14 Cardinals who won't survive Chaim Bloom's offseason overhaul

John King

Acquired by the Cardinals as the "throw-in" reliever in the Jordan Montgomery/Chris Stratton trade, I honestly didn't think at the time that King would be on the roster past the conclusion of the 2023 season, but he's provided the Cardinals with two and a half seasons of production in their bullpen.

Since coming over to St. Louis, King has appeared in 126 games for the Cardinals, posting a 3.30 ERA in 125.1 innings of work. For a guy that we had virtually no expectations for and has made barely any money during those years, that's a great outcome for the Cardinals.

Now, the underlying numbers will tell you he's probably overachieved, as King has a 4.17 FIP over that stretch and 1.39 WHIP while striking out just 13.7% of the batters he faced. King had a 1.45 ERA in 2023 for St. Louis and a 2.85 ERA in 2024, but the bubble burst this year when his ERA rose to 4.63 with a 4.87 FIP and -0.4 fWAR.

While most of the attention on the Cardinals' cost-cutting has been centered on Arenado, Gray, and Contreras, King will be entering his second year of arbitration, and after making $1.61 million in 2025, I don't think the Cardinals will be inclined to give him a raise in 2026.

King feels like a perfect non-tender candidate to me, and while he'll find another job somewhere else, I don't think he presents the Cardinals with much upside moving forward. He's 31 years old, a groundball specialist with literally no swing and miss, is getting more expensive, and is coming off the worst year of his career.

With all of that being said, the Cardinals should have no complaints about King's tenure with them. He provided them with helpful innings all three years, and until 2025, he was actually a really important member of their bullpen. The Cardinals lacked bullpen depth most of his tenure, and so King stepping up the way he did meant a lot for the Cardinals' chances of contention.