St. Louis Cardinals cut ties with former first-round flameout

In a city as baseball-crazy as St. Louis, players whom the St. Louis Cardinals select in the first round are always under intense scrutiny and subjected to high expectations. For one year, it appeared that Zack Thompson was ready to meet those lofty goals. But instead, after several injury-plagued seasons, the Cardinals appear to have given up the ghost with the left-hander.

The Cardinals have outrighted Zack Thompson off of the 40-man roster.

It's been a long and painful fall from grace for Thompson, and "painful" is being used literally. Injuries have dogged at him since his high school days, where he nursed a shoulder injury, and they followed him to the University of Kentucky, where an elbow issue shelved him for much of his sophomore campaign. The Cardinals, unfazed by the setbacks, took him 19th overall in the 2019 draft. He came out of college with a 91-94 mph fastball and a beautiful looping curveball, but questions lingered regarding his command.

2020 was not kind to any prospect, as the pandemic canceled the minor league season. Thompson was sent to the alternate training site, where his command remained shaky. He took a step back in 2021 when he debuted in Triple-A with Memphis and held a 7.06 ERA and 5.5 walks per nine innings in his 93 frames thrown.

In 2022, Thompson appeared to put it all together, as he made his major league debut and served as a high-leverage arm out of the Cardinals bullpen as the season wore on, pitching to a tidy 2.08 ERA in 22 relief outings. He looked to be a long-term option for the Cardinals and was a candidate to snag a rotation spot down the road.

The Cardinals shuffled Thompson between the rotation and the bullpen in 2023, with him appearing in 25 games and starting nine of them. He wasn't as effective as he was the previous season, but he still ended up with a 4.48 ERA and a 25.1% strikeout rate. However, everything unraveled in 2024.

Thompson made five appearances for the Cardinals early that season, and they weren't pretty, as he surrendered 18 earned runs in 17 innings. He had lost several pounds during the offseason, which caused his velocity to back up. Thompson was quickly demoted to Memphis, where his control regressed, with him walking 5.6 hitters per nine innings. If that wasn't enough of a nightmare, a lat issue ended up sidelining Thompson for the entire 2025 season after he experienced several setbacks in his recovery.

Thompson was the type of polished college pitcher whom the team under former President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak loved to take in the first round, and many fans had high hopes after his 2022 season, but injuries and ineffectiveness doomed the rest of his time with the Cardinals.

The MLB draft is a crapshoot, but hopefully, with Chaim Bloom heading the Cardinals and a new draft strategy already visible, St. Louis will be able to tap into the potential of pitchers with high upside. As for Thompson, maybe another team will take a flier on him to see if he can avoid the injured list and be a capable arm. And wouldn't Cardinals fans just love that?