Feb 26, 2021; Jupiter, Florida, USA; A general view of the St. Louis Cardinals logo on the stadium at Roger Dean Stadium during spring training workouts. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-Imagn Images Jasen Vinlove-Imagn Images

Cardinals 27-Year-Old Pitcher Named Non-Tender Candidate

Originally posted on St. Louis Cardinals on SI
By Patrick McAvoy | Last updated Nov 20, 2025 4:11 PM ET

The 2025 Major League Baseball non-tender deadline will come and pass on Friday and that's the next big day for St. Louis Cardinals fans to watch out for.

We've already seen decisions start to pop up around the league, but they will need to be finalized by Friday. Essentially, this means that each club -- including the Cardinals -- needs to decide whether or not to give contracts to guys they have team control over. This means players who are arbitration-eligible or pre-arbitration. After the decisions have been made to tender -- or cut ties with guys -- then the next step will be working through the actual contracts themselves. But, that's a question for another day.

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MLB Trade Rumors' Anthony Franco shared a story highlighting non-tender candidates across the league. For St. Louis, the guy who stood out was 27-year-old hurler Andre Pallante.

What will the Cardinals do?

Eakin Howard-Imagn Images

"As we do each offseason, we’ll take a look at arb-eligible players we believe have a realistic shot at being let go," Franco said. "To be clear, this is not a list of players we think are likelier than not to be non-tendered. These are players we consider to have at least a 10-20 percent chance of being cut — a broad group who wouldn’t strike us as completely surprising. We’re only looking at players who are eligible for arbitration. There’ll be plenty of pre-arbitration players from the back of teams’ rosters who are dropped (often to immediately re-sign on minor league deals), but those are outside the scope of this post...

"Starting Pitchers: Bailey Falter (Royals): $3.3MM, Ryan Feltner (Rockies): $2.3MM, Jake Irvin (Nationals): $3.3MM, Alek Manoah (Braves): $2.2MM, Luis Medina (Athletics): $900K, Andre Pallante (Cardinals): $3.4MM, JP Sears (Padres): $3.5MM José Suarez (Braves): $1.5MM, Ken Waldichuk (Athletics): $900K, and Joey Wentz (Braves): $1.1MM."

Arguably, the Cardinals should tender Pallante a contract. It's not shocking that he's viewed as someone who could be non-tendered. He had a 5.31 ERA in 31 starts in 2025. But, he's just 27 years old and has shown that he can have an impact in the majors. In 2024, he had a 3.78 ERA in 29 total appearances -- including 20 starts.

As a rookie in 2022, he had a 3.17 ERA in 47 total appearances -- including 10 starts. He has talent, but needs consistency.

This article first appeared on St. Louis Cardinals on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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