Cardinals Need To Cut Ties With Struggling Relief Pitcher

The St. Louis Cardinals have seemingly waved the white flag for the 2025 season, but that's not entirely a bad thing. A rebuilding year is necessary for almost all teams in baseball, unless you're the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, or New York Yankees and can afford to dish out $1 billion in contracts in one offseason.

For the Cardinals, the rebuilding year in 2025 is going to be used to build up the farm system, develop the young core, and build confidence throughout these young stars.

This could result in the Cardinals trading away players like Erick Fedde and Ryan Helsey, both of which don't have a future in St. Louis beyond this season.

But the Cardinals need to cut ties with relief pitcher Ryan Fernandez for a different reason. Fernandez has consistently been one of the worst pitchers to step on the bump this season and it doesn't appear to be trending in the right direction.

In eight innings, the righty has allowed 14 hits and 10 earned runs. On the year, he's among the league's worst in hard hit percentage (59.3 percent), strikeout percentage (11.4 percent), barrel percentage (14.8 percent, and xBA (.306) among plenty of other advanced metrics.

In his last two appearances, he's been even worse. On Friday night, Fernandez came into a tied game, faced one batter, and allowed him (Francisco Lindor) to belt a walk off home run. On Sunday, Fernandez came into a game down by one run and allowed three doubles and three runs to put the game out of reach for the Cardinals.

St. Louis needs to make room for a prospect reliever at this point because Fernandez is doing nothing but trending in the wrong direction.