The Cardinals came into 2026 with plenty of uncertainty in the rotation, but Kyle Leahy has turned that into one of the club’s best developments.
St. Louis leaned on a young group from the start: Michael McGreevy, Andre Pallante, Kyle Leahy, Matthew Liberatore and Dustin May.
May and Leahy were the oldest in the bunch when the season began, both at 28, and Leahy turned 29 in June. May is still 28, but he is no longer in the organization.
It was a staff full of pitchers with something to prove. McGreevy, Liberatore and Hunter Dobbins are all 26.
Pallante is 27. For the Cardinals, this season has been about finding out what they really have in that group, and there have been real positives.
Leahy has been the clearest one.
He leads the staff with a 3.38 ERA across 117 1/3 innings. Pallante sits second at 3.46, followed by McGreevy at 3.64 and Liberatore at 5.15. Dobbins has only made nine outings, but he has a 3.40 ERA.
Over the last month or so, Leahy has taken things up another level. Across his last nine starts, he owns the second-best ERA in baseball at 1.52.
His season didn’t start that way. After five starts on April 22, Leahy’s ERA was 5.63.
After 14 starts, it had come down to 4.63. Then he caught fire, and now it stands at 3.38.
That kind of climb is exactly why development doesn’t always move in a straight line.
Early in the year, the Cardinals took heat for sticking with him in the rotation. Now they have every reason to feel good about it.
Leahy has put himself in the mix to be a long-term part of this rotation, even with top prospects like Liam Doyle, Quinn Mathews and Jurrangelo Cijntje beginning to reach the majors. For a Cardinals season built around sorting through young arms after moving veterans, that’s the kind of answer they were hoping to find.
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