The Cardinals will recall righty Adam Kloffenstein before of Thursday’s game against the Giants at Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, according to Ari Alexander of KPRC-2. This will be the 23-year-old’s big league debut. Kloffenstein is currently on the 40-man roster. He would have been eligible for the Rule 5 draft last winter, so St. Louis took him in November.
Kloffenstein was a second-round pick by the Blue Jays out of a Texas high school in 2018. He was pitching in Double-A last summer when the Jays traded him and Sem Robberse to put Jordan Hicks in the bullpen. St. Louis favored upper-minors pitching in their deadline deals with Hicks, Jack Flaherty, and Jordan Montgomery.
Kloffenstein was promptly assigned to Triple-A Memphis. Last season, he made nine appearances there, pitching 39 innings with a 3.00 ERA. He has worked out of the Memphis rotation this season with similar outcomes. Kloffenstein has a 3.97 ERA over 77 innings. His strikeout rate of 21.9% and walk rate of 9.4% are average, but he gets ground balls at a strong 48% clip.
Andre Pallante will start on Thursday, with Miles Mikolas and Sonny Gray rounding out the weekend series. (The teams will take Friday off to fly from Birmingham to St. Louis for the set’s last two games.) That means Kloffenstein could start his MLB career in the bullpen. Throughout his minor league career, he has started all but two games. Baseball America ranked him 28th in the St. Louis system this winter, describing him as a depth starter or grounder-oriented long reliever.
