St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospects: #4 Matthew Liberatore

It's hard to imagine a left-handed prospect better than Liberatore other than Luzardo and Gore. The man is straight-up filthy. It's funny, most lists have him third but I like him at the four spots because, with pitchers, it's harder to rank them because a lot of them increase in velocity and command, so it's difficult to be high on pitchers when they can also be busts. Some of the best pitchers in baseball were not top prospects like Jacob DeGrom and Luis Castillo. Liberatore has been a name ever since he was drafted in the 2018 class, that also produced his best friend in the first round, Nolan Gorman. Liberatore was drafted by the Tampa Bay Rays and was surprisingly traded this offseason to the Cardinals. He has been ranked between the 40-60 spot in the Top Prospects in baseball. It's funny, it always feels like the Cardinals have a pitching prospect in that area, from Wacha to Weaver to Flaherty (I know right, super weirdly underrated) to now Liberatore. Matthew is a six-foot-five lefty with impressive stuff. To be honest, I haven't watched enough of him to have a good feel on what his best pitch is but I’ll say this, his fastball is wildly untalked about. I've read multiple reports on him that says he sits 93ish on his fastball and that's just wrong. He throws more like 95-96 that tops out (so far) at 98. For a 20-year-old starter, that's eye-popping. He has a whopping curveball that is majestic and will strike out a lot of batters. It’s more of a 12-6 Curveball, reminds me a lot of Patrick Corbin's curve. His slider also from what I've seen is really good. His command can get iffy sometimes and cause a long inning and possibly runs, but that's a part of his growth. The thing I'm looking for is for him to start to consistently strike out more batters. His K/9 was just under 9, which means most starts he had close to as many strikeouts to innings. His stuff is way too good for that to be the case. He’s somebody to be very excited about in the system. I think he has the chance to make the big club by late 2021, as long as the 2020 season occurs. But for now, he’ll most likely stay with Gorman and the two will come up together and it'll be a beautiful and fun thing to watch, definitely going to be all over Cut-4 LOL.

2020 projection:

Starts in Palm Beach and rises to Springfield (if the MiLB season has 100 games this season)

W/L : 7-3 Era: 2.98 Innings: 120 SO: 134 WHIP: 1.09

COMP:

He reminds me so much of Cole Hamels, I don’t know how to explain it other than talent-wise and breaking stuff. Also his edge.

• Jeff Wells (@mlb_trades on twitter)