Cardinals' top prospect named Minor League Pitcher of the Year by Baseball America

When the St. Louis Cardinals selected left-hander Quinn Mathews in the fourth round of the 2023 MLB Draft out of the University of Stanford, no one could have seen his meteoric rise coming. Now after dominating minor league baseball in 2024 and rising four different levels, Mathews has been named Baseball America's Minor League Pitcher of the Year.

In case you are unfamiliar with Mathews or have only checked in from time to time, Mathews led all of MiLB in strikeouts this year with 202 in just 143.1 innings, going 8-5 with a 2.76 ERA in 26 starts in his first season of professional baseball. When he was drafted, Mathews' biggest claim to fame was his 156-pitch outing on his way to a complete-game victory over Texas in the Super Regional. Mathews was not seen as some future top pitching prospect in the making, but he certainly has earned that title now.

When Baseball America last updated their prospect rankings on September 11th, Mathews had risen from nowhere near consideration for the top 100 during the preseason to all the way up to number 37 on their list. Mathews' brief taste in Memphis at the end of this year is giving fans a lot of hope that he will crack the Cardinals' rotation early on in 2025 and potentially be that awesome, homegrown arm they've been waiting to emerge for years now.

Mathews is the poster child of what appears to be a farm system that is now brimming with pitching talent. For years the conversation around the Cardinals has been their inability to draft and develop quality pitching, but now MLB Pipeline has their pitching prospects ranked as the third-best group in all of baseball. Other notable names include Tink Hence (who most outlets have ranked above Mathews still), Cooper Hjerpe, Tekoah Roby, Michael McGreevy, Gordon Graceffo, Sem Robberse, Chen-Wei Lin, Zack Showalter, and Darlin Saladin.

Mathews is more than deserving of all of the praise he has received this year and will likely receive more accolades before his season is done. I do find it notable that Mathews' is the first Cardinals' prospect to receive a year-end award from Baseball America since Rick Ankiel in 1999. The dominance Mathews has shown this year cannot be understated.

With all of that being said, Cardinals fans are most concerned with how things will translate at the big-league level, and rightfully so. Mathews' blend of durability, pitch ability, and clear strikeout stuff should excite fans, as all of those things have the potential to make him one of the best young starters in the game in the near future. But while all of that is exciting, it is incumbent upon the Cardinals to surround Mathews with quality pitching, rather than rely on him to save them from mediocrity

It sounds like there is young pitching behind him and around him that will help with that, but it is early the Cardinals could do a better job of adding higher-end veteran pitching to their mix as well. Let's hope Sonny Gray isn't the only name to fit that bill next year for them.

Mathews missed bats and blew away all expectations in 2024 for the Cardinals' minor league affiliates Let's hope that is a sign of things to come when he inevitably debuts in St. Louis sometime in 2025.