At the beginning of spring training, I pushed hard for the Cardinals to sign a proven, MLB starter, because I didn’t see a lot of current MLB depth in the system. Given that John Gant, Daniel Ponce de Leon, and Johan Oviedo have a combined 13 starts this year, and we’re not even in June yet.... hard to argue that was a wrong assumption. Granted, the Cardinals have been enormously lucky this hasn’t blown up in their face - Gant inexplicably has a 2.04 ERA despite a performance that suggests he shouldn’t even be in the rotation.
I called the Cardinals organizational pitching depth theoretical rather than actual.