The Cardinal lefty has been impressive so far in 2025
I’ll be honest, I was very dismissive of the idea of Matthew Liberatore being a rotation candidate coming into spring training, but so far, he has been the St. Louis Cardinals most impressive starting pitcher. We heard so much about this being a “runway” season for players and at the time of the beginning of spring training we heard that Liberatore would be coming in stretched out to compete as a starter. Teams generally do this for swing relievers so they can comfortably manage a bulk workload throughout the season.
But, something was different with Liberatore in spring. He was dominating. Not just “oh, its spring” but Liberatore had the mound presence and a reliever’s attack mentality and at one point had retired 21 of 22 batters faced which earned him the opportunity. We’re now witnessing, potentially, Libby making good on his prospect pedigree and showing us why he was so highly regarded and the focal point of the ill-fated Liberatore for Arozarena trade that most Cardinals fans would like to forget.
In 4 starts Matthew Liberatore is 1-2 with a 3.60 ERA, 1.87 FIP, and produced 0.9 fWAR. Liberatore is continuing his spring dominance striking out 24.5% of batters while walking just 2%. He also has 3 quality starts in 4 outings and has gone at least 6 innings in each start. Surprisingly, after getting a late ramp up period, which had some Cardinals fans questioning the validity of this decision. Liberatore has been ready to handle a starters workload at the outset of the season.
You can see here from Liberatore’s Savant page via MLB.com that he is performing at a league average rate or better in most categories. So, how is he doing this?
In contrast to last season, Liberatore, has made his Slider his primary pitch and started throwing it 30% of the time and has increased his changeup usage from 5% to 11% and as you can see from the graph above. The “offspeed run value” is in the 93rd percentile and hitters are just 1-9 against it with a .111 BAA and a 22% whiff rate.
There have been some very mixed results from players early on. Thankfully, Liberatore has been consistent and convicted in his opportunities in the rotation thus far in 2025. If he’s able to carry this through and Chaim Bloom is able to project Gray, Pallante, Liberatore into the rotation next season as well as potentially McGreevy. Then his job becomes much easier rounding out a rotation with a solid floor and the middle to back end of the rotation in the medium term would appear to be in solid shape.
-Thanks for reading