4 moves the St. Louis Cardinals can make to improve their pitching immediately

Change #2 - Stick with a five-man rotation

I'll get to some more roster moves in a moment, but there's more reason than just the struggles of Steven Matz to go back to a five-man rotation for the Cardinals.

First, the Cardinals seem to find themselves having a shortage of arms once or twice a week now with their six-man rotation, asking Liberatore and now Matz to be available just days after starting to come out of the bullpen and being sure when their next start is. The club needs to get that extra arm back in their bullpen and stop messing around with the routines of their starters.

Second, the Cardinals actually need to get more starts out of their better starters, specifically Miles Mikolas. When you're using a six-man rotation, your starters pitch less often, which is a problem where there are significant talent gaps between starters.

Mikolas has sneakily rebounded to be one of the most productive starters in all of baseball over his last seven starts, posting a 2.38 ERA in 41.2 innings of work. The Cardinals need this kind of production, and these innings, from their rotation, and pitching Mikolas more often will give them that.

I also believe that one or both of Jordan Montgomery and Jack Flaherty give the Cardinals better chances to win each night than Adam Wainwright, Matthew Liberatore, and Steven Matz. Both starters have been pretty streaky to start the year, but present a higher upside in their starts than those other starters. Again, the Cardinals higher quality starts, so why not pitch the guys who have the upside to do that?

Speaking of Flaherty and Montgomery, their importance between now and the trade deadline goes beyond their immediate production.