Last week I took a look at the Cardinals’ 2025 position players on a man-by-man basis. I wanted to evaluate their performance, look at a historical comp, and assess their future role as the front-office leadership transitions from John Mozeliak to Chaim Bloom.
Today, it’s time to inspect the St. Louis starting pitchers. I won’t go with some of the fringy types that haven’t pitched that much for the Cardinals in 2025. This review doesn’t include prospects – just major-league pitchers.
One other note: the historical comps are based on a starting pitcher’s adjusted ERA (via FanGraphs) which is filtered by ballpark effects and league trends for a particular season. In doing the comps, I don’t use starting pitchers that have a low number of innings. The larger the sample, the better it is.
Let’s get to it …
SONNY GRAY
Adjusted ERA: 7 percent below league average. Last season, his first in St. Louis, Gray was 5 percent better than league average.
Bernie Comments: Gray, 35, is still a good starting pitcher but cracks have formed in his profile. His strikeout rate, while better than average, has dropped by four percent. This season Gray has yielded a slugging percentage over .500 on his four-seam fastball, sinker, and changeup. Ten home runs (total) have been launched against his four-seam and sinker, and opponents have slugged .490 against his cutter.
The overall slugging percentage against Gray was .401 last season but has jumped to .425 this year. Inconsistency is a problem for Gray; in his last 10 starts he has a 6.31 ERA and has been blasted for 13 home runs in 55 and ⅔ innings.
Gray has lost his dominant edge at Busch Stadium. Last season Gray had a 2.09 ERA at Busch Stadium and gave up five homers in 92 and ⅔ innings. This season his home ERA is 4.04 and the HR count has spiked to 13 in 107 innings.
Closest historical performance comps: Bryn Smith in 1992, John Stuper in 1983, Lynn McGlothen in 1976, Lance Lynn in 2013, Rheal Cormier in 1992.
Bottom Line: Despite some problems, Gray still has 3.1 Wins Above Replacement which ranks 11th among NL starters and 22nd overall. But he’ll be 36 years old next season, and his decline phase seems to be underway. Will his performance quality turn worse in 2026?
Trade Him or Keep Him: Gray will be paid $35 million next season in the final year of his St. Louis contract. He has a no-trade clause but may consider waiving it depending on the team. The Cardinals should trade him if they get the chance to offload his enormous salary and get a couple of good prospects in return.
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ANDRE PALLANTE
Adjusted ERA: 27 percent below the league average through 28 starts. Last season Pallante was 12 percent better than league average in 20 starts.
Bernie Comments: Pallante has absorbed a beating in his last 13 starts with a 7.28 ERA and a 1-9 individual won-lost record. Since the start of June, Pallante’s 6.01 ERA ranks 60th among 61 MLB starters that have worked at least 85 innings since then. Only nine of 56 MLB starting pitchers have a worse ERA than Pallante’s 5.28 since the start of the season.
Closest historical performance comps: Jose Jimenez in 1999, Bob Tewksbury in 1994, and Jake Westbrook in 2011.
Bottom Line: Nothing personal, but Pallante’s statistics tell us that he’s one of the worst starting pitchers in the majors this season. His only good stat is a high ground-ball rate. But his whiff-swing and strikeout rates are abysmal.
Hitters won’t chase Pallante’s pitches out of the strike zone; they smartly wait for him to throw strikes. And when Pallante throws a strike this season, hitters have destroyed those pitches for a .315 average, .521 slug, 20 home runs, 25 doubles and four triples. When Pallante leaves a pitch out over the plate in the “meatball” section, opponents have crushed away for a .341 average, .598 slug, 40 extra-base hits, and a 49 percent hard-hit rate.
Trade Him or Keep Him: I suppose the Cardinals can keep Pallante … but if they don’t have anyone better than Pallante to fill a rotation spot that’s truly pathetic.
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MATTHEW LIBERATORE
Adjusted ERA: 5 percent below the league average.
Bernie Comments: Liberatore is in his first full season as a major-league starter and he’s had to deal with an accumulation of innings that have impacted his endurance. His pitches have flattened out, and lack movement.
+ In his first 10 starts, Liberatore had a 2.73 ERA, an adjusted ERA that was 66 percent above the league average, and a 21.5 percent walk rate.
+ In his last 17 starts, Libby has a 5.53 ERA, an adjusted ERA that’s 33 percent below average, and a strikeout rate of only 16 percent. His home-run and walk rates have elevated as well.
That contrast sums it up.
Closest historical performance comps: Bob Gibson in 1974, Ray Washburn in 1966, Jose DeLeon in 1988, Dustin Hermanson in 2001, and Shelby Miller in 2014.
Bottom Line: He’s talented. He’s a tenacious competitor. He’s smart. But next season Liberatore will have to show he can push through the inevitable fatigue without losing too much effectiveness.
Trade Him or Keep Him: Liberatore will be 26 next season, and I want to see him in the rotation next season. He should be able to last longer and pitch better after an offseason of training and preparation. It would be ludicrous to give up on a young starter who currently rests with a 4.14 fielding independent ERA and is only five percent below the league average for the season. There’s a lot to like about Libby, but the Cardinals will expect improvement in ‘26. All of that said, I couldn’t rule out a trade if Liberatore is part of a big package that has multiple players switching teams. It all depends what the Cardinals would receive in return.
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MILES MIKOLAS
Adjusted ERA: 16 percent below the league average. He was 32 percent below average in 2024, and 12% under average in 2023.
Bernie Comments: Mikolas, 37, has lowered his ERA from 5.26 to his current 4.84 over his last 11 starts by doing a much cleaner job of suppressing home runs. That said, his fielding independent ERA over the last 11 starts is 5.11, so let’s not get carried away. The right-hander remains vulnerable because of the 85 percent contact rate against him in 2025. His 4.99 ERA over the last three seasons ranks 33rd among 38 MLB starters that have worked at least 300 innings.
Closest historical performance comps: Reggie Cleveland in 1971, Joaquin Andujar in 1983, Alan Benes in 1996 and Jaime Garcia in 2016.
Bottom Line: I appreciate how well Mikolas pitched for the Cardinals in 2018, 2019 and 2022. Combining the three seasons – Mikolas had a 3.40 ERA in 96 starts. He was especially fantastic in 2018, sculpting a 2.83 ERA going 18-4, making the All-Star team, and finishing sixth in the NL Cy Young voting that season. But the last three seasons have revealed the deterioration that comes with age. Mikolas has been paid nearly $60 million over the last three years, and this is an example of why the Cardinals must resume developing their own starting pitchers within their system.
Trade Him or Keep Him: The Cardinals don’t have to do any of that. Mikolas will head to the free-agent market after the season, and another team will probably take a look and give him a chance on a low-cost contract.
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MICHAEL MCGREEVY
Adjusted ERA: 22 percent below the league average.
Bernie Comments: Time for a reality check, because McGreevy’s ERA has risen and it’s 5.08 in his 12 starts this season. McGreevy does fit the pitch-to-contact prototype that has made so many Cardinal starting pitchers so darned hittable in recent seasons. More on that later. For all of his intangible qualities, there isn’t much room for error when he delivers a pitch.
Closest historical performance comps: A physically compromised Adam Wainwright (elbow) in 2017, Dakota Hudson in 2023, Brett Tomko in 2003, Greg Mathews in 1988.
Bottom Line: McGreevy has work to do, because he doesn’t have the advantage of being able to throw the rock by hitters. This season his strikeout rate is in the bottom 2% percent of all MLB pitchers, and his whiff-swing rate is in the bottom 8%.
Not exactly a new thing around these parts, eh? But here’s an example of what I’m talking about – it’s a look at what happens when McGreevy throws a strike that’s put in fair play by hitters in each of the three pitch-type categories.
Fastball: .275 average, .412 slug, four home runs, 7% strikeout rate, 14% whiff-swing rate, 44% hard-hit rate.
Offspeed: .333 average, .750 slug, one home run, no strikeouts, 15% whiff-swing rate. At least the hard-hit rate (33%) isn’t bad.
Breaking: .321 average, .491 slug, one homer, 47% hard-hit rate, 9.3% strikeout rate, 14% whiff-swing rate.
McGreevy has ceded two home runs on non-strikes this season, but overall the punishment has been fairly light. But here’s the issue for him: a chase rate that ranks in the bottom 19 percent. His fastball (mostly the sinker) is actually good and has positive value. But McGreevy’s breaking pitches are in the bottom 13 percent for value, and his offspeed pitches are in the bottom 30 percent. So once hitters catch onto McGreevy even more, they won’t be doing him a favor by hacking at pitches out of the zone.
Trade Him or Keep Him: Keep, of course. It’s early in McGreevy’s big-league career.
I’ll be back in a day or two to assess the Cardinal relievers.
Thanks for reading …
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him weekdays on the “Gashouse Gang” or “Redbird Rush Hour” on KMOX, and Bernie does a weekly “Seeing Red” podcast on the Cardinals with his longtime pal Will Leitch. Bernie joins Katie Woo on the “Cardinal Territory” video-podcast each week, and you can catch a weekly “reunion” segment here at STL Sports with Bernie’s appearance on the Randy Karraker Show every Friday morning at 10:30 am.