Cardinals top prospect "banking" on a successful 2025 season

It's not often that a professional baseball players says that his current career wasn't his preferred choice as a child.

For Quinn Mathews, his dream job was to be an investment banker growing up. During the Cardinals' Winter Warm Up this past weekend, Mathews, 24, said that "I thought I'd be an investment banker, move to New York, and work 80 hours a week."

Thank goodness one of the organization's most talented (and quirky) players didn't choose that route.

The southpaw just finished his second professional season. He was drafted in the 4th round of the 2023 MLB draft, and the St. Louis Cardinals didn't expect him to be anything fantastic as a fourth rounder. Mathews had just been the darling of the College World Series after throwing 156 pitches in a game. He was a tall lefty with average velocity and a solid changeup, a pretty generic profile.

Mathews was all but generic in 2024, though. He finisehd the year having gone through every level of the Cardinals' minor-league system and being named Baseball America's minor-league pitcher of the year.. He finished the year with a 2.76 ERA in 143.1 innings while leading all of MiLB in strikeouts with 202.

Quinn knows that he doesn't have overpowering velocity. His fastball sits around 92 MPH with an ability to reach 96 MPH. His slider is one of his best secondary pitches, but he said at Winter Warm Up that he's trying to get more horizontal break on that pitch. Mathews stated that the break on his slider went from seven inches to just four inches by the end of the year, but he was satisfied with the jump in velocity that he experienced. He's hoping to blend the two in 2025 to create a more efficient pitch.

In his first professional offseason between 2023 and 2024, Quinn Mathews tried to add velocity to his pitches. Mathews' offseason workout program this winter has been focused on preparing for a shorter offseason rather than velocity. "The duration of the season kind of got to me in September I would say, physically as well as mentally," said Mathews. "This offseason I was kind of preparing for September...How do I get seven or eight more weeks out of my body?"

Mathews' numbers did drop off in the month of September, but that could be attributed to a variety of factors. He was playing against Triple-A hitters as a 23-year-old, he was using the major-league ball in Memphis, and he was on the cusp of throwing the most innings in one season he's ever done. Those are all contributing factors to his 6.39 ERA in the final month of the year.

At one point in his interview, Mathews compared himself to a former rival-turned-player for the St. Louis Cardinals: Jon Lester. Lester wasn't known for overpowering stuff. He wasn't known for lighting up the radar gun. Rather, he was known as a pure pitcher and more importantly a winner, one of the best of his era. Mathews grew up watching Lester and wanting to mirror his methods.

Quinn will start the 2025 season at Triple-A Memphis as one of the team's best pitchers. He will be given every opportunity to crack the big-league starting rotoin right out of the gate in spring training this year, too, as a non-roster invite.

Oh, Quinn Mathews is also heavily into cryptocurrency. He's about to break the majors. Perhaps he could spend some of that league-minimum salary he's going to make on Bitcoin if he gets the green light from his mother.