Michael McGreevy

Perhaps just betting on college pitchers with elite control and modest stuff in the draft is the way to go. McGreevy, whom the Cardinals nabbed with the 18th overall pick in 2021, had a 2.6 percent walk rate as a junior for UC Santa Barbara that year. Three years later, he made his big-league debut this past July and made another three starts in September and finished with a 2.3 percent walk rate in 23 MLB innings. McGreevy, a 6-foot-4 righty with a 93-mph fastball, generated groundballs at a 62.5 percent clip in his first four big-league starts, and having Masyn Winn and Nolan Arenado behind him helped consistently translate those groundballs into outs. He logged unsustainably low ratios (1.96 ERA, 0.78 WHIP), but even when those ratios normalize, McGreevy should still be among the better rookie pitchers in those categories. While he does have a plus slider, McGreevy's game is more about generating weak contact than racking up strikeouts on a per-start basis. However, after logging 173 total innings last year, he could still finish near the top of the rookie leaderboard in Ks with a full season in the big-league rotation. Read Past Outlooks