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The #stlcards system was 0-1 on Monday. The Cardinal Nation’s Player of the Day, DSL reliever Javier Martínez, pitched 3 ⅓ scoreless, no-hit innings. Other standouts include Lucas Takahashi, Juan Santillán and Misael Sánchez. https://t.co/QCiwm5Lx5x pic.twitter.com/TZHiUJBr5B
— Brian Walton (@B_Walton) August 4, 2026
He was good at popping minor league mistakes. But yeah, maybe he is getting himself sorted out. I dread the thought of enduring a homer a week and nothing in between again.
Well, hitting more homers is certainly a better sign than striking out every other at bat (or every at bat) even if it is Memphis.
He’s fanned 8 times in those 27 ABs, which is a lot. But before he struck out a remarkable 40 times in 73 ABs. Curious if we’ll hear about him on the podcast in the morning…
The Springfield lineup with Gurevitch and Peete being promoted and then Ragsdale coming in is going to be fun. A lineup full of top 30 prospects in the system.
Teen phenom Yhoiker Fajardo also promoted to AA and scheduled to start on Wednesday, after a mixed tenure for Peoria. (Mixed, yes, but nevertheless strong enough for Keith Law of The Athletic to rank him baseball’s overall #14 pitching prospect in his recent update.)
His ERA for the Chiefs was very solid, but not great, at 4.01. I know that doesn’t sound so good, but the Midwest League ERA this year is a bloated 5.33 and Fajardo’s teammates are even worse at 5.79. Weirdly, the kid coughed up 11 homers in 76 innings, after permitting just 2 in 123 IP across 2024/25. And moreover, he allowed a fairly amazing .359 BABIP.
So why the promotion, and why the tremendous ranking from Law? Well, there are 519 minor league arms with 60+ innings this year, and Yhoiker ranks 6th in Swinging Strike Percentage at 17.7%. The top three in SwStr%? Superduper arms Seth Hernandez, Kade Anderson, and Anthony Eyanson. And right behind Fajardo at #7? Gage Wood, the 5th-best pitching prospect in all the minors, per Fangraphs.
Not surprisingly, with so much swing n’ miss, Yhoiker has registered a slew of strikeouts. Out of those 519 pitchers, he rates 26th in K/9 at 12.50, and 27th in K% with 32.1%. In other words, 95th percentile in both.
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But it goes deeper than that. Fajardo has also done a good job of limiting free passes. His K-BB% is 12th overall, at just over 24%. So, 98th percentile at the thing that’s most important, except perhaps for ERA.
All of that said, I don’t really see the need to push a 19-year-old pitcher to Double-A, especially when he’s not exactly dominating High-A in the actual prevention of runs. But hey, the Cardinal development people know the young man, and wouldn’t promote him on a whim.
Fajardo doesn’t go past 80 pitches and that usually gets him 4+ innings. That seems OK for a teenager, but there is a step up to make still ahead of him. Or should be, but who knows now days. He is entering danger territory for a power arm strike out type. He is used to throwing it past everyone. That will get a lot harder to do vs more advanced hitters from here on up. He might respond to that by reaching for a little more, and a little more until his arm blows. He might respond some other way, but guys tend to do what got them there. We just have to wait and see what happens.
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