The most encouraging development for the St. Louis Cardinals is seeing the organization making real progress in replenishing their supply of pitching prospects. That bodes well for the future.
The Cardinals inability to produce effective starting pitchers down on their farm was a calamity that sabotaged their chances of winning.
And their scarcity of good, internally developed starters was a substantial reason for their downfall.
It wasn’t always like this.
From 2011 through 2015, the Cardinals made the playoffs in all five years. They led the majors in regular-season wins (465) and postseason wins (32). They won a World Series and two National League pennants and competed in four league championship series.
During those five unforgettable seasons, the St. Louis starting rotation featured a crop of important starters that were developed within the organization.
Adam Wainwright, Lance Lynn, Michael Wacha, Shelby Miller, Joe Kelly, Jaime Garcia and Carlos Martinez.
And the St. Louis bullpens during those fun-time seasons (2011-2015) were stocked with a drafted-developed cast that included Trevor Rosenthal, Kevin Siegrist, Jason Motte, Seth Maness, Fernando Salas and Kyle McClellan. Martinez and Kelly were also part of the reliever procession at times.
When a team can successfully hatch and raise their own pitchers instead of scrambling like crazy to sign free agents to cover rotation shortages, it gives them a big advantage over most MLB teams. The Cardinals had that working for them over a lengthy and prosperous stretch of high-level seasons.
And then … poof.
Where did all of the young starters go? What happened down on the farm?
Let’s take a look at the severe drought.
– Over the last three seasons, 2023 through 2025 – the Cardinals have played 486 regular-season games. Their starting pitchers collectively threw 4,304 and ⅓ innings over the 486 starts.
– Their homegrown pitchers – those drafted and developed by the Cardinals – made only 25 percent of the 486 starts, and worked just 15.8 percent of the total innings provided by STL's starters. Those are dire numbers.
– And 75 percent of the starts and 84.2 percent of the rotation innings came from expensive, veteran starters. The type of starters that St. Louis had to pursue (or stay with) in response to their futility in drafting and shaping their own starters.
Here’s the list of the eight drafted-developed starting pitchers used by the Cardinals over the last three seasons. And I’ve included the year each pitcher entered the organization as a draftee.
Jack Flaherty, 2014
Jake Woodford, 2015
Dakota Hudson, 2016
Kyle Leahy, 2018
Zack Thompson, 2019
Andre Pallante, 2019
Michael McGreevy, 2021
Gordon Graceffo, 2021
With all due respect, there isn’t a lot there. And if we want to get to the heart of the matter, several of those hurlers weren’t a factor in the team’s starting rotation from 2023 through 2025.
Leahy and Graceffo each made one start that covered a combined 6 and ⅓ innings. They were relievers that each made a spot start – though the Cardinals plan to give Leahy a legitimate opportunity to be part of the 2026 rotation.
So for practical purposes, only six starters drafted and “developed” by the Cardinals since 2014 have served in a designated starting-pitching role.
The six – Flaherty, Woodford, Hudson, Thompson, Pallante and McGreevy – collectively worked 675 and ⅔ innings as starters over the past three seasons.
Two arms – Pallante and Flaherty – accounted for 57 percent of those innings. And Pallante and Flaherty were the only two guys (among the internally developed starters) to pitch more than 100 innings in a starting role since the beginning of 2023. There’s been little continuity … and too much instability.
Flaherty last pitched for the Cardinals in late July of 2023 before being traded to the Orioles at the deadline that summer. Hudson and Woodford are long gone. Thompson’s career is in limbo because of injuries. He’s a non-factor at this point.
Because of their flagrant failure to procure and produce good starters through their own system, the Cardinals had to go outside the organization to purchase or trade for starters.
Matthew Liberatore has a promising future in the STL rotation. But he was drafted by Tampa Bay in 2018 and spent his first two seasons of professional ball in the Rays’ minor-league system
By the time Libby joined the St. Louis organization – he was acquired for outfielder Randy Arozarena before the 2020 season – he made his minor-league debut for the Cardinals at Triple A Memphis in 2021.
Liberatore has spent the last five seasons as a Cardinal. In the minors, as a major-league reliever, and now a starter for the big club. He has a chance to become a success story, and we’ll be happy to give the Cardinals credit if it happens. Wainwright wasn’t drafted by St. Louis, but he finished his schooling in the STL farm system. Libby won’t have a Waino career, but I’m just pointing out their similar paths to St. Louis.
To compensate for their inability to harvest their own starting pitchers, the Cardinals had no choice … they had to get outside of their comfort zone and spend money on starters that came here from other teams.
Miles Mikolas
Sonny Gray
Kyle Gibson
Erick Fedde
Steven Matz
Jordan Montgomery
Steven Matz
* Lance Lynn
(Note: Lynn was drafted by the Cardinals in 2008 and was an important presence in the STL rotation from 2011 through 2017. But Lynn is on this list of “purchased” starters because he pitched for other teams from 2018 through 2023 before the Cardinals signed him as a free agent before the ‘24 season. Lynn was signed ONLY because the Cardinals had done such a terrible job of cultivating their own starters from within.)
Wainwright made 21 starts for the Cardinals in 2023 and had the worst starting-pitcher ERA (7.40) for a single season in franchise history. (That’s among starters who worked at least 100 innings in a season.
Including deferred money and dead money – and calculated using MLB’s payroll-tax formula – here’s the amount of money spent by the Cardinals in their desperation to fund a gerry rigged rotation:
2023 – $63.75 million, ranked 5th in MLB.
2024 – $74.16 million, ranked 7th in MLB.
2025 – $55.18 million, ranked 9th in MLB.
(Source: Spotrac.)
The young and cost-controlled dudes that chipped in some starts and innings for those rotations didn’t make a lot of money.
Pallante collected around $1.5 million in salaries over the past three seasons. Hudson received $2.65 million from the Cardinals in his final year here (2023.) Thompson, Leahy and Woodford netted combined salaries of around $3 million from 2023 through 2025.
A hefty percentage of money stuffed into these expensive St. Louis rotations over the past three campaigns were funneled to the veteran earners: Mikolas, Gray, Lynn, Matz, Wainwright, Fedde, Gibson, and Flaherty.
From 2023 through 2025, the Cardinals pumped a total of $193 million into their rotation.
And what did the Cardinals get after allocating $193 for their starting-pitching emergency fund over the last three seasons?
Answer: their starting pitching ranked 25th among the 30 teams in ERA … 22nd in fielding independent ERA … 23rd in WAR … 28th in Win Probability Added … 29th in strikeouts per nine innings.
The poor showing by STL starting pitchers was a significant problem that led to a three-season winning percentage of .477.
Only eight MLB teams have won fewer regular-season games than the Cardinals since the outset of 2023. Over the three-season time frame, 22 MLB teams have qualified for the postseason at least once – but the Cardinals weren’t among them.
The default on internal starting-pitching development pulled this team down – into the mud, out of the playoffs, and out of sight in October.
The good news?
Progress is being made. To enhance the lagging player-development system – his first assignment in St. Louis – president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom recruited the new assistant GM of player development Rob Cerfolio, the new farm director Larry Day, and the new director of pitching Matt Pierpont.
Another Bloom hire brought in Carl Kochan, an acclaimed director of physical performance who earned three World Series rings while working for the Giants and Dodgers. And we shouldn’t overlook Randy Flores, the Cards longtime director of scouting who has fit in well with the Bloom regime.
Suddenly, the pitching-prospect talent is flowing in the right direction for the Cardinals.
Independent evaluators have praised the Cardinals for quickly raising the overall quality and depth in their young-pitching talent pool.
I asked my friend Keith Law – of The Athletic – about this positive trend.
“I agree, the Cardinals are very much headed in the right direction,” Law told me. “Lot of progress made in 2025 – but it’s especially visible in the area of pitching development.”
Law added that he really admires Cerfolio, who had a major role in identifying and developing pitchers during his 10 seasons with the Cleveland Guardians.
“Cerfolio is a weapon,” Law said. “He clearly brought the goods from Cleveland. Opens the Cardinals up to acquire lots of different pitching projects too.”
Law cited the work the Cardinals’ new regime has done with pitching prospect Tekoah Roby. Before popping an elbow ligament and having surgery early last season, Roby had created a noisy buzz among talent evaluators.
“If Roby hadn’t blown out (the right elbow), everyone would have seen how much they helped him in less than a year,” Law said.
When the Cardinals drafted Tennessee pitcher Liam Doyle with the 5th overall pick last summer, Law had Doyle rated as the best overall talent in the draft.
And the Cardinals continue to gain attention for their aggressive approach in upgrading their pitching-prospect pool.
Over at MLB Pipeline, 5 of the Cardinals top 9 prospects are pitchers including Doyle and Quinn Mathews. The two prospect pitchers they acquired in Bloom’s recent trades with Boston – lefty Brandon Clarke and righty Yhoiker Fajardo – are ranked 7th and 9th (respectively) on the list of STL’s top prospects.
To add to my point, seven of the team’s top 15 prospects are pitchers … 10 of the Cards’ top 19 prospects and 13 of the top 24 prospects are pitchers. I’ve been observing the Cardinals on a regular basis since 1989, and I don’t recall seeing this team have such a large volume of pitching prospects in a very long time.
Others to monitor are Roby (when he returns), Tanner Franklin, Brycen Mautz, Ixan Henderson, and Cooper Hjerpe. And there are more.
“They have a lot of pitching depth, and they have a lot of variety within that pitching depth,” Baseball America’s Geoff Pontes said. “And you should be at least somewhat intrigued by what Chaim Bloom can do in terms of building out the development structure, which was part of his key focus over the last couple of years … I think this is an up and coming system.”
Baseball America named the Cardinals as having the most improved farm system in 2025. The Cardinals have moved into the Top 10 ranking of farm systems put together by ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel. MLP Pipeline put the Cardinals on a nine-team list of the most improved farm systems in 2025. Near the end of last season, FanGraphs rated the Cardinals as the No. 1 farm system in the majors.
The rebuilding project is off to a promising start. And that’s a positive change for a Cardinals baseball operation that had lost its way. The pitching is bouncing back. And Bloom will have to find a legitimate power source that can jolt the Cardinals lineup in the next year or two. But so far, so good.
Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!
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. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STLSportsCentral, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.