Right-hander Andre Pallante won his arbitration hearing against the Cardinals, reports Mark Feinsand of MLB.com. He’ll be paid the $2.1MM sum he and his reps at Wasserman requested rather than the $1.925MM figure submitted by the team. Pallante was one of three Cardinals players to go to a hearing; the team won its hearing over utilityman Brendan Donovan and lost a hearing versus Lars Nootbaar. Both results were handed down yesterday.
Pallante, 26, worked his way into the St. Louis rotation last year and looks ticketed for a starting role again in 2025. The right-hander logged a 3.78 ERA with an 18.5% strikeout rate, 9.4% walk rate and enormous 61.8% ground-ball rate in 121 1/3 innings over 29 appearances (20 starts). That 3.78 earned run average is a dead match for his career mark in what’s now a total of 297 1/3 innings.
This was Pallante’s first trip through arbitration. He’s picked up 2.145 years of big league service thus far, making him a Super Two player who’ll be arb-eligible four times rather than the standard three. The Cardinals can control him for four more years, all the way through 2028. He still has one minor league option remaining, though as long as he continues at the pace he’s established in his first three MLB seasons, that’s not going to come into play anytime soon.
Pallante figures to join Sonny Gray, Erick Fedde, Miles Mikolas and Steven Matz in the Cards’ Opening Day rotation — provided all are healthy. The Cardinals bought out 2025 club options on Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn but otherwise haven’t made any changes in the rotation — or really to the broader roster at large — despite a stated goal of getting younger and focusing on player development this coming season.
With Pallante’s salary now set, the Cardinals’ payroll checks in just shy of $148MM, per RosterResource. That’s a reduction of about $35MM, all of which was accomplished by parting with Gibson and Lynn and letting Paul Goldschmidt, Andrew Kittredge and Keynan Middleton walk as free agents.