The St. Louis Cardinals bullpen has been an issue for much of the year already in 2025 but there is unfortunately no clear answer to fix the club’s biggest issue. So far this season, the relief corps have a 2-8 record and an ERA over five after the front office completely rejected any opportunity to upgrade their personnel outside of $2 million reliever Phil Maton.

Coming into the year, this did not appear to be a huge concern because of how good the bullpen was in the 2024 campaign. However, bullpen volatility is a real thing in baseball and it is gross negligence to expect a group of ragtag names to continuously outperform their peripheral stats.

I will admit that I was high on Ryan Fernandez after a great 2024 campaign that saw himself into high leverage spots thanks to an elite slider that opposing hitters were unable to figure out. His performance convinced me that he could slot right into the Andrew Kittredge role but that left the earlier innings open for someone else to fill.

The 2025 season has been rough on the entire Cardinals roster but nobody has seen more of a downturn in production than Fernandez. In 11 games, the righty is 0-2 with an 11.42 ERA, allowing five walks and two homers in 8.2 innings. His slider went from his best pitch to one of the worse in the league with opposing hitters slugging .950 against his breaking ball.

It got to the point that Marmol could not wait for Fernandez to figure it out at big league level as his performance was costing the team wins. The support from Memphis is coming in the form of oft-injured yet intriguing reliever Riley O’Brien, who was one of my sleeper picks during the spring. The 30-year old righty made it into eight games for the Cardinals last year, posting elite strikeout numbers but had miserable command, allowing eight walks en route to an 11.25 ERA.

Armed with a 97 mph fastball and two power breaking balls, O’Brien appears to have unlocked something in Memphis in his first seven innings this season. In those innings he has 14 strikeouts against only three walks. He will likely be worked into lower leverage situations to see if his command remains during his trip to St. Louis.

Fernandez’ demotion is likely a short stay for him if he can quickly get his slider back to 2024 levels. In the meantime, though, a move needed to be made and O’Brien seems like the right guy for the job.