Kyle Leahy keeps stacking up outings that sound more like a franchise flashback than a midseason stretch.
On Tuesday night against the Cincinnati Reds, the 29-year-old right-hander kept it rolling with five shutout innings, six strikeouts and only three hits allowed. That performance trimmed his season ERA to 3.24, which now sits as the best mark on the Cardinals’ staff by a comfortable margin. Michael McGreevy is next in line at 3.48.
The bigger picture is even more eye-catching. Over his last 10 starts, Leahy has put together a 1.38 ERA and has not given up more than two runs in any of them.
Eight of those 10 outings have featured fewer than two runs allowed. That kind of run doesn’t just stand out - it pushes him into rare Cardinals company.
Only Adam Wainwright and Bob Gibson have had longer streaks for the organization of allowing two runs or fewer.
Kyle Leahy has made 10 straight starts allowing 2 or fewer runs.Only Adam Wainwright and Bob Gibson have longer streaks in Cardinals history pic.twitter.com/EIFzr5s3MP
That’s the company he’s in now, and it tells you everything about how far this stretch has gone.
What makes it more striking is where Leahy was not long ago. On April 28, his ERA sat at 5.52, and there was real talk that St.
Louis might send him back to the bullpen. That conversation made sense at the time.
Leahy had been a breakout reliever last season, posting a 3.07 ERA in 62 bullpen appearances, and there was at least an argument that the Cardinals should have gone another direction in the rotation, maybe with someone like Hunter Dobbins.
Instead, they stayed with him. And Leahy has rewarded that patience in a big way.
A 3.24 ERA through 24 starts is exactly the kind of stability St. Louis needed.
More than that, it has shown Leahy can do more than survive in a rotation. He’s proving he can thrive there, and do it at a level that puts him in the top half of an MLB staff.
The Cardinals had Sonny Gray in their rotation over the last two years, and he never finished a season with an ERA as low as Leahy’s current mark.
Gray posted a 3.84 ERA in 28 starts in 2024, then followed with a 4.28 ERA in 2025. Against that backdrop, Leahy’s rise looks even sharper.
St. Louis found something here.
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Cardinals Face A Tough Kyle Leahy Decision At The Worst Time
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According to Jeff Jones, the Cardinals are preparing to significantly scale back Leahys workload soon, with piggyback starts or a move into bullpen duties among the possibilities. He is not expected to be shut down entirely, but the timing makes the decision tricky, especially with Quinn Mathews already having two big league appearances and president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom signaling that Mathews will be part of the clubs plans the rest of the season. [Read more 🡒]