After '24 breakout, 'more in there' for starter Pallante

JUPITER, Fla. -- When pitchers and catchers officially reported to the Cardinals' Spring Training headquarters on Tuesday, one notable exception was reliever-turned-starter Andre Pallante, who was engaged in a salary arbitration hearing with the club.

In the season ahead, quite possibly no Cardinals player will have more of a chance to show off his worth to the club than the rapidly blossoming right-hander who dramatically changed the arc of his career in 2024.

Pallante, 26, is now being viewed by the Cardinals as one of the pillars in their pitching staff following an impressive 2024, when he allowed three earned runs or fewer in 15 of his 20 starts. That breakout performance led Pallante, who qualified for salary arbitration this offseason because of his Super Two status, to ask for a $2.1 million salary for '25, while the Cards countered at $1.925 million.

For Pallante, the money isn’t as much of an issue as the respect he hopes to command as a starting pitcher who can be counted on every five days.

“My goal has always been to be the best pitcher I can be, and it hasn’t been to make a ton of money playing baseball,” Pallante said. “It’s to be the best pitcher I could be, and for me to ever be that, I had to be in that [starting] position.”

The aw-shucks, no-frills type when he broke into the big leagues in 2022 as an unheralded reliever, Pallante was often on the receiving end of numerous pranks from veteran pitchers who loved targeting him because of his good-natured persona. These days, however, Pallante is carrying himself with the gravitas of an accomplished starter who is comfortable in his own skin. Those imposter syndrome feelings have given way to someone who suddenly oozes confidence and knows he belongs.

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It’s even showing up now in how Pallante is investing in himself.

“I had been at a 24 Hour Fitness the last three years, and I definitely got out of the 24 Hour Fitness,” Pallante said with a wry smile. “There are a couple of [NFL] Draft Combine guys coming in and it’s cool to work with people from other sports. You’re locked into what you’re doing at the 24 Hour Fitness as opposed to maybe talking to a lineman who is squatting 700 pounds. Then, it’s like, ‘OK, maybe I can push a little harder.’”

Pallante pushed himself to another level not long after he was demoted to Triple-A Memphis on April 21 last season to try to find a solution to getting right-handed hitters out. Even though it sounded counterintuitive at the time, Pallante pushed to be moved into a starter’s role so that he could have more reps against right-handed hitters to test the effectiveness of his newfound two-seam fastball, a pitch that tends to run in on righties and keep them from leaning out over the plate.

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As it turns out, the development of that pitch proved to be a truly transformational moment for a pitcher whose ceiling had seemed to be capped because of his low strikeout numbers and prior struggles versus righties. Over his 20 starts with the Cards after returning from Memphis on May 26, Pallante was 8-7 with a 3.56 ERA -- a stark contrast to the 6.30 ERA he had in the nine relief outings before reinventing himself.

A deeper dive into the numbers showed just how dominant Pallante could be. Because of the movement on his pitches, hitters had nightmarish times trying to square balls up on him. He ranked in MLB’s 98th percentile in barrel rate (3.3%) and ground-ball rate (61.6%), while the 87.4 mph average exit velocity off Pallante ranked in the 84th percentile in the Majors, per Baseball Savant.

“Sometimes you’ve got to prove to yourself that you belong here, and I feel like last year that’s what he did,” Cards manager Oliver Marmol said. “He checked those boxes of, ‘I’m a big leaguer and I know what I’m doing.‘ He’s going into this year with more confidence and it should be fun to watch.”

It's not hyperbole, Pallante said, to say that his midseason transformation might have saved his MLB career.

“Everyone wants it to be a smooth, easy path where you just kind of roll right into things, but my path was a little different and I had some bumps,” said Pallante, who figures to slot into the Cardinals' rotation between ace Sonny Gray and veterans Erick Fedde and Miles Mikolas. “I learned from my mistakes, and I think it’s going to make me a better pitcher for the long run. Now, I just want to build off what I did, because I think there’s more in there for me.”