Enigmatic Cards prospect Mathews poised to take next step

ST. LOUIS -- Admittedly, Cardinals standout left-handed pitcher Quinn Mathews is a bit quirky and quite different from most of his baseball peers. To him, at least, that’s a good thing and something he fully embraces along his journey to Major League Baseball.

While most of the prospects around him dreamed of being big leaguers since childhood, Mathews always wanted to be an investment banker. When teammates are playing video games, Mathews can often be found studying up and investing in crypto currency. (His mother, Susan, refused to allow him to invest the entirety of his first professional contract in crypto.) And because he’s so competitive and creative, Mathews enjoys a game of Scrabble about as much as he does carving up hitters at the plate.

“He’s a left-handed pitcher for a reason,” cracked catcher Jimmy Crooks, Mathews' closest friend last season with Double-A Springfield.

Maybe it’s only fitting that Mathews’ path to the precipice of the big leagues has been a bit quirky and circuitous as well. Despite being one of the nation’s top collegiate pitchers coming out of Stanford in 2023, Mathews fell to the fourth round of the MLB Draft. The Cardinals even had modest expectations for the 24-year-old last season, starting him at Single-A before watching his rise through four levels of the Minor Leagues and win MLB Pipeline’s Minor League Pitching Prospect of the Year.

He's currently ranked by MLB Pipeline as the organization's No. 3 prospect and No. 77 overall.

While Mathews might not be the stereotypical jock, he draws from many of the same motivations as his teammates and has a competitive spirit burning within him. He knows that a strong Spring Training on the heels of his spectacular 2024 could pave the way to his MLB debut in the 2025 season.

“The chip is still there, but it’s new, it’s different now,” Mathews said. “Basically in 2022, everyone passed over me theoretically [causing him to return to college]. And in 2023, I had the year that I had, and I got taken where I did, and these organizations basically passed over me three or four more times.

“So, that chip’s still there. I did what I had to do last year to maybe prove a couple of people wrong, but not everyone. Then, September came and kicked my teeth in, and I realized I’m not that good. So, this offseason, there’s a new chip there.”

The Cardinals are hopeful that Mathews will continue to use that motivation to push his way into the MLB rotation. In 2024, he became just the second pitcher in franchise history to compete at four levels of the Minor Leagues while also compiling a Minor League-best 202 strikeouts in 143 innings. His numbers tailed off some late in the season after getting to Triple-A and hitting a career-high in innings pitched, but those performances have pushed him this offseason to be better prepared for 2025.

“Last offseason’s approach was velocity-based because that was the knock on me for the longest period of time because I don’t throw very hard,” Mathews said. “The duration of the [2024] season kind of got to me. So, the question now is: How do I get seven or eight more weeks out of my body?”

Fellow Southern California native Michael McGreevy, who broke into the big league rotation last year and could be pushing for a spot in '25 alongside Mathews, smirks at how tough the left-hander is on himself.

“[Mathews] had such a great year by dominating in [Single-A] and High-A, and he dominated the same in Double-A, but he just kind of ran out of gas at the end,” recalled McGreevy, who pitched with Mathews in Triple-A. “He is just totally losing his mind and I’m telling him, “Oh my gosh, Quinn, you’ve had an exceptional year, and you could give up 20 runs tomorrow and you’re still going to win Minor League Pitcher of the Year and Cardinals Pitcher of the Year, and you’ll be fine. And he was like, “Dude, I suck!’”

For as much pressure as he puts on himself, Mathews said he won’t be crushed if he doesn’t make the Cards' starting staff out of Spring Training. After all, big league baseball was never his first dream.

“I wanted to be an investment banker when I was growing up, so I was a weird kid in that regard,” Mathews joked. “One of my childhood best friends said, ‘We’re going to be investment bankers, go to New York, live that life, and work 80-90 hours a week, and that sounded awesome.’

“Now, I don’t really have goals, and I don’t like that word because I feel the word 'goal' means if you achieve it, awesome, but if not, it’s OK. The expectation is to go out and help the St. Louis Cardinals win as many games as possible.”