St. Louis Cardinals Pitching: The good, the bad and the ugly

To carry this thought further, a very solid infield is kept active by a staff that is 2nd in MLB in GB%, just below the 50% mark. For the record, they are pretty much average (15th in MLB) with a BABIP at .288.

Enough about the starters. In the bullpen, well, most of the analysis is down below, in a different section. They are 2nd in the MLB in saves. By and large, this is a reflection of the outstanding performance of one player – Riley O’Brien.

The middling (a little creative license here)

Staff WPA is 1.60. 11th in MLB, they are providing a bit of value towards the winning side. By comparison, they were 24th at -1.43 in 2025. Improvement noted. It’s not great, but a little positive is better than a little negative.

This staff appears skilled at inducing weak contact overall, as their EV (exit velocity against) is 2nd in all MLB at 90.5, just behind Seattle’s premier staff. Fascinatingly, Cardinal pitchers have had double the batted ball events that Seattle pitchers have, so this is a two-faced metric (and also a much larger sample size).

The bullpen has some Jekyll and Hyde in them. On the good side, they are tied for 4th in the MLB in SD (Shutdown) appearance be relievers. An SD is tagged anytime a reliever adds at least .06 to the team’s odds of winning. Unfortunately, the group flat out leads MLB in number of MD (Meltdown) appearances, which is the inverse of a shutdown.

The bad

Batted ball metrics, particularly hard hit%, show the pitching staff at 2nd worst in the league at 36.4% hard hit rate. Given the earlier recognition that average EV is 2nd lowest in the league, what this says is they give up weak contact or really, really hard contact. A low average EV, a high hard-hit rate and an average BABIP tells us…what? BABIP is backwards looking. The hard-hit rate tells us that BABIP may not hold, and hints at how crucial positioning and defensive acumen is to this team.

Total fWAR of the staff is 28th in MLB. This is a direct result of the very low K% this team is producing, which at 18.9% is dead last in MLB. Probably another explanatory factor in the difference between ERA and FIP. ERA doesn’t care how you got the outs. FIP does. K% is more reliable at predicting future outcomes, because BABIP doesn’t influence strikeouts like it does ground balls. Food for thought.

The Ugly

The Cardinals have employed 8 relievers who have thrown more than 1 inning. Not a lot of churn so far. Five of the eight pitchers have walk rates 11% or greater, with group average of 11.4%. This poor number surprisingly is not the worst in baseball, ranking 24th in MLB. Too many extra runners.

Likewise, the Cardinals rank 26th in MLB in reliever K%. With the evolution of pitching, high K guys in the bullpen are a thing, and walks are tolerated because walks and strikeouts tend to not do much damage if the hitters can’t hit you (see O’Brien, Riley). In the extreme, a pitcher can walk 3 guys and strike out 3 guys and get away with no runs scored. But this group definitively lacks K power with a K rate of 19.9% against a league average of 23% and in this metric, a team wants to be above average, not 15% below it.

All this results in a group K%-BB% rate of 8.5% (15 or better is good), which ranks 28t in MLB. You can get away with low K rates as a pitcher, but only if they keep their walk rate down. They haven’t.

While they call them relievers, this group has not provided much relief. They are 28th in the league in LOB% at 68.4%. Average would be ~74%. The Cardinal bullpen is 2nd worst in the league in hard hit% at 37.8%, whereas average is more like 33%.

In summary

Well, the front office did not do a grand job building the bullpen. I think we kind of knew this. Building bullpens is a thing a team does when it thinks they have a competitive roster, not when they are rebuilding, so the reason is clear, even if the outcome is poor.

At some point in time, they need to add some firepower to the relief corps and find pitchers with better command. Let’s face it, though. That firepower is not in Memphis, nor is it found on the waiver wire. If it was, they would already be in St. Louis. What to do?

On the starter side, it’s OK. Not great, but not horrible either. The starters are keeping the team in most games. You could ask for more, but won’t get it until guys like Franklin, Doyle, Cijntje and Fajardo matriculate to the MLB roster.

The general trend in the first 40 games has been some incremental improvement in K rate and innings pitched. Looking down the road, innings are going to be a problem with Leahy and will be even more complicated if they trade May at the deadline. It does feel like Mautz and Dobbins could step in and take some IP, and perhaps Mathews will take that last step and be ready, so it is not as if the cupboard is bare like it was last year.