Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium on Wednesday, September 17, 2025 in St. Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Ali Overstreet/MLB Photos via Getty Images) | MLB Photos via Getty Images Like the rest of the NL Central, the St. Louis Cardinals have been at or above .500 for the majority of the season, but despite outperforming expectations, they find themselves in the middle of the way-too-early division race.

Thanks to Jordan Walker, rookie JJ Wetherholt, and a new hero each win, the Cardinals have been able to hide the weakness on the field. Through the first 25 games of the year, St. Louis starting pitchers are checking in at 29th in the league by measure of fWAR and the underlying metrics show the alarming truth that they might actually be outperforming expectations so far in 2026.As we all know, the point of this season was to serve as a fact-finding mission for most every piece on the major league roster.

That involved bringing back everyone’s favorite 2025 term “runway” when talking about Nolan Gorman and Jordan Walker on the offensive side, as well as including Kyle Leahy and Andre Pallante in the rotation. So far, the Cardinals are batting .333 when looking at the early success of these four players. (I am classifying Leahy as an in-progress plate appearance since he is the one with the least amount of track record heading into the season as a starter). All four of them had the right to the first crack at playing time, especially factoring in that Chaim Bloom did not want to get into any 40-man funny business before the regular season got started.Unfortunately, we have seen the Andre Pallante we saw for the majority of last season, a pitcher with a below-average fastball and inconsistent breaking stuff, which ends up with starts showing lack of command, lack of efficiency, or some combination of both.

Positively, Pallante has already won more games than he won the entire second half last year, but he has yet to pitch more than five innings or allow less than six baserunners in any of his four starts. Leahy, on the other hand, has been more effective than Pallante when it comes to strikeouts and walks, but not by much, which is a bummer for a pitcher who had a mediocre 22% K-rate last year so he did not have much wiggle room for regression there, while also losing close to 2mph on his average fastball. The move to the rotation has also impacted his command, as the former reliever is walking hitters more often and allowing more hits and homers than he did out of the bullpen.

In a season of fact-finding, the early returns are not pointing to positive data in the Cardinals rotation, potentially forcing more moves than anticipated for a rotation that seemed to be a point of solid, if unspectacular performances.The Cardinals should utilize the Memphis Shuttle for more than just relieversThe Opening Day rotation featured Matthew Liberatore, Michael McGreevy, Dustin May, Andre Pallante, and Kyle Leahy, which again simply seemed “fine” for this iteration of Cardinals baseball. However, the early struggles of Pallante and Leahy did not help when surrounded by a couple May blowups (the pitcher not the month), and McGreevy getting hit like the pitch-to-contact hurler he is.

Staff number one Matthew Liberatore has also been simply okay thus far, but he is showing concerning command issues and losing his normal strikeout stuff and was hit hard in his start against the Mariners.. For those keeping score at home, that is closer to 0-for-5 than any of us were hoping for, especially with the Cardinals still managing to win ballgames.The problem with this current rotation alignment is that each of these players should start games as long as they are healthy or unplayable, which is quite the standard to hit in a season where winning is not priority 1, 2, or 3. I truly hope none of the five incumbents get there, but I am also hoping that the need to find answers extends beyond the major league roster and trickles into Memphis for some of the arms that are close to St.

Louis. Typically, we see the shuttle bus reserved for struggling or overused relievers, but I would be open to gassing that baby up to transport guys who can pitch more than an inning at a time and still give the team a chance to win. Of course, a difficulty of that is having MLB-ready talent sitting in Triple-A who also match up to schedule and rotation needs, which the Cardinals have not worried about yet thanks to having every Thursday off in April.One such pitcher who, at times, looked to be the next man up when the rotation was ready was Richard Fitts, who flashed high-90s velocity during Spring and was the face of the revamp we were promised in the minors. However, the minor league injury bug struck yet again in Memphis and Fitts has since undergone season-ending shoulder surgery with the expectation of a fu