We’re a week away from the end of the first month of the season, and the Mariners still haven’t found their groove. The walk-off win on Wednesday afternoon was a nice way to escape a sweep at the hands of the A’s, but it wrapped up a disappointing 3-3 homestand against AL West foes. Thankfully, no one else in the division has been running away in the standings. Everyone is still bunched together, which means the projections and playoff odds are largely unchanged from the start of the season. The other
bit of optimism comes from Seattle’s underlying performance; the team has underperformed its Pythagorean record by two wins and their base runs record by three wins. They’ve been the “unluckiest” team in the majors by both those measures.
The Cardinals are in the initial stages of a major transition for the organization. Chaim Bloom took over as president of baseball operations this offseason and quickly traded away a bunch of high priced veterans. Gone are Nolan Arenado, Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, and Brendan Donovan. There was already a small core of young players already contributing in the majors, but the seemingly endless pipeline of talent coming through St. Louis’s farm system has dried up over the last few years. A lot of their recent top prospects have failed to make much of an impact in the big leagues, which is one of the root causes of this current rebuilding cycle.
Most of that young talent still on the Cardinals roster resides in their lineup. JJ Wetherholt, their first round pick in the 2024 draft, made his major league debut on Opening Day and represents a significant piece of the team’s future. The most impactful development has been the early season breakout from Jordan Walker. A former top prospect who has really struggled to establish himself in the big leagues, he’s looking like he’s finally put it all together this year. He’s still swinging and missing a ton, but he’s elevating all of his loud contact and has already blasted eight home runs. Iván Herrera and Alec Burleson are two solid everyday regulars that complete the backbone of the Cardinals lineup. The rest of the group is pretty questionable at the plate, though both Masyn Winn and Victor Scott II are defensive stalwarts.
Probable Pitchers
Andre Pallante is a groundball specialist who has carved out a nice role as an innings-eating back-end starter in St. Louis. He doesn’t strike anyone out, walks a few too many, but gets away with it by inducing a ton of contact on the ground. His four-seam fastball is super weird. He throws from a really high slot and you’d expect a ton of carry from that pitch at the top of the zone. Instead, it’s arrow straight and drops a lot like his sinker. It has the highest groundball rate of any four-seamer in baseball. It’s almost as if he has two versions of his sinker, one that has a bit of armside run (like a traditional sinker) and one that doesn’t (his four-seamer).
Once upon a time, Matthew Liberatore was one of the Cardinals’ top pitching prospects. His development stalled out once he reached the big leagues and St. Louis actually tried to use him as a high leverage reliever for a while back in 2024. Back in the rotation last year, he had a great start to the season but wore down during the summer. It was his best showing in the big leagues and a stepping stone to continue growing this year. He has a wide arsenal but his big curveball is the only standout pitch. His command is good enough, and repertoire varied enough, that he can keep opposing batters off balance, but his stuff isn’t dominant enough to rack up a ton of strikeouts.
Michael McGreevy is a throw back to a bygone era. He’s a kitchen sink righty with a fastball that barely touches 91 mph and seven different pitches in his arsenal. He’s got excellent command of his entire repertoire and locates well on both sides of the plate. That makes at-bats against him pretty uncomfortable for opposing batters, though none of his pitches are that dominant individually. Instead, batters are more likely to mishit any contact they make because any given pitch could break in or out, up or down. Like the other two starters previewed above, the Cardinals fantastic defense is capable of turning a lot of that contact into outs, which makes his low strikeout rate less of a liability.
The Big Picture:
The Rangers and Athletics head into this weekend tied atop the AL West standings, and those two division rivals meet up for a three-game series in Texas this weekend. The Angels have continued to be entertaining to watch, though they’ve slipped down the standings after losing back-to-back series to the Padres and Blue Jays; they’ll play in Kansas City this weekend. The Astros won their series against the Guardians earlier this week but still bring up the rear in the standings. Houston hosts the Yankees this weekend.
