Cardinals Top Draft Pick Good Enough To Join MLB This Season: Report

The St. Louis Cardinals just added a very special talent to their organization.

St. Louis used its No. 5 overall pick in Sunday’s 2025 Major League Baseball draft to select 21-year-old flamethrower Liam Doyle out of Tennessee. The starting pitcher was the 2025 SEC Pitcher of the Year. He’s also the No. 8 prospect on MLB’s prospect rankings for 2025.

Doyle’s biggest weapon is a blistering fastball, and according to The Athletic’s Keith Law, Doyle’s heater should allow him to rise through the minor league ranks at great speed.

“Doyle’s fastball may be the best in the class this year in terms of how it plays, which should, at the very least, let him get through the minors quickly,” Law wrote of Doyle before the draft.

“He finished second in the NCAA Division I in strikeouts, thanks in large part to hitters whiffing on the fastball 40 percent of the time they swung at it, higher than Chase Burns’ whiff rate on his fastball in his draft spring (36 percent). A team could take him in July and either try to call him up as a reliever in September if they’re contending, given the way the fastball played when he was starting, or more likely (and maybe more responsibly) put him on the same path that Burns or Paul Skenes took, eyeing a June-ish callup next year.”

Law’s suggestion that Doyle could be called up to the majors this season is borderline shocking. It would be interesting to hear Law revise that statement about Doyle now knowing that the lefty landed in St. Louis. The Cardinals have been overly cautious in 2025 about throwing their MLB-ready pitching prospects into the fire (Michael McGreevy, most notably), so no one would expect St. Louis to even remotely consider calling up Doyle this season.

Might that reality have been different for Doyle if he had been drafted by another franchise? It’s difficult to say, but the main takeaway from Law’s assessment of Doyle and his fastball is that the Cardinals have a potential ace on their hands.