The St. Louis Cardinals currently sit atop the NL Central after a three-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins during the opening weekend. Even after losing their first game of the season to the Angels, the Cardinals have still been an exciting team to follow starting the year.

Their starting pitching and offensive power has taken the headlines and also been able to distract from any current major holes the roster features. The Cardinals’ biggest strength of their mediocre team last season was in the relief corps and that could be the case again in the 2025 season. The only missing piece from last year’s squad is righty Andrew Kittredge, who took the ball 74 times last season. Kittredge signed with the Orioles in the offseason but will miss a good chunk of the first half after undergoing knee surgery during Spring Training.

To replace Kitt, the Cardinals made their first major league signing in March by grabbing reliever Phil Maton, who has had similar success to Kittredge but without the heavy usage and is three years younger than Kitt. We saw the faith manager Oli Marmol has in their newest addition as he turned to Maton in the eighth inning of the Opening Day win and then had him close the 5-1 win two days later.

Coming into the offseason, I expected Ryan Fernandez to get the first shot at the set up role but Maton’s signing moved Fernandez down the pecking order. The righty unfortunately could not hold the lead in the seventh inning of last night’s game but I still have faith in the 26-year-old after last year’s breakout season. The rest of the bullpen alignment is interesting to follow. Steven Matz is locked in as the long reliever and he notched his first career save with four innings of relief on Sunday but he will move to the rotation when the Cardinals need a sixth starter.

Matz giving up the long relief spot probably bumps Kyle Leahy into the bulk inning role since he was slightly stretched out during spring. With Matthew Liberatore moving to the rotation, the left-handers in the bullpen are John King and and JoJo Romero. King will fill a middle inning matchup role and Romero will continue to slot in during big spots as he did during the 10th inning of last night’s game. I’m most nervous about Romero’s ability to stay as a lockdown reliever due to his advanced metrics not agreeing with his dominance of last year.

The tall Chris Roycroft has already been called upon twice, each time looking to preserve a lead which he has successfully done in those appearances. On Opening Day, he was the seventh inning guy and last night he filled the firefighter role, coming in against Mike Trout with two runners on in a two-run game. Roycroft allowed one runner to score but kept the Cardinals in the lead.

There is plenty of time to change roles based on performance or injuries, but right now it appears Marmol has his preferred set up to start the year behind closer Ryan Helsley. It will be an interesting storyline to follow for the next month plus, especially after Matz moves to the rotation.