Trying To Understand the Cardinals 2024 Rotation

The Cardinals have added Lance Lynn and Kyle Gibson to the rotation, but do they make it better?

Coming into the off-season, John Mozeliak stated the Cardinals would be bringing in 3 starting pitchers; he backtracked a few weeks later to 2 starters, but did we really think the Cardinals would get 3? And a couple weeks into free agency, it looks like we have 2 pitchers.

The Cardinals and right-handed started Lance Lynn agreed on a 1 year on Monday, worth $10.0M deal with a club option for 2025 at $3M/$1M buyout. They followed it up with a 1 year deal with Kyle Gibson; he’ll get $12.0M with a 2025 option.

(The Salary Matrix has been updated)

I was happy with the Lynn signing. Prior to 2023, he was 123-89 with a 3.52 ERA, 3.61 FIP, and 118 ERA+; his 9.1 k/9 is low, but had an almost 3 to 1 K/BB ratio; he had a 31.4 bWAR over that period, or 2.6 bWAR per season. The Cardinals got 141 games and a 5.36 ERA out of 9 pitchers not named Jordan Montgomery; 5 of those 9 (Dakota Hudson, Matthew Liberatore, Jake Woodford, Adam Wainwright, and Drew Rom) all had ERAs above 5.00.

His 2023 was more of a struggle; he was 13-11 with 5.73 ERA, 5.53 FIP, and 99 ERA+ while sporting a -0.8 bWAR. His strikeout and walk rates weren’t impacted. According to Fangraphs, he was worth about $4M (he was worth $15.1M in 2022).

What bit him was his career 0.9 HR/9 jumped to 2.2 in 2023. He pitched in homer friendly parks for most of his starts; the White Sox see Guaranteed Rate Field sit at 104 park factor for homers, while Dodger Stadium is at 122 (Anything over 100 favors the hitters). Pitching half his games at Busch Stadium will help, as it has a 90 park factor for homers. History is on his side; he’s a career 40-20 pitcher in 87 games at Busch, while sporting a 2.85 ERA and 1.17 WHIP.

Adding Gibson to the mix, I’m starting to wonder if the team wants to see if they can compete with last year’s rotation. Johnny Cueto is available to take on the Wainwright role of aging pitcher that is struggling to compete still.

Realistically, the Cardinals will bring in another guy; they are still tied to Montgomery, Sonny Gray, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the free agent market and there is speculation they could be in on Tyler Glasnow from Tampa Bay. Even adding one of these guys, you have 4 starters with 2023 ERAs of 5.73 (Lynn), 4.73 (Gibson), 4.78 (Miles Mikolas), and 3.86 (Steven Matz, who was helped by some late season success before going out with an injury).

These moves individually were fine; unfortunately every roster move builds on the previous move. Adding both Lynn and Gibson does bring you a couple of innings eaters, but are either of those guys any different than what you already have in Mikolas? No. Lynn gets a few more strikeouts, but they were all below average, back of the rotation starters who ate innings. And really, Matz hasn’t been that far off in his time with the Cardinals, other than eating innings.

Why not try guys like Lucas Giolito, Eduardo Rodriguez, or Luis Severino? They have a little more upside and youth than Lynn and Gibson. They’ll also cost a little more too.

They aren’t passing on these guys because of price tag; I think they are passing on them hoping that the next crop of prospect pitchers will have an elite arm in them and guys like Lynn and Gibson will be stop gaps until they are ready. Tink Hence, Gordon Graceffo, Michael McGreevy, and Cooper Hjerpe could be some good pitchers. Liberatore, Andre Pallante, Alex Reyes, and Hudson were supposed to be those types of pitchers too. I think the Cardinals have shown recently that they are struggling to develop elite pitching prospects and overvalue their farm system.

If the Cardinals don’t have 2 better pitchers added to the rotation, things will look bleak for the team, both in terms of baseball and with the fanbase.