Are the reloaded St. Louis Cardinals ready? Here are five things to watch in 2019

The promise of summer beckons for the St. Louis Cardinals, closing the door on a winter and spring that found them a new face for the franchise.

And even as the Cardinals throw open the curtain on their 2019 season in Milwaukee Thursday afternoon — the start of Paul Goldschmidt’s much-anticipated time wearing the Birds on the Bat — we know what else we’ll be watching for:

He’s in right. But is he right?

When you and I played little league, the manager always put the worst player in right field. Got to wonder: Is Mike Shildt doing that with Dexter Fowler?

In the second year of a five-year deal paying him $82.5 million, Fowler last year had one of the worst seasons of any major-leaguer, hitting .180 with 75 strikeouts in 90 games.

Even so, Shildt promised patience with Fowler as the team gathered last month in Jupiter, Florida, making me wonder how long the Redbirds can let that mindset linger.

Even a month’s worth of less-than-stellar at-bats for Fowler could imperil the Cardinals’ playoff chances; they play 17 games against division rivals the first month. We’ll be watching to see if the fixation to get Fowler fixed takes at-bats from Jose Martinez and Tyler O’Neill, and at what hazard to the team’s postseason bid.

Can W and W earn Ws?

It’s jarring to see Adam Wainwright and Michael Wacha listed toward the back end of the Cardinals rotation.

But that is their rightful spot — behind Opening Day starter Miles Mikolas and second-year sensation Jack Flaherty, ahead of fifth starter Dakota Hudson — given the injury and performance questions for the two longest-tenured St. Louis starters.

Wainwright, 37, is not likely to ever command the baseball the way he did before tearing his left Achilles tendon in April 2015. Since then he’s missed one-third of his possible starts, posting a 4.80 ERA, and appeared in only eight games last year while battling irritation in his pitching elbow. He had surgery after the season to shave away cartilage in the joint, and – here’s the good news -- was able to make four starts without incident this spring.

Wacha, 27, who splashed on the big-league scene with a remarkable 2013 postseason, has battled a vexing shoulder blade injury and assorted other maladies since then. He made only 15 starts last season — a starter usually makes 30 or so — while battling an oblique injury that put him on the shelf in June.

If the Cardinals can get 50 starts and 20 to 25 wins from those two in 2019, the team might have one of the best rotations in baseball. If Waino and Wacha falter, we’ll see a lot more of youngsters Austin Gomber, Daniel Ponce de Leon or (maybe) Alex Reyes, himself returning from elbow surgery that wiped out his 2018 season.

Bullish on the pen?

The Cardinals will look to an aging veteran (Andrew Miller) and an astonishing kid (Jordan Hicks) in the ninth inning this year, but each option comes with multiple question marks.

Can Miller rebound from a frustrating 2018 season, when injuries to his left shoulder, right knee and left hamstring produced his worst season since 2011? Have his 137 high-leverage innings in 2016-17, for the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians, taken too great a toll on the 33-year-old left-hander?

Hicks, 22, is at the other end of that spectrum, beginning the second year of a career than could be singularly spectacular. The right-hander led the National League with an average speed of 100.7 mph on his fastball last year (I’ll pause here to let you fully comprehend that number, taking far more time for one of his pitches to blaze across the plate) and could be a dominant pitcher for years to come.

Will that stardom come to full fruition in 2019? How will he respond to pitching in the ninth? As Tony La Russa likes to say, it’s different when you can shake hands with your teammates on the mound after you (on your own, mind you) nailed down a win in the ninth. That doesn’t happen in the seventh or eighth inning, when you gladly get to hand the ball (and the game’s outcome) to someone else.

And there’s this: I recall an old adage in the NFL — if you have two starting quarterbacks on your team, you don’t have a starting quarterback. Here’s guessing Shildt will settle on the imposing Hicks most often, but we need to realize he is just one all-too-explosive pitch away from an injury that could imperil his (and the Cardinals’) season.

Glove sweet glove?

Goldschmidt, 31, a three-time Gold Glove first baseman and the richest Cardinal in history ($130 million for five years), immediately improves the team’s infield defense. Meanwhile, the club is hoping one glove (a third baseman’s mitt, instead of a first-base and second-base glove) will help Matt Carpenter play more consistently at the other corner infield spot.

Shortstop Paul DeJong improved after a rocky first half afield last year, while second baseman Kolten Wong was the team’s most consistent and spectacular defender.

A healthy and productive Fowler would be far superior to Jose Martinez in right field, and the Cards are hopeful left fielder Marcell Ozuna’s shoulder issues — which compromised his defense last year — have been resolved.

That leaves fleet-footed fan favorite Harrison Bader free to roam at will in center, flashing a skillset the Cardinals haven’t seen there since Jim Edmonds left after the 2007 season.

The Cardinals have no fielding worries behind the plate, where nine-time Gold Glove winner Yadier Molina remains — even at 36 —one of the best players toiling away at the toughest position to play.

Which leads us to …

Yadi time

Molina has caught more than 1,000 innings 11 times in his career, including last year and 10 of the last 11 seasons. With eight seasons topping 1,100 innings behind the plate — that computes to about 120 games’ worth of squats for more than 150 pitches or so in each game — Molina has averaged more than 1,000 innings in each of his 15 seasons.

At some point, sad to say, Yadi’s body won’t be able to take it any more. Will 2019 be the year that wear and tear catches up to him? Will manager Mike Shildt do what Mike Matheny should have done the previous six seasons, and insist that Molina miss a game or two once a week?

This year could mark the best chance for that to happen, with a highly regarded backup catcher (Matt Wieters, late of the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles) on hand to give Molina a breather.

Shildt knows it. We know it. Yadi knows it: If the Cardinals find themselves in play for a playoff spot late this season, Molina needs regular rest before the arrival of October baseball.

We’ll be watching.

This story was originally published March 27, 2019 at 10:54 AM.