Triple-A right-hander bringing gaudy stats to Cardinals’ big league bullpen
The St. Louis Cardinals have a reliever in the system who has held Triple-A left-handed hitters to a 5-for-41 clip at the plate in the season’s early going.
They also have a reliever who has struck out right handers at that level in 47% of their plate appearances against him. Faced with the need to refresh their bullpen ahead of their first series in Milwaukee this season, they benefited from not having to choose between those options.
That’s easy to do when those numbers come from the same pitcher’s line.
Righty Andre Granillo, the progenitor of those gaudy stats, had his contract selected by the Cardinals for his first big league promotion on Thursday. He takes the active roster spot of Chris Roycroft, who was optioned to Memphis, and the 40-player roster spot of Ryan Vilade, who was designated for assignment. Michael Siani was recalled from Memphis to assume Vilade’s spot on the bench.
“He’s done a nice job over the last month,” manager Oli Marmol said. “You look at his swing and miss, and it’s impressive. Being able to get him up here and see what it looks like against big league hitters is something we’ve been kind of looking forward to.”
If it seems like Marmol has been repetitive – or even fixated – on a desire to generate more whiffs from the bullpen, it’s not just a stylistic preference. Entering the four-game set in Milwaukee, the Cardinals rank dead last, 30th of 30 teams, in strikeouts per nine innings from the bullpen among all major league teams.
In this week’s home sweep against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Cardinals’ bullpen allowed 15 hits over the three games played, consisting of 12 innings pitched. When the hits don’t stop coming, neither will the rallies, and Granillo’s elite-level skill at missing bats – along with demonstrated improvements from Riley O’Brien – can help mitigate some of those concerns.
“Hopefully I can provide in any way possible,” Granillo said. “Whether it’s up ten [runs], down ten, up one, down one, [runners on] second and third, clean inning, dirty inning, doesn’t matter. I feel like I can go in there and get the job done and hopefully help this team win.”
The 25-year-old, 6-foot-4, 250-pound righty was St. Louis’ sixth round pick in the 2021 draft. Selected from the University of California, Riverside, his collegiate breakthrough came when his college coach found himself unimpressed with Granillo’s looping curveball.
That coach, long-time big leaguer and former Cardinal Troy Percival, instead suggested a cutter that would move more tightly and create deception. Granillo, though, is a “natural supinator,” rolling his wrist toward the outside as he throws and imbuing the pitch with a sharper bite.
“[Percival] was like, ‘well, I taught you a cutter, but the slider’s working out a lot better,’” Granillo recalled. “And then I just took it and ran with it. I never looked back.”
His numbers in the minors have always included large strikeout totals, but he has historically been held back by his walk rate. Granillo struck out 80 hitters in 65 minor league innings in 2024, but he walked 41. A minor league strikeout to walk ratio of less than two is a recipe for big league disaster, and Granillo opined Thursday that his inability to find the strike zone was all that got between him and a big league call up a year ago.
“Working down in San Diego with my pitching coach [Brandon James], the glaring thing was my walks,” Granillo said. “He didn’t sugar coat it. He said, ‘you’re not ready to be a big leaguer because you walk everybody.’ I was like, yeah, you’re right. If I don’t punch them out, I walk them, because they weren’t hitting me.
“It was a slap in the face just to hear him say, ‘hey, this is what you need to do,’ and that’s all we walked on all off-season.”
The plan to get in the zone was to throw a changeup for strikes, as well as locating that weaponized slider in locations other than chase spots. By doing that, Granillo’s fastball – “only” mid-90s, compared to his velo-happy contemporaries – plays up as it approaches the plate.
The result of that work has been walking just eight hitters to date for Memphis, tripling his strikeout-to-walk ratio. That put him on the precipice of the big leagues, and when Memphis manager Ben Johnson called Wednesday with the good news, Granillo was so ready for the call that he knew what it was before he picked up the phone.
“It kind of didn’t click at the moment,” Granillo said through a wide smile. “I was like, are you serious? He goes, ‘yeah, I wouldn’t joke about that.’”
His road roommate in the minors is Michael McGreevy, a fellow southern California native who was also his first roommate in professional baseball. The two shared “a big ol’ hug” before Granillo started on his battery of phone calls, starting with his mother. That’s when, he said, “the water works came out,” and he rushed to the airport.
Granillo did mention one potential faux pas – he forgot to call his agent to pass on the good news until he was already in a car on the way to the airport in Atlanta from the Memphis team hotel in Gwinnett, GA.
If it was a breach in etiquette, it was a small one, and if his numbers in the big leagues even approach those he posted in the minors, he’ll have more than enough time to iron out the details.
