The Cardinals' strikeout problem in the rotation must be addressed

And the work starts with the pitchers already in place

The Cardinals’ rotation has a present and future strikeout problem. Given the team’s current place in the standings and fresh off a squandered home (and season!) series against the otherwise very bad Rockies, it’s the future about which I’m thinking.

Of the seven moundsmen to make at least one start for the Cardinals this season, including the departed Steven Matz’s pair of starts, just three are in the long-term mix – Matthew Liberatore, Michael McGreevy, and Andre Pallante. I’m excluding Sonny Gray because he’s 35, under contract for just one more season (with a 2026 club option), and may theoretically change his mind and approve a trade this winter. Cardinals starters as a whole have struck out 17.9% of opposing batters in 2025, which ranks 29th in MLB, ahead of only those damned Rockies. Here’s how that breaks down along the lines just laid out:

• Gray, Miles Mikolas, Erick Fedde, and Matz: 19.6%

• Liberatore, McGreevy, and Pallante: 15.6 K%

So that’s not particularly encouraging, to see the depths of the strikeout problem concentrated among the younger members of the rotation. Let’s talk about that with an emphasis on Liberatore and McGreevy. Pallante sort of is what he is at this point, which is an extreme pitch-to-contact groundballer who’s smoothed out his reverse-platoon issues a bit. This season, he’s been stung somewhat by a modestly elevated home run rate on fly balls and a modestly depressed rate of stranding runners. Those should correct, and his xFIP (what’s this?) of 3.93 for this year probably hints at his stabilized level. He’ll always be prone to ball-in-play snakebites from time to time, but he’s a viable fifth/soft fourth guy moving forward, at least in my mind. With a back-end guy like Pallante and his groundball proclivities, you live with the lack of swing and miss. It’s the long-term rotation in front of him that I worry about. So let’s talk about them.