5 exciting pitching prospects the Cardinals should target in their offseason trades

Guardians RHP Braylon Doughty

Another system the Cardinals should be very familiar with, the Cleveland Guardians are reported to have interest in Brendan Donovan, and Cardinals' assistant general manager Rob Cerfolio spent over a decade with their organization before coming over to St. Louis last offseason.

Cleveland, like Seattle, is one of the best organizations in baseball at pumping out quality pitching. Like the Cardinals in the early 2010s, Cleveland always seems to have exciting, homegrown arms popping up in their rotation, and right-hander Braylon Doughty may be the next in that line.

Doughty, who was drafted 36th overall by the Guardians in the 2024 MLB Draft, is just 20 years old but has already made a name for himself among national talent evaluators. Doughty had the best strikeout-to-walk ratio of any pitcher with 80 or more innings in the Carolina League last year, which is an excellent metric to see when gauging the upside of a young arm.

Doughty has a good fastball that sits around 93 MPH but gets up to 97 MPH as well. With him still being so young, adding a tick or two more to his fastball could still be possible and take him to another level on the mound. Doughty leans heavily on the fastball, using his four-seamer up in the zone and a two-seamer low in the zone.

His best pitch is his curveball, though, which lives in the low-80s with a hard bite that acts as his main swing and miss pitch. It's the kind of curveball that can have hitters fishing well below the zone for it or cause them to freeze at the plate, and watch it paint the bottom of the zone. Add in an average change-up as well and Doughty's already impressive command, and he has all the tools to be a really good pitcher in this league.

Doughty is young and dynamic, the exact kind of profile the Cardinals should want to add to their system. If the Cardinals find a way to swing a deal with the Guardians for Donovan, Doughty has to be in that package in my mind.