Story by
Former St. Louis Cardinals Pitcher Offers Advice to Team's Latest Trade Acquisition
- Story by
- Former St. Louis Cardinals Pitcher Offers Advice to Team's Latest Trade Acquisition
The St. Louis Cardinals ' roster will likely have a lot more turnover than it already has before returning to contention status.
The Cardinals have re-tooled the higher-end and lower-end of the roster over the last year. Even some of the additions St. Louis has made, such as free-agent acquisitions Dustin May and Ryne Stanek , seem to have been signed for the goal of trading in the future.
Advertisement
The Cardinals made another move on Day 1 of spring training that went under the radar was a one-to-one trade that sent reliever Andre Granillo to the Washington Nationals in return for fellow reliever George Soriano .
Both pitchers are low-to-mid leverage arms. Sorinao is coming off a down season with the Miami Marlins where he posted an 8.35 ERA and struck out 36 batters in 36.2 innings pitched across 24 appearances. He allowed home runs in a third of his appearances (eight games) and multiple home runs in two of them. In total, Soriano allowed 10 homers to opposing batters.
In a recent appearance on the Cardinal Territory podcast, former St. Louis pitcher Lance Lynn offered some advice for Soriano when it came to the latter's home run trouble.
"You get yourself in bad counts. You get yourself in bad counts and you got to do things you don't want to do. ... You get predictable. You try things that maybe might not work and then you get yourself in a hitter's count and you make a mistake. Once you feel like you got to be perfect every time, more mistakes happen. So maybe it's (eliminating) a pitch for him. Maybe there's just one pitch that seems to get him in trouble. Maybe it's a count, maybe it's a tip or something like that. There's a lot of different things that can change. ... You just got to be able to make sure that you put (pitches) in the right spots to the right hitters and not come into zones that you don't want to be in, especially if you're behind in counts. Get ahead, use your best pitches."
According to latest roster projections from FanGraphs, the Cardinals' bullpen for 2026 is shaping up to be the following: Gordon Graceffo in low leverage; Soriano, Matt Pushard , Justin Bruihl and Ryne Stanek in middle leverage; Matt Svanson as the team's set-up man; and JoJo Romero and Riley O'Brien as the closers.
Advertisement
If Soriano is able to put together a great season, St. Louis could have another potential piece to move at the '26 trade deadline. Or, if he's able to find new form, the Cardinals could keep him around as one of the mainstays in the bullpen. He's still under pre-arbitration.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION:
Remember to join our CARDINALS on ROUNDTABLE community, which is FREE! You can post your own thoughts, in text or video form, and you can engage with our Roundtable staff, as well as other CARDINALS fans. If prompted to download the Roundtable APP, that's free too!
