St. Louis Cardinals Add Power Arm Tegan Kuhns With No. 32 Pick

Cardinals Add Power Arm Tegan Kuhns With No. 32 Pick

The Cardinal Chronicle
St. Louis, MO
By Ray Mileur

The St. Louis Cardinals went bat first, then power arm.

After selecting high school outfielder Trevor Condon with the 13th overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, the Cardinals came back with their second Day 1 selection and added Tennessee right-hander Tegan Kuhns at No. 32 overall.

This was not a soft landing pick.

Kuhns brings the kind of arm strength, breaking-ball feel and SEC-tested background that fits the Cardinals’ larger organizational need. St. Louis has spent much of the past year talking about building a deeper, more sustainable pipeline, and that cannot happen without adding real pitching talent.

Kuhns gives them just that.

The 6-foot-3 right-hander entered the draft as one of the more intriguing college arms in the class, with a fastball that sits in the mid-90s and has reached the upper 90s. The separator, though, may be the curveball. It is a high-spin breaking ball with downer action, giving him a legitimate swing-and-miss weapon when he gets ahead in the count.

That matters because the Cardinals have needed more arms with bat-missing stuff.

Too often in recent years, the organization has leaned on pitchability types, back-end profiles or arms that needed too much to break right to become impact starters. Kuhns is not a finished product, but the raw ingredients are louder. Fastball. Curveball. Size. Track record. SEC competition. Real upside.

This is the kind of arm you take when you believe your player development group can finish the job.

Kuhns is not without risk. He still has work to do refining the rest of the arsenal. The slider and changeup will need to become more consistent if he is going to remain a starter long term. The control has shown improvement, but command inside the strike zone will determine whether he becomes a mid-rotation starter or eventually moves toward a power relief role.

That is the honest read.

But the upside is easy to see.

Kuhns has already shown he can handle a major college stage. He worked his way into Tennessee’s weekend plans, improved his draft stock and showed enough growth to push himself into the first-round conversation. He also brings the kind of competitiveness and pitch traits teams look for when trying to find more than just organizational depth.

The Cardinals did not take him at No. 32 to become filler.

They took him because there is a chance to develop a legitimate major-league arm.

The fastball and curveball give Kuhns a foundation. The question now becomes whether the Cardinals can help him sharpen the third pitch, repeat the delivery, and command the baseball well enough to turn two loud weapons into a complete starter’s mix.

If that happens, this pick could look very good.

The bigger picture is also important. The Cardinals opened their draft with Condon, an athletic five-tool high school outfielder, then followed by grabbing a college arm with power stuff. That is a strong balance. One pick attacked upside on the position-player side. The next addressed pitching with a player who should not need years of physical projection before showing what he can be.

Condon is the athlete.

Kuhns is the arm.

That is a good start to a critical draft.

For Chaim Bloom and the Cardinals, this draft is about more than simply adding names. It is about changing the shape of the system. More athleticism. More impact. More pitching. More players with tools that can actually move the needle.

Kuhns fits that assignment.

He may not be a finished product, but very few pitchers are on draft day. The Cardinals are betting on the fastball, the curveball, the SEC foundation and their own ability to develop the rest.

That is a reasonable bet.

And at No. 32, it is the kind of bet the Cardinals needed to make.

The Cardinal Chronicle, in association with Gateway Sports & MiLB Today
Preserving the Past, Promoting the Present, and Projecting the Future.

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Photo Credit: Tegan Kuhns, St. Louis Cardinals | Dan Harralson/Vols Wire