The Yankees’ Other Young Ace In The Making
If you weren’t familiar with Cam Schlittler before this season, I’m sure you are now. The 25-year-old owns an AL-leading 1.35 ERA across nine starts. The Yankees are 7-2 in his outings, and opposing batters are hitting .176 against the righty and his devastating three-fastball mix. With Tarik Skubal on the shelf, Schlittler has emerged as an early frontrunner to start for the AL All-Stars this summer in Philadelphia. Some might tell you he’s the Cy Young favorite, too. But Schlittler isn’t the only reason the Yankees’ starting staff has exceeded expectations in 2026.
Will Warren, 27 next month, has a 3.42 ERA through nine starts of his own. With 59 strikeouts, he’s tied with Schlittler for fourth-most in the American League. His 5-1 record also matches Schlittler’s, as does New York’s 7-2 record in his starts. Under the hood, the numbers are just as impressive. Warren ranks among the AL’s top 10 qualified arms in xERA and FIP, while his xFIP and SIERA put him into the league’s top five. The only AL pitchers ahead of him in all four metrics are Schlittler, Dylan Cease, and Jacob deGrom.
One thing all of those “ERA estimators” appreciate is the significance of strikeouts, walks, and their relationship to one another. Warren’s strikeout rate is up from 24.1% in 2025, his first full season, to 29.8% in 2026. His walk rate has dropped by nearly one third, from 9.1% to 6.1%. Accordingly, his 23.7% K-BB% (strikeout rate minus walk rate) is more than 10 percentage points higher than the league average for a starting pitcher. K-BB% is a stat that stabilizes relatively quickly. It’s also one of the strongest predictors of future run prevention. Warren still needs to prove he can pitch this well over a full season, but his much-improved K-BB% is a powerful indicator that his early success is more than smoke and mirrors. Schlittler is turning heads with a 24.8% K-BB% after 202 batters faced. As far as strikeouts and walks are concerned, Warren has been almost equally excellent in a similar-sized sample.
It isn’t hard to see that Warren has been pitching better than he was last year. It’s a little harder to understand how and why. His strikeouts are up and his walks are down, but he isn’t throwing substantially more pitches in the strike zone or generating more swings. His swing-and-miss rate is middle of the pack, while his chase rate is well below league average. Even more curiously, his strikeout and whiff rates are down on his sweeper, which was widely considered his bread and butter in his prospect days. When Warren put up a 4.44 ERA in 33 starts last season, many were quick to note that he did so despite opponents hitting .336 with a .569 slug against his supposed “best pitch.” Instead of being a weapon, it was the least effective sweeper in the game, with a run value of -10, per Baseball Savant. So, it would have made perfect sense to presume that Warren needed to harness his sweeper if he was going to take the next step.
It would have made perfect sense, and yet… the explanation for his success isn’t that simple. Warren throws his four-seam fastball, sinker, and sweeper each about one third of the time against right-handed batters. When he doesn’t have the platoon advantage, he also mixes in a changeup and a curveball to keep lefty batters on their toes. All five of those offerings have above-average (or better) raw stuff this year, according to models like Stuff+ and PitchingBot at FanGraphs.
However, most of his pitches had good stuff last year too. What Warren has really improved in 2026, according to those models, is his command, specifically on his four-seam, sweeper, and changeup. Indeed, a glance at his heat maps will confirm that he’s been hitting his spots with those pitches more frequently. He isn’t letting his four-seam fastball drift to the sides, he’s wasting fewer sweepers, and he’s punishing opposite-handed hitters with his changeup low and away. The righty might not be throwing more pitches in the zone, but he’s throwing pitches where he needs to throw them to earn more strikes.
Just as consequential as where Warren is throwing his pitches is when and where he’s throwing them in relation to one another. In other words, all five of his pitches work in tandem. His changeup works because it plays off his sinker. His sinker works because he pairs it with his four-seam. They all work because his sweeper gives him such a different look. His arsenal is more than the sum of its parts.
To that point, Stuff+ and PitchingBot give Warren strong scores for the stuff and location of each of his individual pitches, but his overall scores – scores that take into account physical pitch characteristics, pitch locations, and situational usage for his entire arsenal – are nothing short of elite. His 118 Pitching+ (a sister metric to Stuff+) ranks third among qualified arms across MLB, trailing only stuff god deGrom and stuff prodigy Jacob Misiorowski. Warren’s overall PitchingBot score is even better, leading all 79 qualified pitchers in the major leagues. It may be just one metric, but it’s a metric that puts him ahead of names like deGrom, Skubal, Skenes… and Schlittler. Pitching+ and PitchingBot aren’t stats you hear about every day, but they’re powerful tools for predicting rest-of-season runs allowed in smaller samples. When all is said and done, what matters is preventing runs and winning ballgames. The pitch models tell us that Warren has the skills to do exactly that.
Gerrit Cole has been out all season. Carlos Rodón only just returned. If Clarke Schmidt pitches at all this year, it won’t be until the latter half of the schedule. Luis Gil is hurt too, and even before he landed on the Triple-A injured list, he was pitching like something was wrong. Those four pitchers made up the Yankees’ rotation as recently as the 2024 World Series. Yet, even without meaningful contributions from any of them, New York’s starters lead the Junior Circuit in wins, xERA, and FanGraphs WAR. Their 3.14 ERA ranks second, and their 16.5% K-BB% ranks third. Not all of that is Warren’s doing – he’s had plenty of help from Schlittler, Max Fried, and Ryan Weathers – but it would be hard to overstate how much he has meant to his team so far in 2026. Cole, Fried, Rodón, and now Schlittler are much bigger names, but Warren is looking like another future ace for New York.
Photos courtesy of Maria Lysaker, Imagn Images.
Rockies Place Chase Dollander On IL With Elbow Sprain
The Rockies announced a series of roster moves today. Most notably, right-hander Chase Dollander has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to a right elbow sprain. (The Rockies initially said it was a strain but later issued a correction.) Left-hander Sammy Peralta has been recalled to take his spot on the roster. The Rockies also placed infielder/outfielder Tyler Freeman on the paternity list. Outfielder Sterlin Thompson has been recalled for Freeman and will be making his major league debut as soon as he gets into a game.
To this point, not a lot of details have been made public regarding Dollander, but the signs are a bit ominous. Dollander departed yesterday’s start in the second inning, with the team providing a vague diagnosis of arm tightness. Quickly placing him on the IL might not necessarily be any kind of flag, since it makes sense that they would be cautious with their prized young righty. But a sprain, by definition, means there is some degree of tearing or stretching involving a ligament.
Perhaps the team will have more information on his status later. At the very least, they will be proceeding without Dollander in the rotation for the next couple of weeks. Dollander has technically been working as a reliever for the most part this year, but his relief outings have seen him pitch multiple innings behind an opener, effectively a starter’s workload. Four spots in the rotation are taken by Kyle Freeland, Michael Lorenzen, Jose Quintana and Tomoyuki Sugano. They don’t have an off-day until May 28th, so some kind of solution will be needed for the fifth spot.
Tanner Gordon has been pitching three- and four-inning stints out of the bullpen, including four frames following Dollander yesterday, so he is perhaps the simplest guy to slot in. Ryan Feltner is currently on the IL and doesn’t appear close to a return, though he could be a factor down the line. In Triple-A, the Rockies have Gabriel Hughes, Carson Palmquist, Valente Bellozo and Blas Castaño, who are all on the 40-man roster, so one of them could be recalled.
Thompson, 25 next month, was drafted 31st overall in 2022. He has since been climbing the minor league ladder. The Rockies added him to their 40-man roster in November of last year, to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft.
He has a tremendous .344/.491/.496 line in Triple-A this year. That’s surely a bit misleading since he’s been playing in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League and also has an unsustainable .419 batting average on balls in play. Still, his 18.6% walk rate is massive and higher than his 17.4% strikeout rate. However, the offensive part of his game has never really been the concern. Some evaluators think he’ll be a below average defender, even in an outfield corner. That means he’ll really have to hit to provide value.
It’s possible this will just be a brief call for Thompson. Stints on the paternity list last for one to three days, so Freeman should be back relatively quickly. The Rockies have Mickey Moniak, Jake McCarthy, Brenton Doyle and Jordan Beck getting playing time in their outfield at the moment. If Thompson doesn’t have a path to regular at-bats, it makes sense for him to go back down when Freeman returns, but he can get a taste of big league life now.
Photo courtesy of Ron Chenoy, Imagn Images
Brennen Davis Has Assignment Clause In Deal With Mariners
Outfielder Brennen Davis is with the Mariners on a minor league deal. As part of that deal, he has an assignment clause today, per Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times. If he triggers the clause, he will be offered up to all the teams in the leagues. If any club is willing to give him a roster spot, the Mariners would have to either add him to their own roster or send him away to another club that would. Divish notes that Davis also has an August 1st opt-out.
It seems like Davis has a decent chance of getting a roster spot in the coming days. He is crushing the ball with Triple-A Tacoma, currently sporting a .293/.404/.569 line. Even in the context of the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, that performance leads to a 145 wRC+, indicating Davis has been 45% better than league average. He has eight home runs in 151 plate appearances and is drawing walks at a strong 12.6% clip.
Those numbers will surely draw the attention of some clubs around the league but it doesn’t seem like the Mariners will let let him get away. “I don’t see a scenario where we don’t keep him in our organization,” general manager Justin Hollander said to Divish. “He’s a right-handed bat with power and there aren’t a ton of them available.”
The Mariners are surely not just making this call based on his 33-game sample this year. Many years ago, Davis was one of the top prospects in the sport. He was a second-round pick of the Cubs in 2018 and hit his way up to the top minor league level in 2021. Baseball America ranked him the #16 prospect in the league going into 2022.
Injuries derailed his progress from there. As Divish notes in his column, it was initially thought that Davis had a herniated disc in his back in 2022, but surgery found a cluster of blood vessels pushing against his sciatic nerve. Subsequent seasons saw him deal with a core muscle strain, a stress reaction in his back and a broken ankle. Around those injuries, he only played 229 minor league games in the four years from 2022 to 2025, producing a .215/.329/.404 line in that time.
The Cubs added Davis to their 40-man roster in November of 2022, to prevent him from being available in the Rule 5 draft. He never got called up to the majors, apart from a stint on the injured list in 2024. Davis got a few days of big league service from that but didn’t get to appear in a game. He was designated for assignment after that 2024 season and then non-tendered. He spent 2025 with the Yankees on a minor league deal while still recovering from ankle surgery in 2024. He returned but then missed more time due to a crash into an outfield wall, per Divish.
It’s been quite an odyssey but Davis now seems to finally be both healthy and performing up to his abilities. Based on his numbers and the comments from Hollander, it wouldn’t be surprising if he’s added to the 40-man soon. There may not be playing time available in Seattle immediately, as they have Julio Rodríguez, Randy Arozarena, Luke Raley, Dominic Canzone, Rob Refsnyder and Connor Joe in their outfield mix.
Davis burned two options while on the Cubs’ roster in 2023 and 2024 but still has one remaining. That means the Mariners could give him a 40-man spot and keep him in Tacoma for the time being, unless they want to bump someone else off the active roster.
Photo courtesy of Rick Scuteri, Imagn Images
Trade Rumors Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript
Steve Adams
- Good afternoon, everyone! We'll get going at 2pm CT, but feel free to ask questions ahead of time, as always.
- Good afternoon! Let's begin
Chris
- What kind of deal would Arraez be looking at next year if his defensive metrics at 2B continue to hold up?
Steve Adams
- The market just doesn't pay second-base-only players even if they can play decent defense. I suppose you could argue Arraez is a second base or first base option, but that's not helping his cause much, particularly not when he's hitting for less power than ever and still never walking.I'd be surprised if he got more than the 3/42 that's been somewhat en vogue in recent offseasons, and I think a two-year deal would be a likelier outcome. Arraez is very good at one thing (hitting singles) and doesn't offer a ton else.
wiseoldfool
- Ildemaro tsunami has subsided. What you project ROS?
Steve Adams
- The legend of Joltin' Joe Ildimaggio will live on fondly in my heart forever, but that was never holding up and I don't see any reason to think that, at 34 years young, he's morphed into a genuinely above average hitter. He's not hitting the ball hard or walking, and he's swinging at everything under the sun.He entered this season a career .249/.289/.357 hitter, and something in that vicinity is probably likely from here on out.
Sandy at 90
- Any chance Dodgers will be in on Skubal at trading deadline?
Ghost of Peanuts Lowery
- Just a wild thought: If, and it's a big "if," the Tigers decide that they needed to trade Skubal now in order to get pitchers in return who can help assure them a spot in the playoffs, would the Dodgers be a good fit? They have some good young pitchers and they wouldn't need Skubal until the postseason. Or would the Tigers decide that if they got into the playoffs, they would need Skubal?
-
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Orioles Acquire Eduarniel Núñez, Designate Christian Roa
The Orioles acquired right-hander Eduarniel Núñez from the A’s in exchange for cash, the clubs announced Friday. He’d previously been designated for assignment and has now been optioned to Baltimore’s Triple-A affiliate in Norfolk. To open space on the 40-man roster, the O’s designated another right-handed reliever, Christian Roa, for assignment.
The 26-year-old Núñez was one of four players the A’s received from the Padres in exchange for Mason Miller and JP Sears. Shortstop Leo De Vries headlined the return, with rotation prospects Braden Nett and Henry Baez standing as enticing secondary pieces. Núñez was the “fourth” prospect in the deal but also the most major league-ready of the bunch. He’d already made a very brief MLB debut with San Diego and jumped right onto the Athletics’ roster following the trade.
Last summer, Núñez pitched eight innings with the Athletics and was tagged for eight runs on nine hits, seven walks and a pair of hit batters. He did fan nine batters, but when accounting for all the walks and the pair of batters he plunked, those nine punchouts only represented 23% of the opponents he faced — just barely north of the league average.
Lackluster debut notwithstanding, the A’s surely had some hope that Núñez could turn things around in 2026. That hasn’t happened. Núñez has a respectable 4.61 ERA through 13 2/3 innings (2 1/3 in Double-A, 11 1/3 in Triple-A), but he’s walked 11 of his 67 opponents (16.4%) and plunked another two batters (3%). Since coming to the A’s organization last summer, Núñez has faced 155 batters between the majors and minors. A whopping 19.3% of them have reached base without putting a ball in play, whether by walk or hit-by-pitch. He’s also tossed six wild pitches in a total of 33 1/3 innings.
Beyond that poor command, Núñez has experienced an alarming velocity drop this season. His four-seamer averaged 98.1 mph last year but is at an even 95 mph so far in 2026. Last year’s slider sat 88.5 mph. This year, it’s at 87 mph. Perhaps the Orioles have some mechanical tweaks in mind to get him back on track, but it’s not an encouraging trend. Núñez doesn’t have a full year of service under his belt and is in the second of three minor league option years, however, so the O’s have some time to get him trending in the right direction if they’re willing to keep him on the 40-man roster.
Roa, 27, was with the Marlins last year and signed with the Astros as a minor league free agent after being outrighted by Miami. He was briefly called to Houston’s big league roster but was quickly designated for assignment and claimed by the Twins. Minnesota optioned Roa to Triple-A and wound up designating him for assignment themselves not long after. The Orioles claimed him earlier this week, but it’ll be another potentially abbreviated stay in a new organization for Roa.
The No. 48 overall pick out of Texas A&M back in 2020, Roa is a hard-throwing righty who’s yet to break through and establish himself in the majors. He’s drawn praise for a plus slider and average or better fastball and changeup over the years, but he’s regularly received 30 and 40 grades (on the 20-80 scale) for his command along the way. Roa has pitched to a 4.56 ERA in parts of four Triple-A seasons, fanning 25.5% of his opponents there but also issuing walks at a dismal 14% clip.
This is already his third DFA of the season. The Orioles will either trade Roa, place him on outright waivers or release him in the days ahead. His DFA will be resolved within a maximum of one week.
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Rays Designate Aaron Brooks For Assignment
The Rays have designated right-hander Aaron Brooks for assignment and recalled fellow righty Trevor Martin from Triple-A Durham in a corresponding move, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. Their 40-man roster is now at 39 players.
Brooks, 36, signed with the Rays earlier this month after beginning the season in the Mexican League. His contract was selected to the major league roster last weekend, and he made his team debut Wednesday evening. It didn’t go well. The journeyman righty recorded only one out and was tagged for three earned runs on a pair of walks and a homer. That could end up representing the entirety of his time with the Rays; he’ll now be traded, placed on outright waivers or released within the next week. Brooks has been outrighted in the past and thus has the right to reject a minor league assignment if he passes through waivers unclaimed.
This now becomes the seventh season in which Brooks has logged at least one big league appearance. He has just under three total years of major league service time, during which he’s compiled 207 innings with a 6.48 ERA, a 15.2% strikeout rate and a 7% walk rate.
Though he hasn’t had much success in the majors, Brooks has pitched in parts of 10 Triple-A seasons and piled up more than 800 innings there. A 4.80 ERA doesn’t stand out, but he’s spent most of his Triple-A career pitching in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League and has had some successful seasons there. Brooks also spent two years pitching with the Korea Baseball Organization’s Kia Tigers, for whom he logged a 2.79 ERA in 229 1/3 innings from 2020-21.
Angels, Austin Wynns Agree To Minor League Deal
The Angels and free agent catcher Austin Wynns are in agreement on a minor league deal, MLBTR has learned. The Klutch Sports client opened the season with the division-rival A’s but was designated for assignment a week ago. The A’s asked to assign him to Triple-A Las Vegas, but as a player with five-plus years of service, Wynns had the right to refuse, which he did. The A’s then placed him on release waivers, and he subsequently became a free agent.
Wynns spent nearly one calendar year with the A’s after they acquired him in a cash swap with the Reds last June. He’d taken 63 plate appearances with Cincinnati and turned in a mammoth .390/.429/.661 slash (three homers, seven doubles), but that sort of production was never going to be sustainable; Wynns had a modest track record prior to that outburst, and while the short uptick in power was impressive, his overall batting line was also buoyed by a sky-high .513 average on balls in play.
Now 35 years old, Wynns wound up taking 110 plate appearances with the A’s and slashing .167/.204/.304 in that time. The well-traveled backstop’s career marks are somewhere between the extremes of those Cincinnati highs and West Sacramento lows. He’s suited up for the Reds, A’s, Orioles, Giants, Dodgers and Rockies, compiling a lifetime .231/.276/.347 slash line in 826 big league plate appearances (293 games).
Wynns doesn’t draw premium framing grades, but Statcast thinks he’s solid when it comes to blocking balls in the dirt. More impressively, Wynns has shut down 30.2% of attempted base thieves in the majors — right in line with his career 31% mark in the minors. He’s quite strong when it comes to controlling the run game, and clubs clearly value his experience, defensive acumen and work with pitchers, as evidenced by his five-plus years of service despite sub-par work in the batter’s box.
Because Wynns has five-plus years of service, he was able to elect free agency and still retain the remainder of this year’s $1.1MM salary. The A’s are on the hook for the vast majority of that sum. The Angels will owe Wynns only the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the big league roster. That would be subtracted from what the A’s have left to pay out.
The Angels’ catching depth has taken a major hit in recent weeks. Logan O’Hoppe suffered a broken wrist in late April. That injury pushed Travis d’Arnaud into the starter’s role, but he went on the injured list last week due to plantar fasciitis.
That pair of injuries left the Halos with Sebastián Rivero and rookie Omar Martínez as the catching tandem at present. Both signed minor league deals over the winter. Rivero entered the season with only 162 days of big league service. He’s a .169/.220/.202 hitter in 134 big league plate appearances and a .248/.296/.369 hitter in 785 Triple-A plate appearances spread across six seasons.
Martinez, 25, had never played in the majors before being called up earlier this week. He’s 1-for-3 in his fledgling MLB career. The Venezuelan-born backstop posted decent numbers in the lower minors with the Yankees but slashed .208/.297/.358 with a 34.4% strikeout rate in 259 plate appearances between Double-A and Triple-A dating back to last season. Given that tandem’s minimal track record, it wouldn’t be at all surprising if Wynns found himself catching games at Angel Stadium in the near future.
The Opener: Subway Series, Suarez, Lee
With Shohei Ohtani getting the day off, catcher Will Smith led off for the first time in his career. The move paid off for the Dodgers. Smith took Landen Roupp deep in his first at-bat. Ohtani is expected to return to the lineup on Friday, which will likely bump Smith back to the middle of the order.
1. Aces battle in New York
The first Subway Series of the season begins on Friday, with the Yankees heading to Citi Field. It’s a matchup of unexpected top starters for each side. Cam Schlittler will get the ball for the Yankees. He’s built on his 2025 postseason success to become a legitimate AL Cy Young contender. Clay Holmes will oppose Schlittler. The veteran slipped out of the rotation down the stretch last year, but has bounced back in a big way this season. Holmes has allowed two earned runs or fewer in all eight starts. He’s been one of the most effective members of a rotation that includes Nolan McLean and Freddy Peralta.
2. Suarez cruises in revenge game
Red Sox lefty Ranger Suarez faced his former club for the first time on Thursday. He delivered 5 1/3 scoreless frames against the Phillies, striking out eight. Suarez was coming off a minor hamstring injury and was pulled after 76 pitches. “To be honest, it was like a regular game,” Suarez told reporters through an interpreter, including Jen McCaffrey of The Athletic. “Obviously, I know they were my old teammates, but I wanted to just get deep in the game.” Philadelphia signed Suarez as an international free agent in 2012. He’d spent his entire pro career with the organization until this season. Boston handed Suarez a five-year, $130MM deal this offseason.
3. Lee makes history against the Dodgers
Giants outfielder Jung Hoo Lee sliced a line drive down the left field line in the fifth inning against the Dodgers last night. The ball skipped off the side wall and past Teoscar Hernandez. Lee zoomed around the bases for an inside-the-park home run. It was the first inside-the-parker for a Giant at Dodger Stadium, according to multiple reports, including from Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle. It was also Lee’s first at any level, even Little League, he told reporters. The play momentarily tied the game, but L.A. would score three times in the sixth inning. Hernandez was at the center of the rally following his defensive miscue.
Photo courtesy of Vincent Carchietta, Imagn Images
What Should The Cardinals Do With Riley O’Brien?
It’s been a weird year for closers. Edwin Díaz, Josh Hader, Ryan Helsley, Emilio Pagán, Carlos Estévez and others are on the injured list. Jeff Hoffman lost his job with the Blue Jays. Pete Fairbanks, just reinstated from the IL, has an earned run average of 10.00. Devin Williams and Andrés Muñoz have ERAs over 5.00. Bryan Abreu, filling in for Hader, has an ERA over 8.00. The Cardinals, meanwhile, are getting great results from a guy who hardly pitched in the majors before his 30th birthday.
St. Louis acquired Riley O’Brien in a very small trade in November of 2023. At the time, O’Brien didn’t even have a 40-man roster spot with the Mariners. All 29 other clubs had passed on claiming him when Seattle placed him on outright waivers in the summer of 2022. He was about to become a minor league free agent, but the Cards saw enough in O’Brien to send cash to Seattle to acquire him and place him on their 40-man roster so he couldn’t hit the open market.
The track record at that time wasn’t much to go on. An eighth-round pick of the Rays in 2017, O’Brien began his career as a starting pitcher. He was flipped to the Reds in August of 2020 for left-hander Cody Reed. Cincinnati added O’Brien to the 40-man roster that November to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft. Things didn’t work out with the Reds. O’Brien made a brief major league debut in 2021 but posted a 4.55 ERA in Triple-A. He was designated for assignment early in 2022 and shipped to the Mariners for cash or a player to be named later.
O’Brien was moved to a relief role in 2022, a switch that didn’t immediately bear fruit. He finished the year with a 7.03 ERA in 39 2/3 Triple-A innings. He seemed to turn a corner in 2023 when he threw 55 Triple-A innings with a 2.29 ERA in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. O’Brien struck out 37.7% of batters faced and induced grounders on 57.1% of balls in play. His 13.6% walk rate showed that he was still working on his control, but the Cards were intrigued enough to make that small trade and dedicate a 40-man spot to him.
That didn’t pay off right away. O’Brien suffered a flexor strain early in 2024 and missed most of the season. He was only able to make eight big league appearances and 14 more in Triple-A. He went into 2025 with only 10 1/3 major league innings under his belt. He turned 30 in February of that year, just before the season started.
O’Brien was finally able to break out in the big leagues last year, as he gave the Cards 48 innings with a 2.06 ERA. He wasn’t really as good as that ERA would suggest, however. His 11.1% walk rate was quite high and his 22.6% strikeout rate only average. His 54.1% ground ball rate was good but he got a lot of help from a .252 batting average on balls in play and 82.8% strand rate. His 3.61 FIP and 3.82 SIERA suggested he was good but not quite as dominant as the ERA made it seem.
The Cardinals sent him to the minors a few times last year and burned his final option year. That situation could push a pitcher off the roster, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon with O’Brien. He has taken over the closer’s role in St. Louis, with a 2.70 ERA and 12 saves in 20 innings so far this year. Though that ERA is higher than last year’s, the numbers under the hood look far better. His 29.5% strikeout rate, 2.6% walk rate and 62% ground ball rate are all huge improvements. His .320 BABIP this year actually skews a bit to the unlucky side. His 2.06 FIP and 1.67 SIERA think he actually deserves far better than his ERA.
The results are backed by a strong arsenal. O’Brien is averaging 98.4 miles per hour with his sinker, a pitch he is throwing 59.2% of the time. This year’s most-used secondary pitch is a sweeper that comes in around 83.8 mph, though he’s also using a 91.5 mph slider, giving hitters two different breaking pitches to watch out for. There’s also a changeup nominally in the mix, though that has made up less than 1% of his offerings this year.
O’Brien’s success is a big reason why the Cardinals are playing a bit above their heads right now. They have a 24-18 record despite an essentially even run differential. They have scored 194 runs and allowed 193. The +1 run differential gives them an expected win-loss of 21-21, but they have gone 8-3 in one-run games and 5-1 in extra innings. In short, they’ve played like a .500 team on the whole but have eked out three extra wins in close contests. O’Brien locking down 12 saves and earning three wins has surely played a role in tipping those scales.
It puts the Cards in an interesting spot this summer. They had planned for this season to be an evaluation year. They traded away Sonny Gray, Willson Contreras, Nolan Arenado and Brendan Donovan in rebuilding moves. The plan was to spend 2026 letting less-established guys accumulate lots of playing time, so the club could figure out who is a building block and who has trade value.
Perhaps the Cardinals will fall back in the standings and make things easier for the team brass. If not, it could lead to some tough decisions. The front office probably doesn’t want to buy at the deadline since that would require subtracting from the farm system, at a time when they are trying to build it. In fact, they probably want to do more selling, with guys like Lars Nootbaar, JoJo Romero, Dustin May, Nolan Gorman and Alec Burleson being some logical trade candidates.
O’Brien will be a very interesting player to track as well. On the one hand, he is not close to free agency. He came into this year with one year and 129 days of service time. He’s under club control for four more seasons after this one. He could qualify for arbitration this offseason as a Super Two guy, but even he does, four arb years for what looks like a potential high-end reliever is a great thing to have. There’s a case for keeping him around.
On the other hand, reliever performance tends to be quite erratic. O’Brien is 31 years old and doesn’t have a long track record of big league success. He walked 11.6% of batters faced in his minor league career. He had a 13.1% walk rate in the majors coming into this season. He’s now walking just 2.6% of opponents this year. Did he suddenly go from poor control to elite, or is this going to regress?
There’s also the ever-present injury concerns with a pitcher, especially one who throws almost 100 mph. Most high-velocity pitchers deal with arm issues these days and O’Brien had that aforementioned flexor strain in 2024.
There are many moving pieces here, making O’Brien an interesting player to watch in the coming months. As mentioned up top, lots of clubs have gotten poor results from their closers. Relievers are always in demand at the deadline and that need will perhaps be even greater this year. There’s an argument for the Cards to cash in while O’Brien is putting up good numbers. When they plan to truly contend in a few years, he’ll be pushing into his mid-3os and who knows what his status will be at that point?
Between now and the August 3 deadline, there are many ways it could tip. O’Brien could keep locking down games but he could also see his control slip or he could perhaps get hurt. The team could keep winning games and hang in the race or they could slip back. Trade talks won’t earnestly ramp up for a while but the Cardinals will have some interesting phone calls this summer.
Photo courtesy of Dennis Lee, Imagn Images