The Cardinals will recall righty Adam Kloffenstein before tomorrow evening’s game with the Giants at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, as first reported by Ari Alexander of KPRC-2 (on X). It’ll be the 23-year-old’s major league debut. Kloffenstein is already on the 40-man roster. He would have been eligible for the Rule 5 draft last winter, so St. Louis selected his contract in November.
Kloffenstein was a second-round pick of the Blue Jays out of a Texas high school back in 2018. He was pitching in Double-A last summer when the Jays packaged him alongside Sem Robberse in the deal to plug Jordan Hicks into the back of the bullpen. St. Louis prioritized upper minors pitching in their deadline swaps of Hicks, Jack Flaherty and Jordan Montgomery.
The Cards immediately pushed Kloffenstein to Triple-A Memphis. He finished last season with nine outings there, tossing 39 frames of 3.00 ERA ball. He has worked out of the Memphis rotation this year with similar results. Kloffenstein carries a 3.97 ERA over 77 innings. His 21.9% strikeout rate and 9.4% walk percentage are pedestrian, though he’s getting ground-balls at a solid 48% clip.
Andre Pallante gets the start tomorrow with Miles Mikolas and Sonny Gray closing out the weekend series. (The teams are off on Friday to travel from Birmingham to St. Louis for the final two games of the set.) That suggests Kloffenstein could get a look from the bullpen for his first MLB work. He has started all but two of the appearances in his minor league career. Baseball America ranked him 28th in the St. Louis system over the winter, writing that he profiles as a depth starter or grounder-oriented long reliever.
A 3.97 ERA at AAA isn’t setting high expectations for MLB.
Memphis is a very tough place to pitch. He’s earned this promotion.
He actually has the 10th best ERA in the PCL. Graceffo is 7th at 3.84.
Triple A is a hitters paradise. All offensive numbers are inflated. His numbers aren’t bad for triple A pitching
Correct
The Cardinals are a bad baseball team, playing an ugly brand of baseball, without many reasons for hope in the top of the system. They need to sell at the deadline no matter how close they are to a wildcard spot. This team isn’t ready to compete for anything serious.
I’m looking forward to your first ever optimistic/positive comment about the Cardinals…some day.
Kyle Leahy has done an admirable job giving the bullpen some innings over a tough couple of days. How’s that?
I’m positive the Cards are not a great team.
Terrible take. It’s June and they are 21 – 15 in their last 36 games. They have the 2nd wildcard spot and have Contreras, Nootbaar, and Edman coming back soon. Goldy is slowly digging back. Gorman is hitting bombs again.
Mo needs to get them a 5th starter immediately. We’ve basically given up every fifth start. Gibson getting pulled right before the game yesterday sucked. He’s been great and given us a bunch of quality starts.
Im not saying they’re great, but some of their recent World Series teams didn’t look great at this time of the year. The blues were the worst team in hockey in January of 19’when they won it all.
There are no decent starters on the trade market at this point of the season. We’ll see how Matz does once he returns from the IL within the next couple of weeks. He might fix the problem, and if not, then they’ll look for an upgrade at the trade deadline.
How are they bad? The bullpen is excellent, the defense is very good, 4 out of the 5 rotation spots have performed from decent to excellent (and the 5th might fix itself once Matz returns from the IL), and the offense has improved back up to expectations since early to the middle of May save for Arenado’s power and the three starters on the IL who should all be back within the next week to a month.
Sure, it’s not a great team, but it’s easily one of the better teams in the league after the Top 4 of the Dodgers, Phillies, Braves, and Brewers.
Heard it on the local sports radio today:
The Cardinals have the worst OPS+ with runners in scoring position of ANY team in major league HISTORY.
That’s how they’re bad.
With the Cardinals lackluster pitching development in the minors, he’s about the best they can call up.
Seems like when they promoted Stubby Clapp to the major league team, that’s about when their pitching development tanked and went down the toilet.
I know those coaches are trying their best down there, but the results of their efforts it seems are not preparing them for the majors.
Who would want to be called stubby clapp???
It’s not that the system is short on talent. The problem is the talent isn’t getting an opportunity to develop properly. Mcgreevy and Graceffo both earned a chance last year they didn’t get. Liberatore and Thompson should have been competing for the 5th rotation spot.
Graceffo
Robberse
Kloffenstein
Mcgreevy
Thompson
Rom is hurt but has potential
Hence will be in AAA soon
That’s better than most teams have at AAA.
McGreevey and Graceffo did not pitch well enough in AAA to deserve a chance last season. You’re better off using AAAA guys in your rotation than calling up your real prospects too soon and risk hurting their development.
Thompson and Libertore were not ready for a guaranteed rotation spot between them and rightly competed for the 6th spot in Spring Training. Their performances as MLB spot starters since then has not changed that impression.
As up and down as the team is now, where would they be if they hadn’t signed Gibson thinking that Thompson and/or Liberatore would take that rotation spot instead?!
I told you this before yes they did. Memphis is a tough place to pitch. If we were worried about screwing up a playera development then why was Walker on last years opening day roster? Why was Scott on this year’s?
Lynn’s FIP is about the same as Liberatores. And then we woupd have had 10 million to spend on other needs.
Young talent needs opportunity.
The system is short on talent.
Who’s going back to Memphis?
Kyle Gibson was scratched today & Arenado had to leave after a HBP. Might be an IL move incoming
They all get a 27th man for the Rockwood game, so no one going down immediately.
Victor Scott the 27th man. Roycroft sent down for Kloffenstein.
As of right now, Arenado is back in the starting lineup today according to the article on the Rickwood game tonight.