The Cardinals optioned Richard Fitts on Wednesday, seemingly finalizing their season-opening rotation. Fitts was trying to win a spot at the back end over Michael McGreevy or Andre Pallante.
The latter two righties seem set to round out a rotation led by Matthew Liberatore, Dustin May and Kyle Leahy. The Cardinals announced Wednesday that Liberatore will take the ball for the season opener opposite Drew Rasmussen and the Rays. It’ll be the 26-year-old southpaw’s first Opening Day assignment.
Fitts landed with St. Louis in the November trade that sent Sonny Gray to Boston. The Cards acquired A-ball pitching prospect Brandon Clarke as the headliner. Fitts was more of a secondary piece but is a controllable starter with good velocity and a pair of minor league options who should factor in over the course of the season.
A 26-year-old righty, Fitts made 15 MLB appearances for the Red Sox between 2024-25. He managed a 3.97 earned run average but only struck out 17.5% of opponents while struggling with the home run ball. He took the ball three times this spring, giving up six runs on nine hits and three walks across 9 1/3 frames. He struck out nine of 39 batters faced while working with an impressive 97 mph fastball on average.
He’ll head back to Triple-A, where he has a 4.13 ERA over 143 2/3 innings. There’s a good chance Fitts is the first man up if an injury or extended stretch of the schedule opens a rotation spot. He’s the only depth starter on the 40-man roster who has any MLB experience.
Liberatore and May were assured of rotation spots. The Cardinals intended to give Leahy a chance to start after he tossed 88 innings of 3.07 ERA ball in a long relief role last season. He has been a little homer-prone this spring but leads the team with 20 strikeouts over 17 2/3 innings to solidify his starting job. It’ll be his first rotation work since he was in Double-A four years ago.
Pallante and McGreevy seemed on shakier ground at the start of camp. Pallante took 31 starts and logged 162 2/3 innings a year ago, but he mustered only a 5.31 ERA. McGreevy allowed 4.42 earned runs per nine over 95 2/3 innings. Both pitchers ranked near the bottom of the league in strikeout rate. They’ve each managed a sub-3.00 ERA despite modest strikeout totals this spring.
The Cards shooed the Fitts.
They’re Fitts to be tied.
If the Dick Fitts, wear it!
This is why I opened the article. Thank you for your service.
In hindsight, Dick didn’t fit…
Wasn’t mcgreevy from the Phillies as rule 5 ????
McGreevey was the Cardinals 1st round draft pick in 2021.
Thinking of Griff McGarry.
The name short for the Richard Fitts is hilarious 😆
If the shoe Fitts, wear it.
Fick Ditts.
Cardinals defense is going to get a lot of reps this season. Probably the worst rotation in MLB and the worst the Cardinals have run out in my lifetime. All low strikeout guys and not even any ground ballers to reduce the sting. I truly hope some of the younger pitchers force their way up to the big leagues by the All Star break.
You might want to check out whoever the Rockies and Angels are running out every fifth day before you DOOOOOOM the Cardinals rotation.
Angels have Jose Soriano, Yusei Kikuchi, Grayson Rodriguez, Reid Detmers, and Alek Manoah.
Rockies have Kyle Freeland, Michael Lorezen, Tomoyuki Sugano, Jose Quintana, and either Ryan Feltner or Chase Dollander.
Cardinals have Matthew Liberatore, Dustin May, Michael McGreevy, Andre Pallante, and Kyle Leahy.
To be fair I think all of these are bad rotations.
Not running out Mikolas and Fedde will be an addition through subtraction. And Pallante’s first two months as a starter last year weren’t bad, he just ran out of gas the second half of the season.
Lots of guys with lots of upside are going to get looks and will get rest when needed. With the volume of players, I think the pitching is going to surprise a lot of people.
Hitting may be more of a struggle, though.
Go Cards!
Better than the rotation they’ve thrown together for at least the past 5 years. I really don’t know where you’re getting your opinion.
Somewhere where the sun don’t shine?
To be fair, Fedde was quite good for the first two months last year before he fell apart, while Mikolas had a decent second half.
As for the last 5 years, you can only say that for last year (2025) and 2023. On paper at least, this rotation is clearly worse that the ones the Cardinals used in 2024, 2022, and 2021. They did have injury problems in the rotation in those latter two seasons, but they were still able to patch it together well enough to make the playoffs in those two years.
This rotation is at least better than when they were running out Montgomery (until he was traded) and pray for rain in 2023. There’s also 2007 (Wainwright and pray for rain) and just last year when they had bad starting rotations.
You don’t always need high K rates to succeed. When healthy, May was a quality #2 starter before last year, McGreevy is a good prospect coming off a decent rookie year, and Liberatore finally started putting it together as a former high-level prospect last year. Leahy was a very good setup man last year, so we’ll see if that can transfer over as a starter.
It’s not a good rotation by any means, but it’s still quite a bit better than you make it out to be.
Worst rotation in baseball and they don’t even have Miles Mikolas 😂 the step son of Michael Busch and Pete Henry Crow-Armstrong
I heard Dick Pitched a Fitt when he learned the news.
If you’re Dick Fitts, then you must sits.
This is pretty sad from the perspective of a red Sox fan. Fitts has been decent in the majors and he couldn’t crack this roster? He may not have much of a rotation future at this point.
He will be next man up.
Beyond Liberatore and May this is an audition year. Leahy McGreevy and Pallante are getting a shot, so will Fitts, Dobbins, Matthews and possibly Graceffo.
They arent trying to compete in ’26, they are assessing who is and isnt future core.
A lot of us like Fitts over Pallante. He will get his chance
Graceffo starting? Would be interesting but probably not expecting much. Haven’t heard that bandied about since he lost life on his fastball.
Hes a ‘Just maybe’ but will probably get swallowed up by the wave of other pitching prospects next year, and end up in the BP
In addition to what Robbly said (very well), Fitts has two minor league options remaining, whereas Pallante only has one. And Pallante earned his stripes by taking the ball so much last year, staying healthy, and getting minimal support from a rudderless team running on fumes.
Your definition of decent is quite different from mine.
While he was pretty good in his 2024 cup of coffee, he posted a 5.00 ERA and a 1.311 WHIP over 10 starts (11 games) for a -0.3 bWAR last year.
While Pallante wasn’t any better last year in a larger sample size, he at least had a decent MLB track record before last year and had a better Spring Training.
If you don’t acquit yourself well in spring training you must not fitts. Now the family must contend with Fitts and his tantrums
The problems for Fitts started when he had trouble fitting his pitching glove and cascaded from there
Time to either do your business or get off the pot for most of this roster. The question is do they trade or keep the ones taking care of business in July. Performance from guys like Burleson, Herrera, Nootbar, May, Liberatore, and Romero might just get them flipped for prospects. If the plan is for long term actual contender aspirations that is the play. If the plan is to get back into the postseason as a wild card as quickly as possible then they might split the difference and keep some still controlled a couple years. It’s an interesting season to watch from that perspective, but I hope they trade the works and nearly completely rebuild the roster with studs instead of duds. Extend Winn and if possible Westherholt to have something for the fans to watch at least. Trading the guys with less than 2 years of control seems like a no brainer to me at this point. Who knows what or how many games get played in ’27.
Right about Romero and May (obviously, contract year), agree re Nootbaar and Burleson.
Wrong about Herrera and Liberatore, both of whom are future core with Winn, JJW, probably Doyle and maybe Baez if he continues on from 2025.
Burleson and Herrera are part of the future core, as well as their two best hitters. They aren’t going anywhere. Liberatore is also unlikely to be moved anytime soon.
There’s absolutely no reason to tear the roster down completely when they can very easily contend again by 2028. Nobody likes watching tanking teams anyway, and the draft system has also been revised to discourage it.
If that was the plan why not seek extensions sooner than later. I understand they are forking over 40 plus million for players to play on other teams this season and that may be part of it, but Herrera is a DH and Burleson really belongs in the position he finally gets to play this season and there are options for both roles either targeted in the trades of those players and already in their system.
I have no idea where the Cardinals stand on extensions for their current players, but most of them have yet to show enough MLB consistency to deserve one. Burleson may be the exception, as he has had two good years in a row, but of course the player (and his agent) has to agree to it, too. Maybe starting next offseason we’ll start seeing some long term extensions.
In any case, Burleson is still under team control until 2028, and Herrera and Liberatore until 2029, when the Cardinals should be competing again. Meanwhile, there is far from any guarantee that anyone the Cardinals have in their system now or could trade for could end up even as good of a 1B and DH as Burleson and Herrera are now let alone how much better they may eventually become.
the intrinsic issue on extensions is that by the time a club is certain of the value of extending, so is the player and they will either cost a ton more or say nope, FA for me.
Sweet spot is probably buying out 2 years of free agency from players who are either pre-arb or arb 1. Player gets a guaranteed first big payday so gives a discount for that guarantee against regression and injury, but retains freedom to seek a big FA payday age 30 – club gets the peak years of a player and never pays for decline years (eg Goldy, Arenado)
Current obvious candidates are Winn – and perhaps Wetherholt during the 2026 season. Maybe Herrera, Liberatore?
Do it with 2 players every year, and have a rotating 4 young veterans in their FA1 and FA2 years as your core. Keeps the team young as well which has got to be good for defense.
162 games will be played in 2027.
Stop it.
If the Dick doesn’t Fitts, you must omit.
McGreevy’s spot in the rotation was never on shaky ground. After his very decent rookie year, he’s arguably a better starter than the so-called Opening Day starter Liberatore.
McGreevy had a spot before Leahy did. Not sure why this article has him on the periphery of the rotation.
The rotation may suck this year but it will be better than 2025. May and Mcgreevy will be an upgrade over Mikolas and Feede. Gray’s ERA away from Busch was over 5.00. The offense can’t be much worse than last year. Probably have close to the same record as last year.
The offense is worse by giving more playing time to Walker and Gorman with Contreras and Arenado now gone. (Yes, Arenado had a bad July and was on the IL for August and the first half of September, but his offense was decent the rest of the year and still probably better this upcoming year than what Gorman will provide.) Weatherholt may win Rookie of the Year but will probably still be a downgrade offensively compared to Donovan.
Losing Contreras and Arenado are also big downgrades defensively. Burleson may better defensively at 1B than CO but still worse there than Contreras was, and Walker still isn’t very good defensively.
Hopefully, we see more offensive development from Winn, Scott, and Saggese (and maybe even Gorman and/or Walker), a bounce back from Nootbaar, and maybe Burleson and/or Herrera get even better and become legitimate All-Stars, but right now the offense is a clear downgrade on paper.
Meanwhile, you didn’t mention it, but the bullpen is much worse than it was for the first 4 months last year, especially with Leahy moving to the rotation. It’s got Romero (for now), O’Brien, Svanson, Graceffo, and very little else.
All these jokes about his name and no one is even thinking of whether he’ll be able to supplement his minor-league pay by selling weed to Kevin Spacey. SMH