Cardinals starter's colorful way to learn from starts is paying off

The St. Louis Cardinals have been on a solid run in May, winning nine of their first 15 games this month, with every series except for the last being played against teams with a winning record. This level of play has brought a renewed, shirtless energy to Busch Stadium, and the Cardinals have used that to their advantage.

Lost in the shuffle, though, has been the consistent performance from the starting rotation, who needed to flip the switch after a tough stretch. Kyle Leahy, the newest reliever-to-starter project for the Cardinals, has been the face of consistency this month and credits his adjustments to his own creative pitch charting to help him learn from his previous outings.

Kyle Leahy is using color-coded charts to learn from his outings, and teammates are taking notice

Cardinals starter Kyle Leahy had a phenomenal 2025 season out of the bullpen, but the organization saw his arsenal as a better fit in a spot of need. After allowing Sonny Gray, Miles Mikolas, and Erick Fedde to depart the starting rotation, there were multiple openings on the starting staff that needed to be filled from within. Rather than dish out millions of dollars for multiple rentals or promoting pitching prospects before they were ready, the Cardinals made the choice to take Leahy from his successful firefighter bullpen role and slot him into the starting rotation. After seeing success in this transition with Matthew Liberatore, the team had a blueprint in place for Leahy's shift to the rotation.

The move did not get off to a great start. Through Leahy's first month starting consistently since 2022, the righty had a 5.52 ERA and allowed more than a hit per inning while seeing his strikeout stuff trickle down into mediocre range. In May, though, Leahy has been one of the factors in the team's success this month. Through three starts, Leahy has allowed just two runs in 16.1 innings and just tallied the first quality start of his career with a six-inning, one-run performance against the Royals. In a very interesting thread by Dani Wexelman that is worth the read, she pointed out that Leahy created his own method of pitch charting to help him from start to start.

Traditionally, especially in the lower levels of the minors and in my own experience, pitchers who were not pitching that day would track the outings of the current starter, including looking at what pitch is thrown when and what the batter's strengths or weaknesses are. At the major league level, a lot of that is done by the coaching staff and the people behind the scenes.

In Leahy's world, though, he is doing all the tracking himself with color-coded notes, a method that he used to study for tests in school. He credited his mother and wife for helping him put it together into a functional notebook that other pitchers have taken notice of. According to Wexelman, reliever George Soriano saw the chart and got the bullpen coach to talk Leahy into showing off his madness. Leahy said that learning from peers is one of the best ways to improve, so Soriano latching onto this idea could cause an even bigger spread among the staff.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow