Another Day, Another Injury

With four players likely to start the season on the IL, where does that leave the team?

John Mozeliak is cursed. At least when it comes to relievers.

That’s probably overstating things a tad, but we know his track record with reliever contracts, whether trying to jump a market that never materialized (hello, Brett Cecil) or trying to placate a manager (Mr. Greg Holland), or signing extensions that are more worker’s comp than services rendered (Jason Motte, Jordan Walden). One year at the Blogger Day event, he even referenced this, saying, “Do you really want me signing relievers?”

So he and the front office went about everything in a smart way this time. They traded for minor league relievers. They traded for major league relievers. They picked up a reliever in the Rule 5 draft. What they didn’t do is spend money on relievers, at least until the very last, when they decided to put a cherry on top and sign Keynan Middleton.

And who won’t start the season on the active roster? You guessed it, Frank Stallone. Also Keynan Middleton.

Forearm strain isn’t really what you want to hear out of any pitcher, much less someone you just acquired. Middleton had done well in his limited work—three innings over three games—and the club believes that the fact that they caught it early will help it from becoming a major problem. The club also believed that Tommy Edman would be ready for spring training so take all of that for what it is worth.

So, as we’ve been doing all winter, let’s use this newest wrinkle to see what the 26-man looks like.

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Catcher (2): Willson Contreras, Ivan Herrera

No drama here, thankfully. If I believed in jinxes I’d be worried about now but if what I wrote had any sort of power ten million dollars and an invite to be a part of the next Star Wars movie would show up at my door. Spoilers: they didn’t.

Infield (7): Nolan Arenado, Matt Carpenter, Brandon Crawford, Brendan Donovan, Paul Goldschmidt, Nolan Gorman, Masyn Winn

After today Carpenter was six for 18 with four extra-base hits. That’s not something we’d see out of Carpenter at all and even with the spring variables, it’s an interesting wrinkle. I still don’t think we’ll see a lot of old school Carp but as long as it’s better than the last two years, it could help the team more than just being the Cardinal version of Grandpa Rossy.

There’s nothing much to see here, either.

Outfield (4): Alec Burleson, Dylan Carlson, Michael Siani, Jordan Walker

We went over why I don’t think Victor Scott II makes this team in the last post. I will admit, however, that the press buzz is building around him and media folks do tend to have a better feel for what could happen than some blogger five states away. (Do you still call yourself a blogger on a Substack? No matter, I’ve been that for too long to change.) With Tommy Edman out for an indefinite (but increasingly longer) period of time, there’s a better chance of VS2 than I probably am accounting for.

Again though, say he’s there instead of Siani. Then Lars Nootbaar comes back in two weeks. Do you send Scott down then? If so, why are you spending a lot of time juggling the 40-man for two weeks of play? If you aren’t sending him down (maybe he’s had a strong two weeks), who goes? Burleson, who has also had a strong spring and really has nothing to prove in Memphis?

Say you send Burleson down then but Edman is ready to go in May. What happens then, even if Scott is Vince Coleman redux? There’s not a lot of different options. Now, of course, baseball finds a way and all that. The reason we keep writing these posts is because people get hurt. It’s also possible that Mozeliak could make a trade that frees up a spot to keep Scott around. Putting that all together, though, it just seems to make more sense to pick Siani.

Rotation (5): Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, Steven Matz, Miles Mikolas, Zack Thompson

The chances are getting better that Sonny Gray will actually make the Opening Day roster which would bump Thompson out of the rotation, though perhaps not completely off the roster. Otherwise, we’ve known this since Thanksgiving.

Bullpen (8): Ryan Fernandez, Giovanny Gallegos, Ryan Helsley, Andrew Kittredge, Matthew Liberatore, Riley O’Brien, Andre Pallante, JoJo Romero

For most of the winter, I’ve been expecting that either Thompson or Liberatore (or perhaps both) would go to Memphis to stretch out and be the sixth starter. With the injuries, I’m not sure that’s going to be the case. Having Liberatore in the bullpen would allow for a lot of innings to be covered should the starters not go as deep as they were expected to go. However, I could also see Nick Robertson getting the final slot and Liberatore in the Memphis rotation with Drew Rom, Tekoah Roby, Sem Robberse, Adam Kloffenstein, and Gordon Graceffo….well, that’s six but it’s the minors so who knows.

If Gray is ready to go, I wonder if they don’t send Thompson to Memphis to be that starter-in-waiting and leave Liberatore up until Middleton is ready. That last spot could be pretty interesting. It’s also possible that another spot could come available should the Cardinals trade for the rights to Fernandez, giving them the option to send him to Memphis, but he’s pitched well enough that there’s no real problem letting him at least start the season with the big club and see how he manages the higher level.

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Besides injuries that crush the spirit, spring is also known for extensions in Jupiter. When the news broke yesterday that the club was having a press conference, most everyone correctly predicted that they were going to add on to someone’s contract. Absolutely no one picked the manager as the lucky recipient.

There were a lot of people that made sure they had oil for their torches and their pitchforks were nice and sharp, but for me, it was more of a “hmmm” situation than something that caused consternation. I have been of the opinion for a while that everyone focused hard on 2023, which is understandable, but they weren’t giving any credit for 2022. Anything good that year seems to have been assigned to Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, and Adam Wainwright, even though Yadi wasn’t there half the year. There’s no doubt that those guys played a role in things, but Marmol also helped navigate those older players while continuing to make sure the team won. I honestly thought that his management of Molina and Andrew Knizner, even before Yadi got hurt, was a pretty effective way of easing Molina out of the full time role.

We know that leadership has been the buzzword of the winter but as Katie Woo reiterated when she was on Musial back in January, the kind of leadership expected out of a manager is different from that peer leadership from other players. Oli’s the boss and he sets the tone, but the fact that the club felt the need to get Carpenter and Crawford and the like isn’t really a slam on what he’s been doing in the clubhouse. The message is always going to be more effective from someone that’s on your level.

Plus, from all indications, the players really do seem to like and respect him. Most of them made public comments last year saying how disappointed they were in their play, in part because of the stress and pressure it placed on Marmol. Even rifts that we as outsiders thought would be there, like him and Tyler O’Neill, may have been overblown as those two made a specific effort to have a chat before the Red Sox/Cardinals game last week. No manager is going to have the entire clubhouse—Casey Stengel said the art of managing is to keep the five guys that hate you away from the 10 that are undecided—but there doesn’t seem to be any real player rebellion happening here.

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Really the only question around this is the timing. This winter, the front office kept saying things in the vein of “we like Oli, we think he’s a great fit, we think he’s smart and everything, but this is also a results business and he knows he has to win.” The idea that he was going into his final season on his contract was interesting because most managers don’t get that far—they are either fired or extended. The thinking is that security for the manager leads to authority in the clubhouse. Could be, I guess. Given how much that “security” means to most managers, though, I don’t know how far it goes.

If you have always wanted him to have that security and authority, though, why wait until now? Sure, maybe right after a 71-91 season you want to give everyone a cooling off period, but why not at Thanksgiving, right after you have signed 60% of your 2024 starting rotation? Slip that news in there around the holidays and maybe people aren’t quite as worked up.

It seems like the front office is worried that the club might get off to a slow start and then all the talk about Yadier Molina or Albert Pujols taking over the Cardinals—which, I will stake my claim here now, hiring either one of those would be an unmitigated disaster—would just start adding to things. People start pressing, spirals start happening, and all of the sudden it’s 2023 again.

I get that, but again, the schedule has been out for months. You knew that the team was heading to Los Angeles and San Diego to start the year, even if you didn’t know the Dodgers were going to buy every free agent and the Padres were going to make your old manager their current skipper. You knew that, after a short home stand, you’d have to go back out West to deal with the NL pennant winners (and Oakland, but well….) April was always going to be a tough month.

It sounds like maybe the injuries were the tipping point, that they were afraid things would start off slow with all these guys on the IL. Maybe. That’s probably a fair point but it’s also fair to say that even 100% this club had a good chance to struggle in the early going.

Perhaps the front office was hoping for a winning stretch to start the season—maybe come home 4-3 or something—and they could sign Oli to the extension as part of the Opening Day festivities. Which wouldn’t really be unheard of or anything, but again, a week isn’t going to lessen the impact much. The club should have just done it over the winter so Marmol wasn’t stressed over it (if he was, which it didn’t really seem like it) or they wouldn’t have to make such a big deal about him having to win to stick around.

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That being said, he has to win to stick around.

Mike Shildt had a year left on his contract and had taken St. Louis to the playoffs three straight years when he was fired. Mike Matheny had 4 1/2 years left on his deal when he got relieved of his duties in mid-2018. If Oli Marmol doesn’t have at least a .500 season this year, the decision to let him go or keep him won’t really revolve around his contract. John Mozeliak (if, indeed, he is still calling the shots in such a situation) isn’t going to say, “Man, I’d get rid of him, but he’s got two more years on his contract.”

I’m sure the two years was to get more security for the manager, but I’m a little surprised that they went that way. If they give him one (so through 2025), they could turn around and tack on a couple of years after this season should it be a good one. If it goes bad, that’s one less year they have to pay for him to not manage their team. It’s not like it is huge money or anything, but for an organization that keeps track of their inflows and outgos like the Cards, to potentially have dead money on the books is a little jarring.

Overall, a lot of people got worked up over something that may never actually come to pass. Which is pretty much par for the course these days.

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I mentioned last time that I had started divisional previews over at Musial. This week saw the Cubs and the Reds and I’ll be recording and releasing the Pirates on Monday to complete the saga. Speaking of Musial, I had Ben Cerutti on last night to talk about his projections for the upcoming season.

Nothing really new on the books front or anything else Star Wars, so we’ll wrap this up. Hopefully we can talk about something non-injury related next time!