ST. LOUIS -- In a year that has been designed to set a foundation for the next era of Cardinals baseball, many elements of the club’s progress have produced encouragement about the trajectory.
Whether it’s Jordan Walker’s All-Star turn, JJ Wetherholt landing as one of the league’s most exciting rookies or the budding consistency in starting roles for one-time relievers Andre Pallante and Kyle Leahy, individual success stories are found most everywhere you look inside the Cardinals’ clubhouse.
Matthew Liberatore’s season has been a counterexample.
After earning the nod as the Opening Day starter, Liberatore’s campaign has seen the 26-year-old left-hander traverse more than his share of uneven terrain.
Following an abbreviated outing in the Cardinals’ 7-3 loss to the Cubs on Monday at Busch Stadium, Liberatore’s 5.26 ERA sits more than a full run higher than the number he sported a year ago, his first full season in the St. Louis rotation.
On a day where the Cardinals had baked in a plan to piggyback Hunter Dobbins behind the starter to provide respite to a heavily-utilized stable of relievers, Liberatore’s 3 2/3 innings of work left a heftier portion of the game for Dobbins.
Liberatore fell behind Chicago hitters with regularity in his first turn through the batting order, setting the tone for a sluggish showing.
“At this level, especially if you look at the Cubs, they’re first or second in the league against left-handed starters,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “They’ve done a real nice job, and you’re going to have to get ahead of them and put yourself in favorable counts in order to get what you want.
“That was the biggest difference for Libby was just falling behind and being in bad counts.”
Overall, Chicago boasts a .794 OPS against lefties, second best in MLB. Liberatore intimated that the success of the Cubs’ lineup against left-handed pitching wasn’t a factor in his wrestling with the strike zone early but acknowledged how a lack of execution bit him in those spots. First-pitch strikes were a rarity from the outset of the night.
“Just not getting ahead,” Liberatore said. “All the pitches. I tried a little bit of everything and just didn’t get ahead of anybody.”
After starts such as Monday’s for Liberatore come more calls for change from out in the ether. Cardinals fans see him struggling. They see another left-hander, prospect Quinn Mathews, excelling at Triple-A Memphis. There exists a desire, from some, to connect those dots.
In a general sense, Marmol spoke Monday afternoon to the way that such personnel decisions are managed for struggling players, that it’s “dependent on the personality and how they’re handling” those struggles.
But for Liberatore, he’s too far down this track of evaluation to go backward. Amid the scuffling, the stance of the organization seems to be that there’s nothing to be gained in Triple-A Memphis that will inform the discussion of whether he can hack it as a starter in St. Louis.
“This is, continue to plow on and prove that you can,” Marmol said. “There’s zero going back to like, ‘Let’s go gain confidence elsewhere and then come back’ -- that’s not an option.”
The urge to armchair GM the Cardinals into a swap is prevalent among restless supporters. But Marmol could not have been more clear Monday afternoon that a trip to the Minors is not on the horizon for Liberatore.
“No chance,” Marmol said. “I have not thought of it once.”
Now, whether Liberatore has an indefinite leash on a rotation spot is a different conversation -- and it’s worth noting that his lifetime ERA in a relief role is 3.89, more than a full run better than his career line as a starter (4.99).
But the Cardinals aren’t measuring his every start through the lens of whether Liberatore did enough that day to avoid a demotion.
Yes, Liberatore’s results Monday were, as has been the case on a number of occasions during this summer, underwhelming. Dobbins, who completed the remainder of the game in 5 1/3 innings, has shown favorably across the sporadic big league opportunities that he’s been given. Mathews is a prospect worthy of consideration, too.
The Trade Deadline looms to potentially add new wrinkles to the Cards’ pitching depth chart. Whether Liberatore can handle his current role or not, it seems his pitches will continue to be thrown at the Major League level.