Bernie’s Redbird Review: The Cardinals Didn’t Think Andre Pallante Could Be A Good Starting Pitcher. They Were Wrong. He Was Right.

THE REDBIRD REVIEW

Even during a .500 season and the postseason out of reach, the Cardinals have provided a few pleasant stories. And this isn’t about feel-good stories that aren’t hooked to the outcome of baseball games. These are the type of stories that can carry over into 2025.

Rookie shortstop Masyn Winn is one of those stories, and he will be a crucial presence on the 2025 Cardinals. Though he’s faded late in the season, Alec Burleson emerged as an above-average hitter who displayed real power for the first time. He’ll only get better.

Rookie reliever Ryan Fernandez is a keeper. The Cardinals have gotten extensive looks at young catchers Pedro Pages and Ivan Herrera, and there’s a lot to like about each of them.

Center fielder Michael Siani went from a remote location on the depth chart to give the Cardinals exceptional defense in center field. Siani is well below average offensively, but it’s nice to know that he can be counted on next season as a fourth outfielder and frequent defensive replacement. Saving runs matters. The Cardinals like rookie Victor Scott’s potential as an outfield option going forward. Utility infielder Thomas Saggese, a recent call-up, almost certainly will be in the plans for the big club in 2025.

No, none of these guys are budding superstars. But good teams need options and depth and platoon bats. Teams need quality role players … or young trade chips. One way or another, you can see a future for all of the men I’ve mentioned.

No Cardinal has produced a better story in 2024 than starting pitcher Andre Pallante. Stuck in bullpen purgatory after being miscast as a reliever by the front office and manager Oli Marmol, Pallante pitched an idea to the bosses as the Cardinals were in the process of sending him down to Triple A Memphis. He asked to work on becoming a starting pitcher. Pallante believed the role would suit him. He would serve the Cardinals in any pitching role, but Pallante was confident in his potential to develop into an effective big-league starter.

It’s a good thing Pallante spoke up and made his request or he still could be getting pounded as a major-league reliever or sentenced to a long-term bullpen role that didn’t make sense. It says something about the state of the Cardinals when a young pitcher trying to establish himself initiated the process of working as a starting pitcher.

The Cardinals didn’t approach Pallante about making the move; Pallante approached the Cardinals and suggested the move. Manager Oli Marmol and pitching coach Dusty Blake were receptive and gave Pallante a list of things to work on during the transition from reliever to starter.

But why didn’t president of baseball operations John Mozeliak and Marmol and Blake see the possibilities with Pallante? Why was it up to Pallante to propose the change?

What if Pallante had just accepted the way the Cardinals viewed him? What if he had continued toiling as an ineffective reliever, never getting an opportunity to show what he could do as a rotation piece? And with starting Steven Matz suffering a back injury in late April, the Cardinals had to cultivate a fill-in starter … and after a few weeks, Pallante was ready.

Based on preseason expectations, Pallante has been a marvel in a starting role. After being trapped in no-man’s land by an organization that didn’t really know what to do with him, Pallante made the request and got his wish to work as a starting pitcher. And the Cardinals are better off for it, because they can confidently put Pallante into their 2025 rotation and have one less thing to worry about.

It was fun to watch Pallante outpitch the Pittsburgh rookie sensation Paul Skenes in Monday’s 4-0 win. Pallante pitched seven shutout innings, allowing four hits and a walk while striking out a career-high nine hitters.

LET’S GO TO THE PALLANTE FILE

Here are some nuggets that show how Pallante has performed as a starting pitcher.

1. Pallante’s 3.62 ERA in his 18 starts is the best by a Cardinals starting pitcher this season.

2. Since joining the rotation, Pallante is the only STL starter that has an ERA less than 4.31. I’ll list them in order: Pallante 3.62, Sonny Gray 4.31, Nick Fedde, 4.43, Kyle Gibson 4.47, Lance Lynn 4.50, Miles Mikolas 5.40.

3. From May 29 through Sept. 16, Pallante had a better starting-pitcher ERA than a bunch of notables including Dylan Cease, Freddy Peralta, Luis Castillo, Logan Webb, Kevin Gausman, Nathan Eovaldi, Seth Lugo, Shota Imanaga, Chris Bassit, Charlie Morton, Jameson Taillon and Carlos Rodon.

4. Here are the top five ERAs by NL Central division starters since May 29: Paul Skenes 2.05, Justin Steele 2.63, Tobias Myers 3.78, Pallante 3.62, Freddy Peralta 3.83.

5. Among innings-qualified starters since May 29, Pallante has the 11th best ERA in the National League and is 23rd overall.

6. We tend to forget that Pallante made 10 starts as a rookie in 2022 and pitched pretty well, compiling a 3.75 ERA before being put back in the bullpen.

7. In 28 career MLB starts Pallante has a 3.75 ERA. Among National League starters that have pitched at least 150 innings since the start of 2022, Pallante has the same ERA as Sonny Gray and Pablo Lopez and a better ERA than Aaron Nola, Marcus Stroman, Hunter Greene, Jesus Lazardo, Jose Urquidy, Tanner Houck, Andrew Abbott, Jack Flaherty, Lance Lynn and Jordan Montgomery. I didn’t say Pallante is better than any of these pitchers; his sample size isn’t as large and there are many other ways to measure starting pitchers. I’m just saying that his career ERA as a starter puts him in good company.

PALLANTE VS. RIGHT-HANDED BATTERS: Until this year, when he moved into a rotation, Pallante had struggled terribly against RH batters. Pallante did a solid job against left-handed hitters but the reverse platoon split got him.

That’s changed since Pallante developed a sinker that he can throw on the low-and-outside part of the plate to RH batters. That sinker has gotten a lot of attention, but the slider is Pallante’s best pitch to neutralize the right-side hitters.

Since Pallante began starting on May .29, RH batters have hit .242 with a .275 onbase percentage and .364 slugging percentage against his slider. The pitch has popped for just one home run in the 66 at-bats that end with a slider. And the slider has generated a 52 percent ground-ball rate against right-handed batters in his 18 starts this season.

Pallante’s slider handcuffed the Pirates on Monday. According to Statcast, the Pirates RH batters went 2 for 10 against Pallante’s slider (both singles) and struck out four times. When used against right-swinging opponents, the slider produced a 40 percent strikeout rate and 66.6 ground-ball rate. Well done.

BASEBALL CAN BE STRANGE: This season the Cardinals lost two of three games to the hideous White Sox – but WON two of three games in their matchups against Skenes.

Weird. Skenes did his part against St. Louis, ceding only three earned runs in 20 and ⅔ innings for a 1.31 ERA. The big man also struck out 31 percent of Cardinal hitters in the three assignments.

But the Pirates went 1-2 in the three Skenes assignments vs. STL. Their lone victory came June 11 on a rare bad night for Cards reliever Ryan Helsley. The contest was scoreless through eight innings and the Pirates broke through for two runs against Helsley in the 9th. Pirates reliever David Bednar gave up a run in the bottom of the 9th but the Pirates held on for a 2-1 win. Skenes worked 6 and ⅓ shutout innings and was long gone by the time the outcome was decided.

The crazy part? The three St. Louis starting pitchers who faced Skenes were brilliant. Miles Mikolas, Lance Lynn and Pallante combined for 19 shutout innings in the three starts and gave only nine hits and five walks.

While Skenes was actually in the game, still pitching against the Cardinals in his three starts, the Pirates scored one run for him in 20 and ⅔ innings. Individual pitcher won-lost records can be terribly misleading, and Skenes shows that. His individual record is 0-2 against the Cardinals and 10-1 against all other opponents.

CARDINALS AND THREE-RUN HOMERS: Growing up in Baltimore watching Earl Weaver baseball, I took note of Earl’s love of three-run homers. The grand-slam home run has more mystique and is more celebrated, but Earl was crazy for the three-run shots. He built his offensive philosophy around having a lineup that drew a lot of walks, put pitchers against the ropes, and broke games open with a barrage of three-run homers. Weaver proudly proclaimed that his Oriole foundation was “pitching, defense and three-run homers.” And for that era of baseball – he managed continually from 1969 through 1982 – they drilled a lot of them.

The 2024 Cardinals do not hit many of these game-breaking home runs, having produced a three-run bomb only nine times this season. That’s tied with the Marlins for the fewest in the National League. The Cardinals’ last three-run HR was ripped by Brendan Donovan at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 31. Before that, the Cards hadn’t deposited a three-run homer since May 4. This is pathetic. That said, here’s a tip of the old ballcap to Alec Burleson, who walloped four of the team’s nine three-run blasts to date.

The 2024 Cards are bad at hitting home runs of any variety. Really bad. The Cardinals are rather feeble overall in the attempt to launch home runs, ranking 24th overall and 12th in the NL with an average of 1.02 HRs per game.

Whitey Herzog’s teams were built on speed, pitching and defense. Home runs were fine, but not a priority. The Redbirds would run opponents ragged. His 1982 World Series champs had only eight three-run homers during the regular season. Herzog traded for Jack Clark to add power, but homers weren’t the focal point of the offense. His 1985 NL championship team went yard for 16 three-run homers, and the 1987 champs hit 11 of them. That’s still more than the 2024 Cardinals have now, and that’s pretty sad.

NOTE FROM BOB NIGHTENGALE: In his weekly MLB notes column, USA Today’s national baseball writer had this to say about the Cardinals’ front-office intrigue:

“While John Mozeliak, president of baseball operations plans to step down after the 2025 season, special assistant Chaim Bloom is expected to have much greater authority next season, perhaps even become the top baseball decision-maker.”

Thanks for reading …

–Bernie

A 2023 inductee into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame, Bernie has provided informed opinions and perspective on St. Louis sports through his columns, radio shows and podcasts since 1985.

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Stats used in my baseball columns are sourced from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Statcast, StatHead, Baseball Savant, Baseball Prospectus, Brooks Baseball Net, and Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise noted.