Cardinals placing bets on ‘lottery-ticket’ lefties in bullpen overhaul
The particulars of a projected roster for the 2026 St. Louis Cardinals can be difficult to pin down, with much still dependent on the shape of the trade market.
While most of the bullpen will be composed of returning players, the left side has undergone significant changes, with more likely to come.
JoJo Romero is the most established reliever on the roster and the easiest to project for success, but he’s also at the top of the trade market. If he continues to retire left-handed hitters at the impressive rates he has in recent years, it will likely be for another team.
That has left opportunities around the margins, especially with the team choosing not to tender John King a contract as he moves through the arbitration process. After being acquired at the 2023 trade deadline, King piled up exactly as many innings as appearances — 127 of each.
King’s number of relief appearances trails only Romero and Ryan Helsley since the start of the 2023 season, and he recorded an ERA+ of 125, comfortably above league average. That performance dipped in quality in 2025, and he always carried the contact risk that accompanies pitchers who rely on batted balls. King, though, has been among the best in baseball at keeping the ball on the ground, which allowed him to skirt trouble.
Replacing him — and likely, eventually, Romero — has been a process marked mostly by lottery-ticket acquisitions.
Perhaps the most established of those came Tuesday, when the Cardinals completed a deal with the Cleveland Guardians, acquiring lefty reliever Justin Bruihl for cash considerations. The 28-year-old has pitched parts of five big league seasons, primarily with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and posted a 5.27 ERA in 13 2/3 innings for the Toronto Blue Jays last year.
Bruihl arrives in St. Louis with an inside track to an Opening Day roster spot, if for no other reason than roster mechanics. He holds a spot on the 40-man roster and has no remaining minor league options, so the Cardinals would have to pass him through waivers to send him to the minors. To acquire him, the Cardinals made room by removing right-hander Zak Kent from the 40-man roster — a demonstration of Bruihl’s relative value and fit in the organization’s eyes.
Other than Bruihl and Romero, the only dedicated left-handed reliever on the 40-man roster is Nick Raquet, who made a surprise major league debut with two appearances at the end of 2025. Those outings were nearly uneventful; he issued one walk and one strikeout and retired six of the seven hitters he faced. As auditions go, it could hardly have been briefer, but it also did not raise any red flags that would preclude him from getting a strong look in spring training.
Jared Shuster, who has thrown 141 2/3 major league innings over the last three seasons with Atlanta and the Chicago White Sox, signed a minor league deal with an invitation to major league camp earlier in the winter.
He is the most experienced of the depth additions and has had perhaps the most big league success, though his strikeout-to-walk ratio leaves much to be desired. The fact that he settled for a minor league deal so early in the winter likely indicates he sees the path to the St. Louis bullpen as more open than elsewhere, which is understandable.
Still in the organization is Packy Naughton, who has battled a series of arm injuries, including Tommy John surgery, since walking off the mound in Milwaukee in April 2023. He managed just over 20 innings in the minors in 2024 while recovering from a flexor strain, but a re-injury doomed him to a prolonged rehab. Even as he’s taken to social media to promote his work as a real estate agent in South Florida, he has also been working through a rehabilitation program that could have him pitching this season.
The Cardinals signed Naughton to a rare two-year minor league deal before last season with the idea that he could contribute in 2026. With so much time off since his last appearance in a competitive game, expectations are understandably tempered. Still, Naughton has long been respected by the coaching staff, and familiarity can go a long way toward earning future opportunities.
As St. Louis continues to seek a veteran reliever on the free agent market, the names in the mix will almost certainly change over the next month before pitchers and catchers report to spring training. Trades could also bring in established arms who might be in the mix at the start of the season.
For the moment, though, this is the group available — and that might be one of the strongest indications yet that there will be an abundance of opportunities on the 2026 Cardinals.
