Cardinals Designate Chris Roycroft For Assignment

The Cardinals announced that right-hander Chris Roycroft has been designated for assignment. That’s the corresponding move to open a 40-man spot for Max Rajcic. MLBTR covered Rajcic’s promotion earlier today.

It’s an unfortunate early birthday present for Roycroft, who turns 29 on Sunday. An undrafted free agent in 2019, the righty started his professional career in independent ball before the Cards scooped him up in 2022. He worked his way up through the minors as a reliever who could generate ground balls. He was added to the 40-man roster in May of 2024.

His first season in the bigs was fairly successful. Roycroft logged 34 1/3 innings out of the St. Louis bullpen, allowing 4.19 earned runs per nine. His 21.3% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate were both a bit worse than average but he induced grounders on 53.5% of balls in play.

Since then, the results haven’t been nearly as pleasant. Dating back to the start of last season, he has a 9.35 ERA in 26 innings. He has still generated grounders on 53.1% of balls in play in that time but he only struck out 13.6% of opponents and gave out walks at a 14.3% pace. He has mostly been in the minors this year and has put up a 5.84 ERA at the Triple-A level.

That performance has led the Cards to push him off the roster and into DFA limbo, which can last as long as a week. The waiver process takes 48 hours, so the Cards could take as long as five days to explore trade interest, but they could also put him on the wire sooner than that. If he were to clear waivers, he would stick around as non-roster depth. Since he doesn’t have a previous career outright nor three years of big league service time, he would not have the right to elect free agency.