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The case only got stronger when the Cardinals put a six-man rotation on the table late in spring training. Instead, the Cardinals felt more comfortable knowing they had McGreevy waiting as the next pitcher up when they inevitably called upon their minor-league pitching depth.

Now, McGreevy’s turn comes against one of the most star-studded and potent lineups in Major League Baseball. McGreevy slots in as part of a revamped six-man rotation and gets his first start of the season against the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers at Busch Stadium on Sunday afternoon.

The lone start will surely and rightfully generate excitement about a young pitching prospect taking the latest step in his maturation process. Though Cardinals manager Oli Marmol wouldn’t look past the one outing when he made the announcement that McGreevy will join the club.

“We’ll let him do his thing tomorrow and go from there,” Marmol said.

The deeper intrigue in McGreevy’s return to the big leagues — he pitched 5 2/3 scoreless innings out of the bullpen in a doubleheader win against the New York Mets on May 4 — lays in what it means for the future and the perception of the Cardinals pitching development.

“Getting McGreevy up here is important,” Marmol said. “I want to see it again. We want to see it again.”

Make no mistake, the 24-year-old right-hander with five total big-league appearances (three starts) matching up against a team that features world-famous baseball icon Shohei Ohtani, superstar former MVP Mookie Betts and superstar former MVP and World Series MVP Freddie Freeman, will provide great theatre.

The Dodgers entered Saturday as the second-highest scoring club in the majors, and they led the MLB in batting average, slugging percentage and OPS through their first 63 games of the season.

But McGreevy joins former Cardinals draft pick Andre Pallante (fourth round, 2019) and left-hander Matthew Liberatore (acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays as a minor-leaguer) to give the club three starters 26 or younger in their rotation.

If you want to put that importance of the Cardinals producing three young starters from their system, you need only look back to the 2023 season. The two homegrown starters at the start of that season were Jack Flaherty, who debuted in 2017 and was on the verge of free agency, and a 41-year-old Adam Wainwright.

At the end of that season, the Cardinals cut ties with former first-round draft picks Dakota Hudson and Jake Woodford.

The fact that the Cardinals targeted minor-league pitching at the trade deadline — they added pitching prospects Tekoah Roby, Drew Rom, Adam Kloffenstein and Sem Robberse — only bolstered the perception that they had serious and deep-seated shortcomings with the acquisition and development of starting pitchers.

Two seasons later, it will signal a significant about-face for the Cardinals to roll through a rotation with three starters — two homegrown and one developed in their system — that were in the fold before the 2023 trading spree.

Last season, McGreevy went 3-0 with a 1.96 ERA, 18 strikeouts, two walks, an opponent’s batting average of .193 and a 0.78 WHIP in four appearances in the majors. He competed for a spot in the rotation in spring training before the Cardinals decided to give Liberatore another chance as a starter.

“This guy has done well, and he deserves to be a big leaguer,” Marmol said. “It’s just our other guys have done their jobs, and we’ve stayed healthy, thankfully.

"So he’s waiting his turn. He’s done a nice job of keeping his head down and continuing to work, but if we have an opportunity to have him up here, I mean, we like that.”

A Baseball America Triple-A All-Star last season while at Memphis, McGreevy endured a rough start to the 2024 season before he found a groove on the mound. In April, he went 1-3 with a 5.19 ERA. In May, he went 1-3 with a 6.84 ERA. In the second half, he posted a 6-1 mark with a 2.96 ERA.

McGreevy carried that second-half momentum into the big leagues, through the offseason, into spring training and into this season in the minors. So far with Memphis this year, he’s gone 6-1 with a 2.78 ERA with 58 strikeouts in 55 innings (11 starts).

“My stuff is in a good spot,” McGreevy said following his brief call up in May. “I don’t need to have those first two, three months of minor leagues to kind of find myself, who I am, and kind of come into the season hot and ready to go.”

The reference being that he needed the first two or three months of last season, but he felt capable of hitting the ground running from the start this season.

Hopefully, this will be a true run for McGreevy. With Liberatore experiencing fatigue or strife in his pitching mechanics or dead arm or whatever he’s got going on, the six-man rotation certainly fits a need.

The fact that the Cardinals opted not to lose Steven Matz from the bullpen also indicates a Matz's value in that role.

So all early signs point to this being McGreevy’s chance to cement his place in the club’s future pitching plans, and that’s what makes Sunday an important day. Just not as important as what happens with McGreevy going forward.