The 40-Man Dilemma

A change is gonna come and the roster may be significantly different afterwards

As the playoffs roll on—and we still are looking for the first winner-take-all game—the work of the Cardinals is going on in the front office. I imagine they’ve been hashing things out for a good long time, given the way the season went, but since October rolled around it’s been a singular focus since there’s no major league team to try to keep stocked.

I imagine John Mozeliak, Michael Girsch, Randy Flores, and the rest of the front office have a huge graphic of the roster, showing all their options and what needs to be done. I know you will be stunned to know that I am not in those offices to see it but I feel pretty confident there’s one central location for this sort of display. In the old days it was stickers or nameplates, now it’s probably a projection from a computer.

I hope the display, however it looks, works really well for them. Because the math is going to be a bear.

Allen and I are going to be tackling the 40-man roster on an upcoming episode of Meet Me At Musial, so I don’t want to get too much into all the names here because I want you to listen to the show (in part because we get a little revenue per listen!) However, I did want to walk through some of the difficulties that the front office is looking at now.

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So right now, technically, the 40-man roster is full. No moves have happened since the end of the season because baseball is in a holding pattern while the playoffs are going on. Once the World Series is done, though, things start moving.

Immediately the Cards will gain two spots. We all know that Adam Wainwright will be filing his formal retirement papers soon but his current contract has expired. Likewise for Drew VerHagen, who will be filing for free agency. That brings the roster to 38. So far, so good.

However, at the same time (or thereabouts), they have to find five spots. That’s because those that are currently on the 60-day IL have to be reinstated to the 40-man roster, as the 60-day IL doesn’t exist in the offseason. Currently, the Cardinals have Dylan Carlson, Brendan Donovan, Patron Pitcher Packy Naughton, Wilking Rodriguez, and Guillermo Zuinga on that list. That means at least three players are going to be removed from the roster almost immediately.

It’s possible the Cardinals address this problem by offering Rodriguez back to the Yankees and/or letting Naughton or Zuinga find employment elsewhere but there aren’t great odds on any of those things, especially when the 40-man currently has a number of people that, shall we say, have outlived their usefulness for this club. They got the team to the finish line but they aren’t going to be part of a deal going forward.

One way or another, three people that were on the 2023 Cardinals (with an asterisk for Rodriguez) won’t be here past November 7. Let’s keep a running total of the turnover, shall we?

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The next thing that comes on the baseball calendar is the GM meetings November 7-9. Held out in Scottsdale, Arizona (and, at this rate, perhaps with almost a front row seat to the World Series Championship Parade), it’s unlikely that any move comes completely to fruition here. The Cardinals have said that they want to be aggressive with signing pitchers but this might be a little too much for them.

That being said, even though they can make moves later on, teams don’t typically like going into the negotiating part of the winter without room on the 40-man. Which means that early to mid-November is when the real action takes place in regards to clear cutting.

November 15 is the last day to protect players from the Rule 5 draft. The Cardinals have a long list of players that are technically eligible (43, not including the recently waived Tyler Reichenborn) but many of them aren’t at risk of being taken nor are they close enough to the major leagues to warrant protection. That said, there are still a lot of interesting names out there.

For instance, both pitchers that came back for Jordan Hicks, Sem Robberse and Adam Kloffenstein, need to be added if they are to be protected. Pedro Pages is making a name for himself at catcher. Chandler Redmond has been hitting a lot of homers in the minors. Jeremy Rivas was sent out to the Arizona Fall League and you probably don’t do that if you aren’t planning to protect him. There are a few more names that are probably also under consideration.

So let’s say the Cardinals have to protect five players, just to pick a number, and they also want to clear at least two spots from the 40. That means seven other players have to go, making our total rise to 10. Given that we started with 45 counting the 60-man, that’s a big chunk.

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That, of course, only leaves two spots. John Mozeliak has said that they plan to bring in at least three starters and Derrick Goold reported the front office is considering bringing in two relievers as well. Which means either more bodies get waived or we see some folks leave in trade.

Even being conservative and saying that they are able to sign or trade for people that require just a 1-for-1 replacement, you could be looking at up to 15 players that are different next year than what we see currently on the Cardinals roster. I can’t ever think of a year where a third of the 40-man was turned over like that. It’s rare enough to have that sort of change from Opening Day to Opening Day, much less in the span of two months. (The change year-over-year from the openers is probably going to be around 70%, don’t you think?)

Some of these decisions are easy—Jacob Barnes probably doesn’t raise any eyebrows—but some are players that could have value. Weighing whether to keep them or to risk them going elsewhere is the calculus that has been difficult for this front office in the past to master. Hopefully they’ve taken some lessons and can really pull this roster math off this time.