Respected pitching analytics website believes Cardinals' Liberatore is the real deal

Matthew Liberatore has been a revelation early on in 2025. St. Louis Cardinals fans are familiar with the left-handed pitcher's background after the team acquired him in the 2020 deal with the Tampa Bay Rays, sending Randy Arozarena the other way. After Arozarena's meteoric rise and Liberatore's struggles, many fans deemed the trade a colossal failure for John Mozeliak and the Cardinals. But Cardinals fans may need to tap the brakes on that judgment, as the southpaw wields a 3.19 ERA through his first five starts of the season. In 31 innings, Liberatore has struck out 28 batters and walked only two.

Throughout Liberatore's tenure with the team, the Cardinals repeatedly attempted to make him a starter despite his pitching far more effectively out of the bullpen. Despite many fans rolling their eyes at the Cardinals continuing the bullpen-to-rotation seesaw in 2025, it appears that the team has finally unlocked something in the 25-year-old, and the analytics back it up.

A vaunted pitching analytics site believes Liberatore's start to 2025 is no fluke.

Nate Schwartz of PitcherList.com penned an article on April 29 that dove deep into Liberatore's pitching metrics and questioned whether he could sustain his hot start. Schwartz compared Liberatore's developments to those of Clayton Kershaw, although he acknowledged that Liberatore does not share the same ceiling. (Who does?)

Like Kershaw in his early days, Liberatore used to rely on his fastball-curveball combo, but he deemphasized his curveball in 2024 in favor of a slider. This pitch allowed Kershaw to neutralize right-handed hitters, and in 2025, Liberatore has allowed a .580 OPS to right-handed batters, compared with an .823 OPS in 2024. The article indicated that Liberatore's slider command has improved significantly, leading to more swings and misses and more called strikes on the pitch.

The slider has become the crown jewel of Liberatore's arsenal, but Schwartz's article mentions that his changeup has also improved in its velocity, drop and run and that he has far fewer misses to the arm side with the pitch when compared with previous seasons. The article also praised Liberatore's command of his cutter, although it mentioned an odd trend this season where Liberatore's higher-velocity fastballs are being hit harder than his slower heaters.

Schwartz believes there will be some regression in Liberatore's minuscule walk and home run rates, and he expressed concern that it could only be a matter of time before Liberatore's slower fastballs are also hit harder as the season progresses. Despite those minor words of caution, he believes Liberatore can hold an ERA around 3.60 with a 22% strikeout rate.

If Liberatore can consistently produce the types of results has has been getting, or even if he slightly comes back to earth, the Cardinals may finally have the success story in pitching development that they and their fans have craved for so many years. The Cardinals overhauled their minor league development system over the offseason, and Liberatore's newfound effectiveness could portend good things down the road for future young arms.