After 16 starts last season, Michael McGreevy is set to be one of the few returning members of the St. Louis Cardinals rotation, and as he put it, “being a vet came quick.” McGreevy would continue to say that when the Cardinals dealt for Richard Fitts, Hunter Dobbins, and signed Dustin May, he was reaching out to them to welcome them to St. Louis and helping them with any adjustments they needed to the new organization.
Taking that jump is no small task, and the Cardinals right-hander climbed the ranks steadily over the first five seasons of his professional career, putting himself in a position to succeed at each stop. McGreevy has spent the offseason working on pitches and refining his arsenal so that when he gets to Jupiter, he is ready to compete and can avoid a slow start to the season.
“Making sure that stuff can be as sharp as possible, so there is no time in Spring Training you are losing to ‘hey let’s try this, let’s try that,” McGreevy said. “That was what the cutter was in 2024, coming in. Had no success that offseason, come in, took about three weeks, just ‘hey let’s try this, let’s try that…, It would have been nice to kinda get it rolling early so I didn’t have a slow start in ‘24.”
The 25-year-old starter is one of the players to watch as the Cardinals enter a place that they have not been for over 20 years. Seeing a full season in the big leagues for McGreevy is one of the most important pieces of building the future. Seeing how he progresses through the season, how he handles the ebbs and flows of a full season in the majors. When asked about what he was able to take away from his short time with Sonny Gray last season, McGreevy said, “It was great seeing how he went about his business, seeing the success he has, and it makes sense why.”
Fangraphs projects the Cardinals' starter to pitch 136 innings, slotting him as a full participant in the Cardinals' rotation for the upcoming season. With good and bad in his stint in the Cardinals' rotation last year, the new season with new expectations and advancing to being an incumbent member of the Cardinals' pitching staff is an exciting prospect for McGreevy as the Cardinals look to build towards the future with youth and create a new culture in St. Louis.
Listen to McGreevy’s entire interview alongside Thomas Saggese from Winter Warm-Up on the STL Sports Central YouTube channel.