It's time to think about removing Jack Flaherty from the rotation

The right-hander has lately provided little reason to believe better days are ahead

One can argue, quite defensibly, that the leading edge of middle May is too soon for performance-driven roster and deployment changes. While that may well be the case in a vacuum, the matter of the 2023 Cardinals prompts me to gesture grandly at what the decision-makers have already done to defrocked catcher Willson Contreras. Precedent fully chambered, let’s talk rotation and, more specifically, let’s talk Jack Flaherty. 

If it’s not already time for Flaherty to lose his spot in the rotation, then the time is drawing very near. Following his Tuesday start against the Cubs in Wrigley, Flaherty in 2023 has pitched to a 6.18 ERA with two additional unearned runs allowed with 39 strikeouts and 27 walks – all unintentional – in 39 ⅓ innings. The various ERA estimators that work to strip away the effects of luck and defense aren’t much kinder to him. He’s also the only current member of the rotation averaging less than five innings per start. Whether he’s going to improve across a larger sample of starts is of course unknowable, but the Cardinals, working from far behind in the standings thanks to their historically dreadful start to the season, can’t really afford training wheels for a guy who’s made more than 100 starts at the big-league level.