but there’s still little doubt McGreevy was one of the top performers in the country.

There’s a bit more divisiveness among public evaluators about where exactly he fit among the draft’s top arms, though. Baseball America was extremely bullish on the 21-year-old, naming him the 16th most talented player in the class. BA lauded his elite control and plus curveball in calling him a potential mid-rotation starter.

Each of Kiley McDaniel of ESPN, Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein of FanGraphs, and Keith Law of the Athletic slotted McGreevy between 35th and 50th on their respective draft boards. Those outlets expressed some concerns about McGreevy’s below-average velocity (90-93 MPH range), although he draws unanimous praise for his athleticism and strike-throwing acumen.

Rounds 2-10 (plus the included compensation picks and Competitive Balance Round B) will take place on Monday afternoon, and then rounds 11-20 will take place Tuesday afternoon.  This year’s draft is to 20 rounds from five rounds in 2020, and the current expectation is that the 2022 draft will return to its old 40-round format, though the draft structure will be one of many topics under discussion when the league and the players’ union negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement this winter.

For more on these stars of the future, check out the prospect rankings and scouting reports compiled by Baseball America, Fangraphs, MLB Pipeline, The Athletic’s Keith Law, and ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel.  As well, here is MLB Pipeline’s breakdown of the slot values assigned to each pick in the first 10 rounds, as well as the bonus pool money available to all 30 teams.

The selections…

1. Pittsburgh Pirates: Henry Davis, C, University Of Louisville
2. Texas Rangers: Jack Leiter, RHP, Vanderbilt University
3. Detroit Tigers: Jackson Jobe, RHP, Heritage Hall High School (OK)
4. Boston Red Sox: Marcelo Mayer, SS, Eastlake High School (CA)
5. Baltimore Orioles: Colton Cowser, OF, Sam Houston State University
6. Arizona Diamondbacks: Jordan Lawlar, SS, Jesuit Prep (Dallas, TX)
7. Kansas City Royals: Frank Mozzicato, LHP, East Catholic High School (CT)
8. Colorado Rockies: Benny Montgomery, OF, Red Land High School (PA)
9. Los Angeles Angels: Sam Bachman, RHP, Miami University (Ohio)
10. New York Mets: Kumar Rocker, RHP, Vanderbilt University
11. Washington Nationals: Brady House, SS, Winder-Barrow High School (GA)
12. Seattle Mariners: Harry Ford, C/OF, North Cobb High School (GA)
13. Philadelphia Phillies: Andrew Painter, RHP, Calvary Christian Academy (FLA)
14. San Francisco Giants: Will Bednar, RHP, Mississippi State University
15. Milwaukee Brewers: Sal Frelick, OF, Boston College
16. Miami Marlins: Kahlil Watson, SS, Wake Forest High School (NC)
17. Cincinnati Reds: Matt McLain, SS, UCLA
18. St. Louis Cardinals: Michael McGreevy, RHP, UC Santa Barbara
19. Toronto Blue Jays: Gunnar Hoglund, RHP, University Of Mississippi
20. New York Yankees: Trey Sweeney, SS, Eastern Illinois University
21. Chicago Cubs: Jordan Wicks, LHP, Kansas State University
22. Chicago White Sox: Colson Montgomery, SS, Southridge High School (IN)
23. Cleveland Indians: Gavin Williams, RHP, East Carolina University
24. Atlanta Braves: Ryan Cusick, RHP, Wake Forest University
25. Oakland Athletics: Max Muncy, SS, Thousand Oaks High School (CA)
26. Minnesota Twins: Chase Petty, RHP, Mainland Regional High School (NJ)
27. San Diego Padres: Jackson Merrill, SS, Severna Park High School (MD)
28. Tampa Bay Rays: Carson Williams, SS/RHP, Torrey Pines High School (CA)
29. Los Angeles Dodgers: Maddux Bruns, LHP, UMS-Wright Prep (AL)
30. Cincinnati Reds (compensatory pick): Jay Allen, OF, John Carroll Catholic High School (FL)
31. Miami Marlins (Competitive Balance Round A): Joe Mack, C, Williamsville East High School (NY)
32. Detroit Tigers (CBR-A): Ty Madden, RHP, University of Texas
33. Milwaukee Brewers (CBR-A): Tyler Black, 2B, Wright State University
34. Tampa Bay Rays (CBR-A): Cooper Kinney, 2B, Baylor High School (TN)
35. Cincinnati Reds (CBR-A): Matheu Nelson, C, Florida State University
36. Minnesota Twins (CBR-A): Noah Miller, SS, Ozaukee High School (WI)