The Cardinals may have a secret sheathed weapon hiding in their bullpen

During the second half of his tenure as the St. Louis Cardinals president of baseball operations, John Mozeliak received ample flak for holding on to players too long and eventually dealing them at their lowest value for microscopic returns. It happened with Tyler O'Neill, it happened with Dylan Carlson, and it sure looks like it's going to happen with Lars Nootbaar. But what about the players who have shown precious little at the major league level so far but whom the team stubbornly sticks with because of certain outlier traits that could eventually transform them into a threat?

Nobody expected the Cardinals bullpen to knock fans' socks off in 2026. FanGraphs' ZIPS projections suggested it would be "below average, but not in dumpster-fire territory." Through eight games on the season, the bullpen ranks 24th in ERA, at 5.19. One of the main culprits of these ugly numbers is right-hander Chris Roycroft, who has pitched 3.2 innings and allowed five runs on eight hits. That comes after a year where he pitched to a 7.84 ERA in 20.2 innings. So he's a lost cause, right?

The Cardinals clearly don't think so, and if Statcast is telling the truth, maybe fans shouldn't give up on him quite yet either.

Roycroft is pitching far better than his numbers suggest.

Roycroft put up gaudy statistics in spring training, allowing one run and two walks while striking out eight in 8.1 innings, and although fans know by now that it's foolish to always expect preseason production to carry over, it seemed that maybe he had found something. And despite posting the unsightly numbers seen above in his first five appearances, Roycroft has made several improvements to his arsenal that could pay off soon.

Simply put, Roycroft has been a victim of comical levels of misfortune in 2026. He has long relied on the sinker as his primary pitch, and he should: It gets an average of 28.1 inches of vertical drop, which is 5.1 inches more than the average sinker and 1.5 inches more than he had on that pitch last season. However, hitters have a whopping .750 average against it so far. His expected opposing batting average on the pitch, though, is .270.

He's also allowing loads of weak contact, with 14.3% of batted balls falling into that category, compared with the MLB average of 4%, and the average exit velocity against him is just 80.3 mph. That's at the bottom 3% of average opposing exit velocity for pitchers. He's also surrendering very few pulled fly balls, which are usually the ones that end up leaving the park.

The issue is that although Roycroft is achieving success with his sinker in coaxing ground balls, with a preposterous 78.6% ground ball rate (MLB average is 44.2%), far too many of them are being hit up the middle, where there are no defenders. 42.9% of batted balls against Roycroft have been categorized as "straight ground balls"; the MLB average for that stat is 17.6%. Most hitters aren't Luis Arraez, where they can choose exactly where on the field they hit the ball, so expect that stat for Roycroft to normalize at some point.

The main blemishes on Roycroft's stat page is are his high walk totals (16.7% of batters) and his poor strikeout rate (5.6% of batters, with a lousy 8% whiff rate on his pitches). True to the Mozeliak-era tenet of "weak contact is king," Roycroft's game was never predicated around swing-and-miss stuff. Still, his sinker is special, and if he can hone his control, more batted balls than not should find infielders' gloves and result in outs.

Since the Cardinals signed Roycroft out of the Frontier League in 2024, he's been an intriguing ball of clay, but one whom the previous regime was unlikely to develop optimally for the modern game. During the 2025-2026 offseason, Roycroft headed to a pitching facility in Wentzville, Missouri, where he raised his arm slot to help his sinker play up. According to Baseball Savant, Roycroft's arm angle in 2025 had dropped about 4 degrees from 2024. Now, his arm angle is at 23 degrees — 6 degrees higher than it was last year.

A lack of whiffs is likely to keep Roycroft from reaching the upper echelon of relief pitchers, but positive regression should be approaching for the 6-foot-8 pitcher with a hammer sinker. If it does, the Cardinals could earn a handsome reward after placing their faith in him over the past few seasons.