Today, I want to take a look at the St. Louis Cardinals player who has become the surprise 5th starter for the team after Steven Matz went down with a fairly predictable injury early in the season. That player is none other than Andre Pallante. First of all, let's take a look at what I've said about Pallante in the past. My projection models in 2023 (old model) and 2024 (updated model) both like Andre Pallante quite a bit more than some others. Also, slightly over 2 years ago, I wrote an article in these spaces about Andre Pallante asking if he was "for real." In that article, I came to the following conclusion:
The Cardinals still seem to be figuring out if they need Andre Pallante in the rotation or if he's better out of the pen. Today's just going to be a fact finding mission of what has occurred so far this year. I don't plan on getting too much into how he should look the rest of the year or anything like that, although Eno Sarris over at The Athletic ($) pegs him as a number four or five type in his list of starting pitcher rankings for the second half of the 2024 season in this article.
In Eno's article, he references Pallante's 90 Stuff+ number based on his own proprietary formula. Pallante does have a 96 Location+ and 97 Pitching+ to go along with that. He has a 12.4% K-BB% for the year. Eno also cites two more stats, a 3.89 ppERA and a 16.9% ppK%. However, Eno also says in the article that "recent Stuff+ is slightly more predictive than full-season Stuff+" so let's take a bit deeper dive into Pallante's STUFF via Eno Sarris' model.
From March 28th to April 20th, Andre Pallante was in the majors as a relief pitcher. His numbers were rather pedestrian, at best. In 9 appearances, he threw to 49 batters over 10 innings. That in itself is not a good sign. Pallante had a 318/388/432/820 line against him that included 14 hits and 5 walks (for a 1.90 WHIP) and just 6 strikeouts (for a 1.20 K:BB and 2% K-BB% - dreadful). His ERA was dreadful at 6.30 although his FIP showed that possibly better was to come at just 4.75 (still not good). However, Pallante's wOBA allowed was .362 - absolutely terrible, but his expected wOBA was actually much worse at .383. He was only getting whiffs on 18.4% of his swings and was allowing hard hit balls on 52.6% of batted balls.
As a RP, here were Pallante's STUFF+ model stats from Eno Sarris:
96 Stuff+, 90 Location+, 92 Pitching+
And here was his pitch mix.
4-seam fastball - 59%, 94.9 mph
Sinker - 21%, 95.6 mph
Slider - 12%, 87.2 mph
Knuckle Curve - 8%, 81.3 mph
What's interesting to me is that Pallante's results as a starter are MUCH better than they were as a reliever this year and yet let's take a look at why. According to Eno Sarris' STUFF+ model, my guess would seem to be that it's because he's locating his pitches much better and throwing a different mix of pitches than when he was relieving.
As a SP, here was Pallante's STUFF+ model stats from Eno Sarris:
89 Stuff+, 96 Location+, 97 Pitching+
And here was his pitch mix:
4-seam fastball - 49%, 94.8 mph
Sinker - 22%, 95.0 mph
Slider - 16%, 88.4 mph
Knuckle Curve - 15%, 79.6 mph
You can see by the two above lists that Eno's model believes that the "stuff" - the combination of movement and velocity on the pitches - was worse as a starter but the location on those pitches was so much better that his Pitching+ stat went up despite the stuff getting worse. Furthermore you should be able to see a vast difference in pitch mix. The percent of time he threw the fastball went down by 10% while the slider and knuckle curve (the breaking pitches) jumped greatly. He also began throwing the slider harder but the curve slower - a bit of a differentiation between the arsenals. Even more on that, he's getting by with his slider being his only pitch that has a Stuff+ over 90, even...but it's over 120, so it's been a terrific pitch by the Stuff+ model.
As a starter from May 29th to July 22nd, Andre Pallante started 9 games and threw 47 1/3 innings. He struck out 38 and walked just 16 (for a 2.38 K:BB and 11.5% K-BB% - both of which far better than his numbers as a reliever). He has allowed just 41 hits (for a 1.20 K:BB - also much better than his numbers as a reliever). This allowed him a 20.1% whiff rate (up from 18.4%) and only a 33.8% hard hit rate against him down from over 50% as a reliever. This has allowed his ERA to drop to a much more miniscule 3.42 even though his FIP dipped to just 3.78. His batting line against is now 236/307/356/664 as a starter. And while his wOBA has dropped from .362 to .296 (a very good drop) his xwOBA shows as a starter at .281 - even better than what players have really done against him. So he went from a bad reliever whose wOBA showed signs of regression coming to a 5+ inning starter who has kept runs off the board fairly well and shows signs of potentially being better than that in all actuality.
So while Andre Pallante might sure be finding out more of who he is as a pitcher, and while the Cardinals might be finding out more of if they want Pallante in the rotation or the pen (or both) in the future, he sure seems like he's pitching a lot better since moving to starting this year and that there seems to be a potential for slightly better results if things break a bit more his way.
Let's go Cardinals!
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