Central STL News

Andre Pallante, a fourth-year player in Major League Baseball, has been focusing on both his physical and mental game this season. With the guidance of the Cardinals' mental skills trainers, he has been working on setting career goals and preparing mentally for games. This approach seems to be yielding results as Pallante delivered an impressive performance against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

In Tuesday night's game at PNC Park, Pallante pitched seven scoreless innings in a narrow 1-0 loss to the Pirates. Reflecting on his performance, Pallante said, "Stuff was a lot better today," highlighting his effective use of curveballs and fastballs.

Pallante's history against the Pirates has been strong; he entered the game with a 1-0 record and a 0.90 ERA over three starts against them. He maintained that trend by allowing only one hit while walking two batters and striking out three.

Recently, Pallante has allowed just two runs over his last three starts (18 innings), lowering his season ERA to 4.10. In his latest outing, he effectively used a variety of pitches including curveballs, sliders, knuckle curves, and introduced a new pitch called a sweeper.

"Definitely [tonight was] the most unpredictable I’ve been in my career," Pallante noted about his varied pitching strategy which resulted in 13 ground-ball outs.

Despite some initial struggles with command during an 18-pitch first inning, Pallante settled into the game quickly. He retired eight consecutive batters following an early walk and allowed only one hit—a single by Andrew McCutchen in the fourth inning.

Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol praised Pallante's performance saying, "He did a nice job...just overpowered these guys." Although frustrated with the loss, Marmol emphasized finding positives from such performances for future development.

For Pallante himself, recent successes have provided motivation: "[It] definitely makes me excited to show up and work everyday when I have a goal in mind."