Matthew Liberatore’s moment with the Cardinals has arrived

Matthew Liberatore is starting on opening day for the St. Louis Cardinals this year. In St. Louis and the surrounding environs, Opening Day approaches something like the sacred. Cardinals fans have become accustomed to a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to an opening day starter. Adam Wainwright. Chris Carpenter. Matt Morris. Bob Tewksbury. John Tudor. And, of course, Bob Gibson. Perhaps Liberatore starting this opening day with his noticeable lack of experience is a microcosm for where the organization is as a whole.

What this says about the organization and its place in baseball is one thing; what it says about Matthew Liberatore is entirely another. Over on our Redbird Rundown podcast, we identified Matthew Liberatore as a key Cardinal that will define the season and had an extended discussion about Libby if you’d like more coverage. 

I’ll be honest: I’m not crazy about the “number distinctions” for pitchers. When fans say a “number three starter” or a “number five starter,” I know what they’re getting at, but personally, it always strikes me as wrong somehow. It’s so subjective. The Dodgers' “number four starter” is likely the “ace” of every other team. (OK, maybe more like the super-ace, but I have Dodgers fatigue.) In my own fandom, I prefer to simply think of pitchers in terms of their relative quality. 

My prior going into this season is that Libby is a league-average pitcher with the potential to be much more. His journey thus far has been almost as perilous as Frodo carrying the ring. He looked destined for what I’d like to inaugurate publicly as the Zack Thompson Bullet Train to Memphis. Libby has more upside, but I was terrified that we were going to spin his career around like the wheel of fortune from starter to bullpen from St. Louis to Memphis with such dizzying speed that not even Pat Sajak could keep up.

However, Libby has a patron of sorts in Cardinals Galactic Emperor Chaim Bloom. (What’s the positive version of this?) As I’m sure you’re aware, Bloom was with the Rays when Libby was drafted in the first round. He came over in the Randy Arozarena trade — which I think now we can say that the Cardinals have won? (Cal Raleigh certainly thinks we’ve won it!) And, lo and behold, last year in Spring Training, Libby got his shot and capitalized on it.

In a rotation stocked with such stellar luminaries as Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson, and Miles Mikolas (ouch, that hurt), Libby was a borderline All-Star in the first half of last year. He didn’t finish as strongly but flashed the upside that Cardinals fans crave.

And now, for a franchise behemoth in its flop era, Matthew Liberatore is starting on Opening Day. That’s an accomplishment worth celebrating for him and his family — but also one to celebrate for us, too. Why? Well, instead of the player development department being led by pocket lint and the gingerbread man from Shrek, the Cardinals resurrected player development staff under Bloom went to work on Libby.

Here’s the sneaky question to think about: What is Libby’s long-term future with the Cardinals? There is a strikeout tsunami coming to St. Louis from the minors. It’s going to sweep away most of this current rotation, but will Libby be left standing as a veteran rotation member to shepherd the precocious prospects on the way to the promised land?

No one knows the answer for sure. But Matthew Liberatore gets to start constructing his answer to that question on Friday. That’s something that should matter to all of us.