Cardinals expected to add right-handed reliever to bullpen, reports say

The winter advertisement for the St. Louis Cardinals could not have been more clear if they had posted it on a corkboard outside of Busch Stadium – Wanted: relievers with ability to make hitters swing and miss. An addition late Thursday to round out the shape of their bullpen is yet another commitment in that direction.

The Cardinals and free agent reliever Keynan Middleton are in agreement on a contract, per multiple media reports, including MLB.com and The Athletic. With a currently full 40-player roster, the club will have to make a corresponding move to make the signing official.

The deal is also reportedly contingent on the outcome of a physical, which is no small hurdle given Middleton’s career trajectory. He has been placed on the injured list in each of the last three seasons with arm ailments – a biceps strain in 2021 for Seattle, elbow inflammation in 2022 for Arizona, and shoulder inflammation in 2023 for the New York Yankees. Those interruptions, in addition to toe and ankle injuries in 2022, have limited Middleton to just 98 ⅔ innings since the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign, spread across four different teams.

When on the field, though, Middleton has provided precisely the kind of profile the Cardinals entered the winter desiring. He struck out 30.2% of hitters faced last year for the White Sox and Yankees, good for the 91st percentile among major leaguers. Batters missed 36% of his pitches at which they swung, landing him in the 96th percentile. They chased 33.1% of the pitches he threw outside of the strike zone, better than all but 11% of pitchers.

His stuff is not in question, only his ability to deploy it.

“There are guys that we’ve brought in that will miss more bats. That’s important,” manager Oliver Marmol said in January at the team’s annual Winter Warm-Up, prior to the agreement with Middleton. “You do have some firepower in addition to what was brought in that allows you to look at that bullpen and shorten some games.”

With that upside comes some risk. Middleton’s walk rate was only in the 18th percentile, averaging 4.4 per nine innings and coming in at less than 2.5 strikeouts per walk. When hitters made contact, though, it was both weak and on the ground; in some ways, despite not reaching quite to the same stratospheric velocity heights, Middleton’s repertoire is an intriguing comparison point to that of Jordan Hicks, who was traded at the deadline and then this winter signed a free agent deal with the San Francisco Giants.

Middleton joins Andrew Kittredge among veteran relievers brought in by the Cardinals this winter in their attempt to overhaul a pitching staff whose struggles in 2023 were primary contributors to a lost season. The two of them will slot largely into the roles held last season by Hicks and Chris Stratton, and will form the core of the bullpen alongside closer Ryan Helsley and primary set-up options Giovanny Gallegos and JoJo Romero.

Those five will be joined by three pitchers from a group which includes Ryan Fernandez, John King, Riley O’Brien, Andre Pallante, Nick Robertson and perhaps one of Matt Liberatore or Zack Thompson. Non-roster pitchers Gordon Graceffo, Andre Granillo, Packy Naughton and Wilking Rodríguez are also in the mix.

Of those, King stands out as a second left-handed option who had a great deal of success after being acquired from the Texas Rangers at the trade deadline. Pallante, too, has a track record of trust on his side; he’s pitched in more games for the Cardinals over the last two seasons than anyone other than Gallegos. He does, however, have minor league options. And like Pallante, Middleton for his career has somewhat strong reverse splits, holding lefty hitters to an OPS approximately a hundred points lower than righties.

Still, Pallante in the last two seasons has less than 20 fewer innings pitched than Middleton has racked up over his entire seven-year career. Availability, it’s said, is perhaps the most important ability of all.

With pitchers and catchers set to conduct their first official workout less than two weeks from now, it’s unlikely that the Cardinals will make any further significant moves to alter the makeup of their roster heading into spring. Perhaps the biggest boost they might have received came from the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, when they agreed to trade ace starter Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles, further weakening a National League central division which has, for years, remained available to be seized by whichever team showed initiative to do so.

The winter overhaul for the Cardinals has been stunning by volume of names. Including Middleton, ten pitchers have been added to the 40-player roster this winter who were not on it at the conclusion of last season. Whether that overhaul is more than incremental by results will be determined in the weeks and months to come.