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St. Louis Cardinals: Evaluating All the Starting Pitchers in This Year’s Camp

By Patrick Karraker

Mar 7, 2015; Melbourne, FL, USA; St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Jaime Garcia (54) pitches to Washington Nationals second baseman Dan Uggla during the second inning of a spring training baseball game at Space Coast Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 7, 2015; Melbourne, FL, USA; St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Jaime Garcia (54) pitches to Washington Nationals second baseman Dan Uggla during the second inning of a spring training baseball game at Space Coast Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports /
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Adam Wainwright St. Louis Cardinals
Mar 21, 2014; Jupiter, FL, USA; St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Adam Wainwright (50) delivers a pitch against the Washington Nationals during a game at Roger Dean Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports /

The St. Louis Cardinals will have 15 healthy starting pitchers in big-league camp as spring training gets underway. How will the organizational depth chart stack up as the season begins?

As the St. Louis Cardinals begin spring training for the 2016 season, there’s decidedly less drama surrounding the starting rotation than there’s been in recent seasons. As of now, lefthander Jaime Garcia looks to be fully healthy to begin the season for the first time in several years, Michael Wacha and Carlos Martinez have established themselves as front-line starters who no longer need to fight for jobs, and ace Adam Wainwright appears to be fully rehabbed from the torn Achilles that sidelined him from April until September of last season. To top it all off, the Cardinals signed Mike Leake to a five-year, $80 million-dollar contract this offseason to round out the rotation.

Despite the stability of the rotation heading into camp, the Cardinals will still take advantage of the opportunity to evaluate many pitchers during the spring, and 15 pitchers who project as starters during 2016 will attend major-league spring training. While none outside the top five have a great chance to make the Opening Day roster, the rotation will undoubtedly need to be altered for some reason or another during the course of the 162-game season, so spring training is a great opportunity for pitchers to seize the hypothetical sixth, seventh, and eighth rotation spots.

On the next few slides, we’ll rank all 15 starting pitchers attending major-league spring training on a three-grade scale, judging whether they’re “safe and sound” (virtually assured to be on the opening day roster unless they get injured), “on the bubble” (meaning that they’ve got a shot, but will have to compete for a job during spring training), or “not likely” (meaning that it would take an absolutely unbelievable spring training performance for the player to have even a minuscule chance of cracking the opening day roster).

We’ll start off with those who appear to be safe heading into camp:

Next: Safe and Sound

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