Cardinals reward resilient 2022 1st-round pick Cooper Hjerpe with Major League debut

After a long road that featured dominant performances but was plagued by injury setbacks, the St. Louis Cardinals' first-round pick from the 2022 MLB Draft, Cooper Hjerpe, is set to make his Major League debut today at Coors Field.

Selected with the 22nd overall pick out of Oregon State, Hjerpe showed incredible strikeout stuff from the left side and has used his unorthodox arm angle to get a ton of swings-and-misses at the minor league levels as well.

In 135.1 professional innings, Hjerpe has struck out 188 batters; Hjerpe uses his low slot to create an outlier plane, much like Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale. While Hjerpe lacks that same level of velocity, his low-90s fastball still gets incredible whiff on it, with his sweeper and cutter doing the most damage in terms of swing-and-miss and getting hitters to chase.

Hjerpe is set to piggyback behind Kyle Leahy today, whose innings are capped for the rest of the season as the Cardinals maintain his jump in workload this year and prepare Leahy to be a big part of their rotation in 2027. For Hjerpe, this is his first chance to show the Cardinals at the Major League level that he belongs in those rotation plans too.

Cooper Hjerpe can earn a major role with the Cardinals for the 2027 season

If you look at prospect rankings, Hjerpe is not rated highly these days, but our friends over at cardinalsprospects.com have him as their 10th-ranked prospect in a loaded Cardinals farm system for a reason.

Hjerpe has been excellent at Triple-A this year, with the only real knocks on his game being that he needs to walk a lot fewer batters and get more hitters to chase outside the zone. Even then, Hjerpe is in the 97th percentile in K% (34.2) and ranks in the 99th percentile or better among Triple-A pitchers in Hard-Hit%, Barrel%, average exit velocity, and xwOBAcon. His stuff is ready to play against Major League hitters, and that could even happen long-term as a starting pitcher.

Hjerpe is someone the Cardinals drafted with the intention of him being in their rotation soon, but Tommy John surgery following the 2024 season caused him to miss the entire 2025 season, and the Cardinals had to be a bit cautious with his build-up prior to that as well.

Hjerpe clearly has the stuff to become a great bullpen option long-term if things don't work out as a starter, but there is far too much talent in his game not to try and see what he can do in a multi-inning role long-term. The Cardinals have capped Hjerpe at 85 pitches this year, so he's unlikely to go more than four innings in an individual outing this season, but he could be a starter for them at the big-league level come 2027.

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