3 Cardinals who could experience positive regression and 3 who will start to struggle

Negative regression - RHP Michael McGreevy

Essentially, any pitcher who has relied on batted ball luck, soft contact, and strong defense could see his numbers fall in the near future for the Cardinals. Michael McGreevy happens to fit all of those categories.

In his first full season in the majors, McGreevy has a 2.49 ERA and a 0.83 WHIP. He's done this thanks to a microscopic walk rate (3.7%) and a plethora of softly hit bloopers.

McGreevy employs a seven-pitch mix that features a fastball-changeup combination to lefties and a sinker-sweeper mix to righties. This vast array of offerings allows him to keep hitters on their toes. McGreevy also doesn't fill up the zone much (46.7% zone rate), so hitters aren't able to barrel the ball against him. In fact, he has just a 14.9% barrel rate, placing him in the eleventh percentile in baseball in that metric.

While McGreevy has solid statistics on the surface, his expected stats aren't quite as admirable. He has an expected ERA of 7.51 and an expected FIP of 4.33. His actual and expected FIPs are right in line with each other because he relies heavily on batted balls. However, those batted balls will eventually fall for hits. That's when his numbers will slowly start to creep up.

This is still just Michael McGreevy's third professional season and his first full go at being a starter in the majors every five days. He experienced similar soft contact success last year, so there's a chance this is just who he is as a pitcher. However, there's likely an equal chance that he'll start to see more home runs hit against him, thus bringing his ERA up closer to his career rate of 3.72 and his 4.42 mark last year.

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