Here We Go Again

Opening Day starts the process all over

As humans, we are designed for cycles. We watch the weather go from winter to spring to summer to fall and then back to winter. Our holidays come around at the same time every year. Even daily we get up, we go to work, we come home, we go to bed. We’re creatures of habit even if we sometimes wish we weren’t.

Today is Opening Day, which begins the baseball cycle all over again. For the next six months, we will two-plus hours almost every day watching our team, trying to determine just who they really are. We’ll try not to read too much into April results, say there’s still a long way to go come mid-May, and maybe finally start getting a handle on them just in time for the trading deadline to upend our thoughts with new players in or old players out.

Then September comes, with its small roster expansion (I still think not allowing for more promotions is a terrible thing) and you hope that October means that the team is still playing instead of starting the next phase of the cycle. Eventually the winter comes for everyone and the replenishing for next season begins. As the ice thaws players go to Florida or Arizona to train, closing the loop as they get ready for another pass.

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The start of things is always full of excitement, anticipation, a buzz that doesn’t always make sense. The Cardinals come into 2025 as a team nobody expects to be great and only some expect to win more than they lose. Ticket sales have been slow—you might be able to get tickets to today’s game still, something that is unheard of in the baseball city of St. Louis. Yet even with all those caveats, there’s something about today that brings out the best in us all.

There’s the history, something that runs so deep for the team with the most National League titles. The 1985 team (which we just spent some time talking about on the latest Musial), a team that is etched into the memories of so many Cardinal fans, will be throwing out the first pitch. The Cardinal Hall of Famers, players that have created so many memories, will be riding into the stadium. The World Series trophies will be shined and placed out in public view.

And there’s the traditions. Whether they be corporate—such as the Clydesdales trotting around the stadium to Jeremy Boyer playing “Here Comes The King”—or personal, there are things that must be done on Opening Day. Not because of some superstitious ritual that will insure good fortune but because this is the way that we mark the beginning of the cycle. They bring back memories of better times, of faces long gone, of the golden age of yesteryear, whenever that might have been.

For the second time in three years, the Cardinals actually get to start their season in Busch Stadium. I understand why ownership passed on that honor so often over the past decade. Opening Day in St. Louis will be special even if the Cardinals have played for a week and getting the home games in the summer when school is out is good for the gate (and, less cynically, good for letting the next generation get to the ballpark).

But it seems like it’s better to have the whole canvas open in front of us when the Cards take the field at Busch. We don’t have to think about how they blew the game the day before in Arizona or whatnot. We don’t have the vibes tinged by the fact that someone is nursing an injury already. Nobody’s struggling, nobody’s on a hot streak. Everyone comes in hitting .000 on the season and, save for Bob Feller’s game in 1940, at least someone’s going to come out with a better average than they came in with.

There’s no telling what kind of Opening Day it may be. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, sometimes it rains. What we do know is that no matter the outcome, this game doesn’t feel like just one of 162. It has too much promise, too much possibility, to be that common.

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Since we’ve last come together in this space, the Cardinals have finalized their roster and done so in a way I never would have expected. Victor Scott II had obviously had a wonderful spring and had done all that the club had wanted him to do in the realm of training and preparation. I still didn’t think they would short-circuit some of their plans by bringing him north, but they did. I’m excited to see VSII on the regular and I hope that the adjustments mean that he will have a much better go-around the second time.

Matthew Liberatore to the rotation is a little bit surprising as well. There’s no doubt Liberatore had a great spring but he didn’t really get to pitch too deep into games and made only one start. He did go about 70 pitches in that final start, so it’s probably not going to be a situation where he’s going short for too long, but given Michael McGreevy had just as strong of a spring and had been starting, it’s a little surprising they didn’t go that route. McGreevy goes to Memphis for depth and all that, which makes sense. I don’t fault them for going this direction, I’m just interested to see how it turns out.

I am very glad, though, that if they were going to do a swing man, an occasional sixth starter that works mainly out of the bullpen, that they chose Steven Matz for that job instead of giving him the veteran treatment and making Liberatore or McGreevy try to figure out what that looks like for them. Matz has been strong out of the bullpen and in theory it gives him the best chance to make it through the season without significant injury. In theory.

We got a taste of the opening lineup on Monday night in Memphis, when Oli Marmol ran it out there, a lineup that is lacking Nolan Gorman. Juggling all of these players was going to be difficult even before Scott made the roster. Now it’s going to be even more so and we’ll see if Gorman gets the short straw or it is just one lineup out of 162 and he’ll be in there more times than not. We love to draw conclusions from the small samples but we also know that’s a terrible thing to do.

Finally, at least when it comes to roster construction, it’s amazing that neither Jose Fermin nor Jose Barreos made the roster, leaving the club without a true backup shortstop. I would guess that Brenden Donovan will get in there if Masyn Winn needs a day here and there and I hope that they give Winn those days when they can. We grumbled about how often Winn wasn’t in the lineup in the early going last season but the extra rest probably helped him finish strong in his rookie year. Getting a few days in the early going could pay dividends later on.

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We’ll skip the housekeeping part of the post today. Enjoy the opener! I’ve got Matthew Leach joining me on Musial tomorrow so be looking for that and his perspective on the first game from the other side of the press box.