What was the plan for the 2024 starting rotation?

Smart organizations in baseball are able to assemble a durable and talented roster each season. Exceptional organizations are able to do that while maintaining a consistent pipeline of talented players who can contribute within the next 5 years. The St. Louis Cardinals once fell into the latter group.

The 2024 starting rotation is a splattering of veterans who have been acquired largely via free agency. In fact, only one player, Lance Lynn, is "homegrown" of the bunch, and the Cardinals had to re-acquire him this offseason through free agency. Sonny Gray, Miles Mikolas, Steven Matz, and Kyle Gibson all became Cardinals through free agency at different points in the last 5 years.

Building a starting rotation through free agency isn't inherently a bad thing; it's just an expensive way to go about business. Paying tens of millions of dollars for pitchers who are worth 2-3 wins above replacement is fiscally foolish when young pitchers can be developed and be just as effective. The Cardinals have been unable to develop those mid-rotation starters in recent years, and that has hurt the team.

I wanted to take a look back to the last time the Cardinals had a top-10 rotation. Using Baseball-Reference WAR, the last time the Cardinals had a team in the top 10 of baseball was in 2018. That year, the rotation was led by Miles Mikolas, Jack Flaherty, John Gant, Carlos Martinez, Luke Weaver, and Michael Wacha. Since then, the rotation has ranked far below league average according to bWAR.

Miles Mikolas was the only free-agent, non-homegrown player on that list. Today, every starting pitcher in the rotation was brought on via free agency. A lot has changed in only 5 years.

Let's assume that the DeWitt family and John Mozeliak are forward-looking people who make plans for the future. If this is the case, surely they were looking at the prospects and development of young pitchers to continue filling spots in the rotation like Martinez, Weaver, Flaherty, and Wacha did in 2018.

The DeWitt family is known for pinching pennies, so one can assume that they would prefer filling out a rotation with arbitration and pre-arbitration players who are cheap rather than veteran free agents who can cost tens of millions of dollars. The plan for future rotations was apparent in 2019 and 2020. That plan, however, did not come to fruition for a variety of reasons.

Let's take a look at what the plan was for the 2023 and 2024 rotations as of 2019 and 2020.

Why did the plan fail?

Now that we've established the "who", we must answer the "why". Fans will never fully know the ins and outs of player development in any organization. While assumptions can be gleaned out of quotes from reporters, management, and players, we will never be able to know the ins and outs of player development and the minor league system.

One explanation for the failure of prospects to rise in time can be attributed to the lost minor league season in 2020 and the abbreviated 2021 minor league season. Zack Thompson had only pitched in high-A Palm Beach before 2021, but he was thrust up to AAA Memphis that year. He hadn't pitched in true, competitive games in 2 years, but he was pushed to the highest level in the minors. His 7.06 ERA and 2-10 record that year is evidence of him not being ready.

Matthew Liberatore had only pitched in low-A in 2019, and he, too, was pushed to AAA Memphis in 2021. Libby experienced more success, a modest 4.04 ERA that year, but he was also negatively affected by the lost time in the minors. Given more complete ramp-ups in 2020 and 2021, and these two lefties could have been ready to contribute in the majors as early as 2022.

More recent pitching prospects such as Gordon Graceffo and Michael McGreevy were hampered by overuse in college and below-average velocity in their professional careers. The next pair of high-octane starting pitching prospects of Tink Hence and Tekoah Roby have as much pressure on them as their predecessors.

The Cardinals aren't the only team to struggle with developing pitchers. The Kansas City Royals and Los Angeles Angels drafted heavily on the pitching side of the game from 2018 until 2021, and very few of those picks have come to fruition. Teams like the Philadelphia Phillies (Andrew Painter) and Texas Rangers (Jack Leiter) placed big hopes on pitching prospects only for them to experience setbacks and injuries.

In regard to pitching development, something the organization can control, it appears as though the team is eons behind other organizations. Teams such as Cleveland Guardians, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Tampa Bay Rays consistently churn out league-average or better pitching prospects. What do they have that the Cardinals lack?

What these organizations share is a focus on spin rate and pure stuff. The Dodgers are known as "pitcher whisperers" due to their ability to mysteriously transform borderline pitchers into above-average studs. Movement is also a predominant focus in these organizations. Spin paired with wicked movement increases a pitch's ability to miss bats, something the best pitchers in the league have mastered.

Technology such as KinaTrax and pitching labs like Tread Athletics are notorious for transforming a pitcher's ability to throw. Adding pitches, changing arm angles, and even readjusting grips can help a pitcher improve. The Tampa Bay Rays were the first to use KinaTrax, and the Dodgers and Guardians have had players work with Driveline Baseball for nearly a dozen years.

The Cardinals were late to adapt Trackman, a technology that assists in tracking spin rates, velocity, and movement in pitches. Additionally, Cardinal players and prospects have only recently started working with Driveline and Tread.

Chaim Bloom's inclusion in the front office should help on the pitching development front. During his time in Tampa Bay, Bloom instituted a system that helped to develop the most 2+ WAR pitchers in baseball for a time. With Randy Flores's drafting expertise and Chaim Bloom's development acumen, the Cardinals could form a potent pitching pipeline in short order.