June 28: The Cardinals have made it official today, announcing they have selected Graceffo to the roster. Righty Kyle Leahy was optioned to open an active roster spot while Matz was transferred to the 60-day IL to open a 40-man spot.
June 27: The Cardinals are planning to promote pitching prospect Gordon Graceffo before tomorrow night’s matchup with the Reds, reports Katie Woo of the Athletic (X link). The 24-year-old will be available out of the bullpen behind scheduled starter Andre Pallante.
Garceffo signed for an overslot $500K bonus as a fifth-round pick out of Villanova in 2021. The 6’4″ righty had a breakout season the following year, working to a 2.97 ERA across 139 1/3 innings between High-A and Double-A. He garnered some attention as a Top 100 caliber prospect heading into 2023, but his stock took a hit last year. Graceffo missed some time with a shoulder issue and wasn’t especially effective in his first crack at Triple-A. He allowed 4.92 ERA through 86 innings at the top minor league level.
Entering the season, Graceffo ranked in the back half of the organization’s top 10 prospects at both Baseball America and on Keith Law’s write-up at The Athletic. Both outlets wrote that Graceffo looked like a back-end starter last season after flashing mid-rotation potential during the ’22 campaign. Eric Longenhagen and Travis Ice of FanGraphs slotted Graceffo 25th among St. Louis farmhands in May, suggesting he may fit better in relief unless he recaptures the command he showed a couple seasons ago.
The 24-year-old has started 14 times for Triple-A Memphis this year. He owns a solid 3.84 ERA, albeit with pedestrian strikeout (21.4%) and walk (8.9%) rates. Graceffo hasn’t missed a ton of bats since he first reached the Double-A level. Working in shorter stints could improve that — either by pushing his velocity back to the mid-90s range he’d shown before the shoulder injury or allowing him to lean heavily on a slider that evaluators credit as an above-average to plus pitch. While Graceffo’s first MLB look will come out of the bullpen, the Cards could eventually send him back to Memphis to keep him stretched out for potential rotation work down the line.
Graceffo is not on the 40-man roster. St. Louis will select his contract tomorrow. Their 40-man roster is at capacity, but they can open a spot by transferring Steven Matz to the 60-day injured list after his recent setback. The Cards will need to take another pitcher off the active roster in a corresponding move.
It’s time to give him a chance.
youd think theyd give him the chance to start, and pallante wouldve been an easy move to the pen? especially with graffeco starting all 14 of his appearances on the farm and avging over 5ip/app… anyone know more about why they are using him the way they are?
They may want to bring him in slowly instead of putting him under pressure.
But how has that worked in the past? Does allowing a career starting pitcher a chance to go through his normal pre-start routine actually put more pressure on him than sitting him in the bullpen with no defined role? The Cardinals have failed to develop starting pitching in part because they bring every promising arm to the majors to use out of the bullpen.
I hope this works out. But I think the plan is broken.
Putting a starting pitcher in the bullpen during his rookie year before moving him to the rotation in following years has worked on a number of occasions, most notably for the Cardinals with Adam Wainwright and Lance Lynn, both of whom pitched well out of the bullpen on World Series winning teams in their rookie years.
Let’s pretend that neither of those people benefitted from having Dave Duncan as a coach. Our coaches are just going to wreck young arms…
He also is coming off shoulder surgery not too long ago. Very slowly increasing his innings as the season goes on.
Innings limit.
The Cardinals are simply horrible at developing players, especially pitchers.Their philosophies just doesn’t seem to work. They’ve had numerous pitchers come through their farm system not performing well with them and go on to other organizations and become very good, if not great! I don’t know, maybe they should lure and hire some of these successful developers from other organizations. Look at how they’re handling Jordan Walker!
It’s not that they can’t develop good starting pitchers. It’s that the ones they do develop tend to have their careers stalled or decimated by injuries (Wacha, Martinez, Reyes, Flaherty, etc.)
They did also unfortunately trade away Alcantara and Gallen, but they were already performing well as prospects in the first place. I don’t know who you mean when you say there are pitchers who perform better with other teams than they did with the Cardinals, aside from the early returns of Jordan Hicks starting for the Giants, albeit he was a decent reliever in St. Louis.
Meanwhile, they have developed and kept a number of good relievers over recent years, especially Ryan Helsley.
I miss Hicks, but he’s already regressing to the mean. Any Cardinals fan could have told you this would happen. Is he good? Yes. Will he be a valuable starter? No.
As for position prospects, the jury is still out on Jordan Walker. However, they have had recent success developing guys like Edman, Donovan, Nootbaar, Gorman, Burleson, and Winn.
Sorry, but this narrative is outdated and wrong. Cardinals fans seem to belive they’re the only organization that trades prospects who later find success. It started with the only two good examples in the modern era: Gallen and Alcantara. There’s no denying they lost that trade, but let’s look at other examples where that wasn’t the case:
Bader
Weaver
Kelly
Gomber
Thomas
Palacios
The list is long. Much longer than prospects who have been consistently good for other teams. Like Lanidrac also said, are we just going to pretend the development of many great players on the 40-man? We can also add Herera too.
Walker is 22. His struggles are not the fault of the Cardinals. He was demoted last season to work on his consistency hitting grounders, and wouldn’t you know it, when he returned he put up very impressive numbers for a rookie season. He’s young, he will be fine. Stop pretending everything is the Cardinals fault.
Why don’t the Cardinals call up Jimmy Crooks and give him a look?
Maybe 3 catchers on the 26-man is enough?
Tough break for Leahy. He had pitched decently. Roycroft was sent out last week to bring Gio back and he hadn’t been bad . Guess they needed a long man. Graceffo turn now. Kinda stocking up on some good young arms for middle relief roles. Graceffo could end up starting
Will we see Tink this year?
I doubt we see Tink until September at the earliest. I’m not a fan of jumping pitchers from AA to MLB.