Former St. Louis Cardinals first-round draft pick suffers injury setback

As the Spring Training calendar has turned to March, the St. Louis Cardinals’ pitching depth has taken a hit. Left-handed pitcher Zack Thompson, who bounced between St. Louis and Triple-A Memphis last season, suffered a tear in his left lat muscle.

#STLCards LHP Zack Thompson has a Grade 1 lat strain and will be shut down from pitching for 3 to 4 weeks, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said.

Thompson, who was 0-2 with a 9.53 ERA in five games with the Cards in 2024, has pitched in one game this spring.
— John Denton (@JohnDenton555) March 2, 2025

According to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Thompson experienced left shoulder discomfort last week. While Thompson tried to “work through it,” an MRI on Saturday revealed the lat tear.

Thompson was the Cardinals’ first-round draft pick out of the University of Kentucky in 2019. He made his major league debut on June 3rd, 2022, against the Chicago Cubs, where he pitched four complete innings that game and earned his first and only career save in a 14-5 Cardinals victory. Thompson finished the 2022 season with a solid 2.08 ERA in 34.2 innings with the Cardinals.

Unfortunately for Thompson, that abbreviated 2022 season has been the highlight of his Cardinals career. In 2023, Thompson’s ERA grew to 4.48 with the Cardinals, where he was both a starter and a reliever. Toward the end of the dreadful 2023 season, Thompson had his best outing as an MLB starting pitcher on September 3rd, where he pitched seven innings and struck out six Pirates in a 6-4 Cardinals win.

At the end of the 2023 season, there was optimism that Thompson could hold down a spot within the Cardinals starting rotation in the future. That, of course, all came to a screeching halt early last season at Dodger Stadium, and it only got worse. In his last outing with the Cardinals, Thompson allowed seven earned runs in 2.2 innings in a horrific 14-1 loss to Arizona on April 23rd, cementing him as one of the teams’ biggest disappointments that season.

Thompson was likely to start the season at Memphis and be used as a starter or, if necessary, a bullpen option. With the lat tear injury, Thompson will miss at least a full month before stepping onto a pitcher’s mound and adding arm strength. While Thompson still has talent, this injury is another setback to a once-promising pitcher in the Cardinals system.

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