Greetings. Welcome to a new week here at Bernie Central. A couple of programming notes before I get into the content.
— On Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 6 p.m. – tomorrow! – I’ll join my friend and colleague Randy Karraker in co-hosting a chat with those who subscribe to the STL Sports Central YouTube channel. So if you want in, then please subscribe to our channel. And we look forward to visiting with you.
— This first Randy-Bernie chat is free, but after that our chats will be limited to those who have subscribed to our STL Sports “Insider” membership. And if you become a paying Insider, you’ll have access to four of my five columns each week here on the site. (Monday is free viewing for all.) I’ll also be doing some extra stuff with our paid subscribers, and that will heat up once we get into the new year.
— I have returned to my roots. I’m doing “Bernie Bits” again. It was a popular staple of my 26+ years as the sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch and STLtoday. I am hoping to do at least two “Bits” columns per week, if not more. And if we attract additional paid subscribers, I’ll add more if requested. Thank you for your support.
Now, let’s get to the column …
THOUGHTS ON DUSTIN MAY
As I type this his one-year deal (plus a mutual option) with the Cardinals isn’t official because it hasn’t been announced. But I will go ahead and assume the deal gets done. Some of what I’m writing here was sourced from my Monday video here on STL Sports Central, and I hope you check out what I had to say about May, the 28-year-old right-hander.
1. This was a low-risk move by Cards president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. Bloom went for the upside here, which is smart for a rebuilding team. Go for an investment that can pay off, and May has the natural talent that made him the No. 2 overall prospect in the Dodgers’ player-development system in 2019 – and 35th overall in the majors – just before his promotion to the Dodgers. If restored, May seems capable of putting everything back together after so many career derailments.
2. Could this be a failure? Sure. But if May breaks down again, there are no lasting repercussions. STL’s financial investment in him is – relatively speaking – minimal. The Cardinals aren’t doing anything radical or irresponsible here. They are committed to just one season. (There's a mutual option for 2027, so the Cardinals or May can decide to move on.) Bloom is taking a calculated chance on a pitcher who could pay off. If not, this isn’t a catastrophe. A failed long-term contract at great expense is a different story … but the May contract is not that story. And the Cardinals have talented young starting pitchers in their system who will be here before long. May is a bridge.
3. On the other hand, If May pitches solidly and reduces anxieties over his physical viability, Bloom can (a) use him as a trade piece at the 2026 deadline, or (b) consider opening negotiations on a contract extension if desired.
4. May was off line for a long time. But as long as May is healthy and feeling good, he’s capable of overcoming the many disruptions that threw his career into chaos. From 2021 through 2024, May had two elbow surgeries, lengthy elbow rehabs and emergency surgery to repair a torn esophagus. Through one preposterous stretch, May went 648 days between pitching appearances, majors or minors. He finally resumed his career in 2025, and logged a career-high 132 and ⅓ innings. Even though his ERA was bad (4.96), the ‘25 season was a step forward, simply because May returned to pitching. This point shouldn’t be overlooked.
5. May needs reps. Lots and lots of reps. From the 2020 pandemic-shortened season through 2024, he made only 34 major-league starts and threw 191 and ⅔ innings. His velocity was down in 2025, and his “stuff” was diminished to an extent. But is that surprising considering that this starter averaged only 38 innings of pitching over a five-year stretch? What, you were expecting Yoshinobu Yamamoto?
6. This surprised me about May’s 2025 season: 74 percent of May’s starts for the Dodgers and Red Sox last season were good, very good or relatively average. Going by the Bill James Game Score method, which I respect and use as a quick reference to measure starts, May had a 9.69 ERA and a soaring home-run rate against in his six bad starts last season. But in his other 17 starts, May pitched to a 3.30 ERA. Nothing wrong with that. Heck, Sonny Gray had seven bad starts for the Cardinals in 2025.
I can’t help but think that May needed to build up innings after being down for so long. After missing so much time away from the mound, this process doesn’t happen over a few weeks, or a two or three months. Six clunker starts in 2025 – after making only 20 starts over the previous four seasons – doesn’t register as an earthquake-type disaster for me.
7. May’s 2024 esophagus surgery figures into this. After the emergency – caused by a piece of lettuce he swallowed during dinner with his wife – May spent two weeks in the hospital. According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, May lost 40 pounds during the ordeal. He gained a good portion of that back in time for the 2025 season, but was still 15 or 20 pounds underweight when he returned to pitching. Does that matter? I would assume so ...
8. The weight loss and reduced strength had to make at least some difference. May only faced seven batters beyond the sixth inning last season. In his first three innings of a start, May had a 3.91 ERA and 4.15 FIP with a 23 percent strikeout rate … and was much worse in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings.
Let’s look at it this way, which presents a clear picture of May’s decline in stamina and performance during starts:
– 1st time through the lineup: 3.33 ERA, .228 average, .359 slugging percentage, 25 percent strikeout rate.
– 2nd time through the lineup: 5.09 ERA, .287 average, .508 slug, and a 20.8% strikeout rate.
– 3rd time through the lineup: 7.98 ERA, .254 average, .518 slug, and a 17.4% strikeout rate.
Huge difference. May’s pitching turned considerably worse as he went deeper into starts in 2025.
9. Dustin May is a good project for Matt Pierpont, the Cardinals’ Director of Pitching. Pierpont played a role in the development of the young pitchers that are drivers of a Seattle starting rotation that has the best ERA in the majors (3.74) since the beginning of 2023. And that three-season FIP (3.86) is tops in the AL and second overall. Pierpont and other associates recruited by Chaim Bloom and Rob Cerfolio have an eye for assessing pitchers and cultivating ways to change them – and improve them. May is a splendid candidate for just that.
10. Pierpont and the Cardinals have something to build on. Last season May’s sweeper pitch had the highest average spin rate in the majors. And opponents didn’t do a lot with it. May’s sinker, which averaged 94.5 miles per hour, had sharp horizontal movement – which is good! – but was surprisingly easy to hit. I’m confident the Cardinals will identify potential solutions. May put a cutter in his arsenal last season but it didn’t do much for him. He’s pretty much junked his four-seam fastball – I’m not sure why, because it worked well for him in 2025 in his limited usage. I don’t believe the Cardinals would have recruited May unless they had a new pitching plan all mapped out for him. And I’m assuming May was excited by what he heard from the Cardinals.
BONUS CONTENT ON MAY
May’s torn esophagus was a scary and life-threatening episode in his life. I’ll present some of the details reported early this year by the Los Angeles Times.
May, working at the Dodgers’ Camelback Ranch facility in Arizona, was rehabbing from his second elbow surgery and nearing a return to pitching. On July 10 of 2024, May went to dinner and ordered salad. After one bite, he felt the lettuce stuck in his throat. He tried to wash it down by taking a chug of water, but that didn’t work. May shook it off but realized something was wrong.
In what May described to the Los Angeles Times as a “complete freak accident,” he had unknowingly suffered a serious tear in his esophagus.
From the LA Times:
“I’m not a big panicker,” May said. “It kind of chilled out. So I was like, ‘I’m fine. I don’t need to do anything.’”
May’s wife, Millie, wasn’t so sure.
“No,” May recalled her saying. “We’re going to the ER to get it checked out.”
Emergency surgery was mandatory. The crisis basically crushed any hopes of May returning to pitching before the end of the 2024 season. But the frightening experience also changed him.
“It was definitely a life-altering event,” May told the LA Times around 10 months ago. “It was definitely very serious. It’s not a very common surgery. It was definitely an emergency … and I probably wouldn’t have made it through the night if I didn’t have it.”
May described intense pain after the lettuce lodged in his throat and perforated his esophagus tube. When the pain subsided, May assumed everything was OK. It wasn’t.
To repair the rupture, May had “basically a full abdominal surgery.” It left a long vertical scar running from his lower chest to his stomach.
The recovery took six months. In addition to losing weight, May wasn’t allowed to exert himself physically. He was prohibited from lifting any weights heavier than 10 pounds. He did some light throwing in November but really didn’t have much of an opportunity to fully prepare for spring training.
“It just kind of gives me a different viewpoint on a lot of things in life,” May told the LA Times. “Just seeing how something so non-baseball-related can just be like — it can be gone in a second. And the stuff it put my wife through, it definitely gave me [a feeling] of, ‘Wow, stuff can change like that.’ It was definitely very scary.”
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Bernie was inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2023. During a St. Louis sports-media career that goes back to 1985, he’s won multiple national awards for column writing and sports-talk hosting – and was the lead sports columnist at the Post-Dispatch from 1989 through 2015. Before that Bernie spent a year at the Dallas Morning News, covering the Dallas Cowboys during Tom Landry’s final season (1988) plus the sale of the team to Jerry Jones and the hiring of Jimmy Johnson as coach.
Bernie has covered several Baseball Hall of Fame managers during his media career including Tony La Russa, Whitey Herzog, Earl Weaver, Joe Torre and (as an interim) Red Schoendienst. In his career as a beatwriter and columnist, Bernie covered Pro Football Hall of Fame coaches Joe Gibbs, Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson and Dick Vermeil. Bernie covered every baseball Cardinals’ postseason game from 1996 through 2014 and was there to chronicle teams that won four NL pennants and two World Series. He provided extensive coverage on the “Greatest Show” St. Louis Rams and has written extensively on the St. Louis Blues and Mizzou football and basketball. Bernie was/is a longtime voter for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Pro Football Hall of Fame, Heisman Trophy and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame.
You can access his columns, videos and the podcast version of the videos here on STL Sports Central, catch him regularly on KMOX (AM or FM) as part of the Gashouse Gang, Sports Rush Hour, Sports Open Line or Sports On a Sunday Morning shows. And you can catch weekly “reunion” segments here at STL Sports Central featuring Bernie and his longtime friend Randy Karraker.