This will be the beginning of a St. Louis Cardinals blog that I will be having during the season, as well as through the offseason as they will be a team I cover in full. I will release this every Tuesday, starting March 25th, where I will review the 2 series from the following week and talk about my thoughts. I will also go over what is coming next for the team and anything else that might pop up.
To start, I am surprised Nolan Arenado is still on the team going into Opening Day. I thought he was going to be traded. The Astros had ties to him and after the Alex Bregman trade, I thought they would make a bigger push. There were virtually no moves done in the offseason to bolster the lineup and all John Mozeliak did was piss off one of our better players, Brenden Donovan, who he didn’t want to budge an extra $500,000. That same money that Donovan deserves because his role is so important to our team. The front office did not spend the money in any other places so, I am not sure exactly what they are doing.
I am pleased with how a few young players played this spring and will focus on 2 this edition, Quinn Mathews and JJ Wetherholt.
Quinn was the best pitcher that played fully in the minor leagues last year as he won the MiLB Minor League Pitching Prospect of the Year Award to round out the 2024 season. He led all of the minors in strikeouts with 202, the first 200 strikeout minor league season since 2011, and pitched on 4 different levels. I expect to see him starting in AAA, and potentially getting called up around early-mid June if not earlier. However, I would not be surprised to see him start in AA for a few weeks, and maybe get called up directly from there when it is his time.
He has a fastball that has looked much better this spring, getting more swings and misses. He has had a sweeping style slider that has been good against lefty hitters whether or not he throws it front door, or near the other batters box. His most important pitch in his arsenal is his changeup that is one of the best in all of the minors, and has had flashes that it can be productive against good hitters as well.
He should be able to be an integral of the pitching staff for years to come, once he gets called up. If he can continue to progress at his high rate, he will be one of the better late round draft picks the Cardinals have hit on in some time. Quinn will pitch in some big games in his career, and a pitcher at his level deserves to.
JJ Wetherholt, the Cardinals 1st round pick in 2024 (7th Overall) had a stellar college career at West Virginia. He played great baseball there with amazing defense in the middle infield (or sometimes third base), and being a beast at the plate with 2 seasons above 1.000 OPS. His slugging number dipped down more in 2024 compared to 2023, but he was dealing with a minor injury. He has however already shown signs of that power in Spring Training If he can get added to the lineup in the next couple of years, he and Winn will be an electric factory together.
In 29 games of single-A last year, he came away with an OPS in the low .800s and showed good plate discipline walking more times than he struck out. This is my biggest thing to see out our young guys show improvement on. Too many of our younger hitters are striking out at high rates. Brendan Donovan is very good at this and I think should be a model for the rest of the organization. If I continue to see the improvement in the raw hitting numbers, and this trend of BB/SO continues for JJ, I will be saying adios from the top of my lungs to Nolan Gorman.