Cardinals pitching prospect Tekoah Roby underwent Tommy John surgery last week, reports Katie Woo of The Athletic. He’s expected to miss not only the remainder of the current season but also the entire 2026 season as well.
It’s a brutal blow to the team’s prospect base. Roby has ranked among the Cardinals’ most promising young arms since he was acquired two years ago in the trade sending Jordan Montgomery to the Rangers, but he’d taken a considerable step forward this season. The 23-year-old opened the season with a brilliant 10-start run in his second stint at the Double-A level, pitching 47 innings with a 2.49 ERA, a 31% strikeout rate and a 6% walk rate. That earned him his first bump to Triple-A Memphis, where he started six more times and notched a 4.02 ERA, 22.6% strikeout rate and matching 6% walk rate.
Overall, Roby has pitched 78 1/3 innings with a 3.10 ERA between the Cardinals’ top two affiliates. Woo adds that the Cardinals, as part of their player development overhaul this season, had added a two-seamer to Roby’s repertoire and made changes to the shape and velocity of both his slider and changeup. The results were impressive, but those gains are now on hold after a second straight season with elbow troubles will prompt a major surgery.
It’s been a tough season for Cardinals pitching prospects. While McGreevy has remained healthy and now pitched his way into the rotation, many of the system’s other young arms have incurred notable setbacks. In addition to Roby, pitching prospects Cooper Hjerpe and Sem Robberse have both had Tommy John surgery this year. Hjerpe had his surgery in mid-April, and Robberse followed about a month later. Right-hander Tink Hence has missed most of the season due to a rib cage sprain. Lefty Quinn Mathews missed more than a month due to shoulder discomfort and has walked a staggering 21.3% of his opponents in 13 Triple-A starts when healthy.
The complications for the Cardinals extend beyond the obvious and straightforward setbacks in the development of several key young arms. Both Roby and Robberse are on the 40-man roster already. Hjerpe will need to be added this winter or else be left unprotected in the Rule 5 Draft (where there’s plenty of precedent for a team selecting a pitcher who is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery).
There’s no 60-day IL in the offseason, so if the Cardinals indeed add Hjerpe to the 40-man in November, they’ll effectively be navigating the offseason with only 37 of their 40-man roster spots available. Each of Roby, Robberse and Hjerpe would be taking up a spot. And, since none of them has made his big league debut yet, those dead roster spots would even carry over into the 2026 season, unless the Cardinals select any of the three to the major league roster and place them on the 60-day injured list. Doing so would start any of the trio’s service clock early and grant them major league service time and salary while rehabbing.
Jesus
This hurts their farm system bad
P.S. can there be an article about the Bryce Harper/rob manfred fight?
I just saw that tweet about that. That’s why I came here to see if there was an article about it.
What did the goofy Mormon and Dracula do?
Please tell me this was a real fight and Harper slugged him in the jaw, and Manfred fell down and was twitching on the ground like an impaled chicken.
I would love to see stars like Harper and machado in a boxing ring I would spend 100 to see that
What do politicians say about certain forms of violence in America when it occurs? Thoughts and prayers? So it will be in money obsessed sports. Thoughts and prayers young man. Thoughts and prayers.
What are you on about?
This sucks, but this is why we should have spent the last two years unloading veterans and hoarding young arms. We all know pitchers are fragile. The only silver lining is with all of these injuries happening at the same time, there should be a wave of arms getting healthy at point when the major league roster is closer to contention.
Sometimes the light at the end of tunnel is a train.
I wonder if this just bad luck or if there is something wrong with how they are developing the pitchers. Considering how widespread the pitcher injury problem is, perhaps a change in philosophy is required. I’d love to see them bring pinpoint command back into the forefront instead of velo and see what happens.
It’s interesting to me that part of their “player development overhaul” was teaching a young pitcher to throw a two seamer. So we have come full circle. Baseball according to Dave Duncan is once again trending.
Good luck with that; this is a problem that goes all the way down to the youth level. Velocity and spin rate leaders are measured on every amateur baseball site, and is something that’s used to quantify success at the next level. Not to mention these sites are constructed by people in the baseball industry and leads directly into things like draft ranking.
Hypothetical scenario; there are two pitchers from Uganda, both the same age, both the same height and weight, both with the same ERA, and both with the same number of strikeouts and walks issued; the only difference is that one is throwing mid 90’s while the other is topping out in the low 80’s. Which of the two do you figure professional scouts are going to expect to succeed at a higher level? Rumors of a Ugandan kid throwing with decent velocity is usually the only way someone like that will get their name out there at all.
If a scout hears about a promising youth pitcher, the first thing they’ll usually ask about is their velocity. So expecting kids to stop doing the one thing that is going to get them noticed is going to be extremely difficult to say the least.
I agree with you there. People get so fixated on one measurable statistic. Why can’t we go back to Maddux style pitching? How about we get rid of radar guns? That’s what’s really the problem. If no one knows how fast it’s going, then who care except for the actual results? But how could anyone change that? Being so data driven has its side-effects. And this kind is legitimately injuring people.
So are we anticipating signing Mikolas and Fedde in the offseason to one year deals …( laugh out loud while crying )
oh no, don’t you put that hex on me, Ricky Bobby!!
we’re banking on a bounce back from both.
Sell to add
Even if all you get are prospects
Arenado, no homers since June 10. He is hurting but still playing
TRADE EVERYONE
This guy pitched less than five innings per start so he wasn’t overused; how much less could he have pitched?
TJ for young pitchers is on the rise. The prevailing theory is that as young players are specializing in pitching at a younger age, they’re more susceptible to injury.
And since the act of throwing a baseball is inherently unnatural (and there’s increased emphasis on velo and spin), more young players are going under the knife than ever before.
So the next crop of bullpen arms are going to miss next season. No big deal. They need a more offense and significantly better starting pitchers for those guys to have mattered next year anyway. Feel bad for their injuries but nothing really lost that isn’t easily replaced.
And the offense should improve once Bernal or Crooks is called up as well as Wetherholt. Pages and Arenado are dragging the team avg down. It gets really exciting to think about JJ leading off next year.
TJ surgery is all too common in baseball over the past few years. It seems like it’s actually accelerating. Hopefully a full recovery to all pitchers going through this.