What Are We Watching For?

That's not intended to be rhetorical, though I can see why you would take it that way

It’s been a while since I picked up my virtual pen and sat down to write something about the St. Louis Cardinals. It’s not that I don’t have some thoughts about things, as both podcasts are still churning along quite nicely, but time is not what it used to be. Finding time to sit down and write is not easy, especially when I may have covered things on the show. Add in the work the Twitter games of #bombsaway and #cardsix take and it can be less than motivating to put down words about yet another disappointing team.

However, Game 150 is currently taking place between the Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates, which means in just 12 games (13 days) the season will be another memory and we will sink into the abyss that is the offseason. Rogers Hornsby’s quote will come out of the woodwork like clockwork. There will be postseason baseball going on, which will be worth watching, but it’s not quite the same when your team isn’t in it. (The only thing worse than the Cardinals not making the playoffs is the Cardinals not making the playoffs and the Cubs playing in October. Thankfully we are likely spared that indignity in 2024.)

The off-season should be—I say should, because we thought last year’s winter would definitely be busy, only to see it done and dusted before the Thanksgiving leftovers were finished—a franchise-defining winter, but as much as I enjoy pondering those possibilities and speculating on what the Cardinals will and should do, there’s only so long you can do that before you need baseball games on your TV (assuming you can watch it) and in your life again.

So, while there are 12 games remaining, what are we watching for?

---

To go to my current hobby horse, one thing I will be watching for is how the Cardinals use those players that should be the future of the organization. The track record on that has been mixed this year, to be generous, and while two weeks won’t really tell you much of anything, it’s a chance to let some young players take something into the off-season.

Give the club credit, after the inexplicable there-and-back-again juggling of Jordan Walker, they have basically played him every day since he was called up for the final time. It’s not been ideal for him—outside of that five-hit day in Yankee Stadium, he has no multi-hit games in the span and actually has five hits total since then—but they are giving him the reps. Hopefully that will pay off, especially since he’s going to be on this team in a big role next year no matter what. He’ll have one option year left but it’s unlikely he can find anything in Memphis he hasn’t already found.

Thomas Saggese has been up a week and until Monday night he hadn’t gotten a day off either. I have no complaints on that score, given that Saggese did need to be added to the 40-man roster this winter. It’s a great time to see what they have in him and either plan for him to be in the bigs next year or at least let him have a little cache should the Cards decide to try to make some trades this winter.

What I do continue to harp on, though, is the decision to play Michael Siani every day, a decision that eventually forced Victor Scott II back to the minors. Obviously, Siani is a tremendous fielder. Given the recent clarification that he is eligible for the Gold Glove, he’ll probably win one in center. I am glad that Siani proved some folks wrong this year.

All that said, Siani has never been a prospect. Since his return, he’s put up a .139/.205/.139 line at the plate. If your offense is exploding, you can handle that from a defensively-gifted center fielder. If your team is challenging for a playoff spot and you want to make sure your pitching staff gets every out, of course you run him out there.

The Cards have neither of those conditions being met. However, in the two weeks before Siani was activated, Victor Scott II had a .293/.356/.463 line. He was finding his footing at the plate in the big leagues, then the club sat him on the bench for a week before finally sending him to Memphis.

I know, I know. He needs to work on his reads and first steps and base running. Yet you are sending him to Memphis, where he’s been all year. If he hasn’t learned all that in months at AAA, why is he going to learn it in September? You are sending him to the same coaches that apparently didn’t teach him enough the first time around.

Did he need work? I wouldn’t argue that, though VS2 made some pretty special plays out in the outfield. (Ask Jackson Merrill about it sometime.) I just think that, with a team out of contention—self-delusion is not a great look, front office—playing Scott regularly in the big leagues, along with the work he could get with Willie McGee—would be the best way for him to improve. It also sounds like center field is going to be a competition next year and that’s a little disturbing as well because so often these sort of competitions wind up with the wrong guy winning because he got hot in spring training.

Will Scott return this season? For that matter, will Nolan Gorman? I’m a little less committed to Gorman—I know it is foolish to write him off at his age and with the power he has, but I do start to wonder if the consistency will ever be there. That said, he has six home runs in 17 games at Memphis (even as he hits .231, so it’s boom or bust) and I’m going to be watching to see if he gets another shot this year or they let him finish the year with Memphis.

---

We’re also watching what could be the last go-around for a lot of different people.

I feel like the Cards aren’t going to worry so much about veteran leadership this off-season, given where it led them to this year, and you have to figure Matt Carpenter will ride off into the sunset after September 30. Maybe they add him to the coaching staff, because it does feel like he was a positive presence in the clubhouse, and overall he wasn’t terrible for the role he was filling. He currently is just shy of 100 wRC+ and he has four homers in 54 games, which is a solid rate for this squad. Still, part of the problem this year was the bench wasted spots for Carpenter and Brandon Crawford instead of having more useful people in those spots and it’s not a strategy I expect the club to try again.

If the Cards cut Carpenter loose, there will only be one member of the 2011 Cardinals still trying to play baseball. There’s no guarantee that by the start of 2025 he’ll have a job, though. Lance Lynn’s option is almost certainly to be declined. Lynn hasn’t imploded like we though he might but he’s not been good either. The underlying numbers have him about league average, which probably does mean he gets picked up somewhere next year and keeps that legendary team’s flame flickering. It’s hard to imagine the Cards paying $12 million for him next year, especially as it’s fairly likely this year’s numbers may be a high water mark for him going forward.

Same probably goes for Kyle Gibson. At the beginning of the season, it looked like Gibson might be in line for that $12 million option to be picked up. There have been some clunkers in the second half, though. He has righted the ship somewhat—two earned runs in his last three starts against the Yankees, Mariners, and Blue Jays, though he allowed four unearned in that last tilt—and if the Cards are going to bring one of them back, he still probably has the edge unless the club goes hard into sentimentality and picks Lynn instead.

As for Steven Matz or Miles Mikolas, as much as many of us might wish these are their last days in Cardinal red, being signed for another year probably means they will still be doing….whatever this is in 2025.

---

Then there’s Paul Goldschmidt.

If you told anyone at this point in the last two seasons that Goldschmidt would be gone at the end of 2024, they likely would have gone on a rant about how the DeWitts are cheap and they won’t even lock up a potential Hall of Famer for the rest of his career.

That’s not quite the sentiment now. It’s hard to believe that, going into spring training, we were sure that Goldy was going to get that traditional spring extension. Katie Woo made her annual appearance on Musial back then and said she’d be stunned if it didn’t happen. And then….it didn’t.

Did the club see something that made them think this dropoff was coming? Did it have more to do with the uncertainty of revenues and not wanting to be locked into a big contract? I’m not sure what the reasoning is but you have to think the front office is very glad that they didn’t pull the trigger if an extension was loaded up.

Goldschmidt is going to finish this season around 1 WAR. His batting average is the lowest in his career. He’ll have the fewest home runs in a full season since his third year in the league. It’ll be a career low in RBI.

Goldy says he wants to play next year. Whether he wants to do so at a significantly discounted rate and a significantly lesser playing schedule is a different story. It is hard to imagine Goldschmidt playing 150 games for this team next year. Is there a role for him on the 2025 Cardinals? I hope so. It’s going to be different, though.

It’s also more than likely Goldschmidt will be a different uniform next season as well. If that’s the case, we really need to appreciate these last two weeks. His entire Cardinal career hasn’t necessary been at the level that we thought it might be when he came, but it’s been a good run (and that MVP season will never be forgotten).

---

Of course, there’s also the play on the field. There’s Masyn Winn—in other years, we might be talking about him contending for the Rookie of the Year, but it’s a strong crop this year. He may have slid a little offensively as the season continued but it’s been a fantastic year for the young man and I’m quite excited about what the future holds for him.

There’s a battle for the team home run lead, though Alec Burleson hasn’t hit a homer in a month and still is tied with Goldy for it. There are also the outings you don’t see coming, like Andre Pallante against the Pirates tonight. To be fair, Pallante has been the pitching highlight in the second half, so I don’t want to make it sound like that was a total surprise, but if you saw a line of seven scoreless innings with nine strikeouts, you’d have expected it to be Paul Skenes that put it up.

We’ll see if Ryan Helsley can get enough saves to set a new club record. The Cards scored just enough that he didn’t get a chance tonight (and now has sat for five straight days with the off day) but you have to figure he’ll have a solid chance of getting five more before things are all said and done. The games are likely to be close and the competition is a little weaker, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

And then there’s just baseball. The game is beautiful, even when the teams playing it aren’t.

---

I’ve been enjoying following the White Sox’s run of futility, but I’m starting to think they are going to mess this whole things up. They won the last two against the A’s and now are leading 7-1 against the Angels. A win would put them at 36 with 11 to play. They’d still have to go 7-4 in that to not tie the ‘62 Mets for losses, but given that they were until recently on pace to win just 36 for the entire year, they might just ruin this whole narrative and be just a really bad team, not a historic one.

It’s about time for me to start thinking about the special guest stars that come on Meet Me at Musial from January to June. If you’ve got someone that you want me to try to get on, either a Cardinal media type or a podcaster, let me know. We have our regulars—Jeff Jones, Katie Woo, Kyle Reis—and I’m hoping maybe this year to add Bernie Miklasz to the mix. Bernie’s got his YouTube show going, as you probably know, and he’s appeared on a few other podcasts. Will Leitch joined me last year so maybe he can put in a good word!

I watched the LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild The Galaxy special on Disney+ this weekend. It was a fun (and obviously not canon!) look at how a mixed-up Star Wars galaxy could turn out. Admiral Ackbar being the clone template. Sheev Palpatine being the leader of the Jedi with a white armored Vader at his side. Darth Rey and Darth Jar Jar. There was a little too much “flip the sides”, though Luke and Leia remained good guys, but overall it was a fun little romp.

You know I’m not a football person. It’s part of my brand to push back the encroachment of that game from the spaces that should have baseball completely in it. That said, one of the few things football has going for it, especially if you are a fan or alumni of an SEC school, is Matt Mitchell’s SEC Roll Call that comes out every week. Matt’s got great stuff year round—and I completely bond with him over his love of the Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes—but this goes to another level. He’s been doing it for a while but I think this season is clearly the best yet.

Speaking of Christmas trees, right at two months until my outside decorating begins. IYKYK.