The St. Louis Cardinals’ pitching pipeline keeps getting deeper, and one of the more intriguing arms in the system is starting to move back toward the mound.
Tekoah Roby hasn’t appeared in a game since July 10, 2025, after undergoing Tommy John surgery, but there’s finally some forward motion. Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom said Roby is “getting closer and closer” to game action, according to Daniel Guerrero of the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch. Guerrero also reported that Roby may face hitters in the coming days.
Roby’s absence has kept him out of the spotlight this season, even with the Cardinals carrying a loaded group of pitching prospects. Liam Doyle, Tanner Franklin, Brandon Clarke, Quinn Mathews and Jurrangelo Cijntje have all drawn plenty of attention in the minors, and Mathews has already made his big league debut. Roby, though, remains one of the more important names in the system.
He enters the picture as the Cardinals’ No. 12 overall prospect. Before the injury, the right-hander put together a strong 2024 campaign, making 16 starts between Double-A and Triple-A while posting a 3.10 ERA and an 87-to-19 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 78 1/3 innings. He also reached Triple-A for the first time in his professional career and made six starts there, finishing with a 4.02 ERA.
A third-round pick in 2020, Roby was trending toward a possible big league look before the injury interrupted his progress last July. If he comes back looking like the pitcher he was last year, a major league promotion sometime in 2027 would seem to be in play for the 24-year-old.
And for a Cardinals organization that has spent the past few years dealing with thin pitching depth, Roby’s return matters. The system is already stacked with arms near the top, and he gives St. Louis another potential rotation piece to add to the mix.
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