{"id":677871,"date":"2026-04-17T20:36:42","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T20:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677871\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T20:36:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T20:36:42","slug":"why-liam-doyles-slump-isnt-a-red-flag-for-cardinals-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/677871\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Liam Doyle&#8217;s Slump Isn&#8217;t a Red Flag for Cardinals Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6i\">One of the St. Louis Cardinals&#8217; top prospects hasn&#8217;t gotten off to the start that he likely wanted to have down in the minors, but there&#8217;s no reason for concern yet. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6l\">Cardinals No. 2 prospect, Liam Doyle, is down with Double-A Springfield and has been cold to kick off the season. Doyle has made two starts so far this season for Springfield and it has been a tough start. Doyle&#8217;s first start of the season came on April 8 against the Tulsa Drillers. That day, Doyle went three innings and allowed four earned runs and six runs total. Doyle <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=doyle-001lia&amp;type=pgl&amp;year=2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">threw 65 pitches<\/a> and struck out three batters, allowed one homer and walked one batter. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6o\">Some overreacted after Doyle&#8217;s first start of the season. He spoke afterward and noted that throughout the contest he was working on two pitches he&#8217;s been tinkering with in a sweeper and a curveball.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6r\">&#8220;No need to overreact about anything, just on to the next start,\u201d Doyle said, as transcribed by Andy Carroll of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scoopswithdannymac.com\/cards-top-prospect-liam-doyle-hones-arsenal-as-springfield-looks-to-ride-lefthander-to-repeat-texas-league-title\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scoops Sports Network<\/a>. \u201cStuff like that also helps you learn how to take losses like that and bad outings as a professional \u2013 you just get to work, and you got five days to turn it around.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Liam Doyle Is Going To Be Just Fine<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/01kpee59mtwz6kdw94yq.jpg\" alt=\"Tennessee's Liam Doyle (12) sends love to the Tennessee fans\" title=\"Tennessee's Liam Doyle (12) sends love to the Tennessee fans\" width=\"3826\" height=\"2152\" class=\"undefined w-full w-full blur-[5px]\" q:id=\"74\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Tennessee&#8217;s Liam Doyle (12) sends love to the Tennessee fans after Tennesee defeated Wake Forest at the NCAA college baseball Knoxville Regional final on June 2, 2025, in Knoxville, Tenn. | Saul Young\/News Sentinel \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"78\">So, he&#8217;s working through things. But his second start of the season wasn&#8217;t great either. Doyle only made it through 2\/3 of an inning against the Wichita Wind Surge and allowed three earned runs and walked one batter in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=doyle-001lia&amp;type=pgl&amp;year=2026\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">40 pitches<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7b\">Again, no need for concern yet. He&#8217;s the Cardinals&#8217; No. 2 prospect for a reason. This is a guy who struck out 164 batters in 95 2\/3 innings last year at the University of Tennessee. His second professional outing in 2025 was already in Double-A and it was scoreless. Clearly, he&#8217;s working through things and there are some growing pains. That&#8217;s going to happen. He&#8217;s just 21 years old and already two steps away from the majors. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7e\">This guy is going to be the Cardinals&#8217; No. 1 prospect very soon. JJ Wetherholt hasn&#8217;t technically graduated from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/milb\/prospects\/cardinals\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cardinals&#8217; top prospect<\/a> list yet. When he does, Doyle will move into that top spot. With Doyle, you know you&#8217;re getting an elite fastball that can already play in the majors. It&#8217;s that good. He also has a very splitter. But if he wants to have success in the majors, he needs to develop his secondary pitches. It sounds like that&#8217;s what he&#8217;s trying to do down in Double-A right now. That&#8217;s the place to do it. The second he gets those pitches working, we&#8217;re going to see him rise. Again, this guy is going to be the Cardinals&#8217; top prospect soon for a reason. He&#8217;s an elite rotation prospect. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"7h\">Don&#8217;t worry about him yet, Cardinals fans. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"22\" height=\"22\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/assets.minutemediacdn.com\/platform\/google_discover_icon.svg\" class=\"shrink-0\"\/>Add us as a preferred source on Google<a aria-label=\"Follow si.com on Google News\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=si.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" class=\"flex h-[30px] w-[30px] shrink-0 items-center justify-center rounded-full bg-primary font-group-large text-sm font-medium text-white transition-colors hover:bg-secondary focus:bg-secondary md:w-auto md:gap-2.5 md:px-4 md:py-[5px]\">Follow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the St. Louis Cardinals&#8217; top prospects hasn&#8217;t gotten off to the start that he likely wanted&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,160,4,673,67,4311,4310],"class_list":{"0":"post-677871","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-louis-cardinals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cardinals","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-st-louis","12":"tag-st-louis-cardinals","13":"tag-stlouis","14":"tag-stlouiscardinals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116421970842333830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}