In MLB’s offseason of uncertainty, St. Louis Cardinals outfield projects stability

For the first time in at least six winters, the St. Louis Cardinals will enter spring training with an assembled starting outfield group free of controversy and with a reliably productive player at each position.

Given all of the things that are uncertain around baseball — up to and including when or whether spring training will start at all — having that certainty should go a long way toward providing some confidence in the team that will eventually take the field this summer.

Tyler O’Neill returns to left field following his second consecutive Gold Glove and an eighth place finish in last year’s Most Valuable Player voting. Harrison Bader has locked down center, winning his first gold glove and posting an above league average offensive season for the second year in a row and third in the last four.

Dylan Carlson’s third place finish in rookie of the year voting is the mark of a player still very much on the ascent, and his return to right field cements the transition from a group of concern to one of the most intriguing groups in the National League.

More on the outfield

As recently as last offseason, none of the three could be said to be firm in their footholds on their jobs; Carlson, then the team’s top prospect, was likely the most secure, coming off a tantalizing debut in 2020. Bader and O’Neill were left to fend off challenges from Lane Thomas and Justin Williams, neither of whom remain in the organization. Indeed, if not for Bader’s spring elbow injury, O’Neill might’ve found himself more frequently pushed from the starting lineup to start the season.

On an early season road trip to Philadelphia and Washington, the Cardinals carried only Carlson from the starting group, owing to a minor O’Neill injury as well. He was flanked by Thomas, Williams, and Austin Dean, who is now a San Francisco Giant after being claimed on waivers at the start of the offseason. Turnover speaks to volatility, and at the start of the 2021 season, it seemed as though the uneven play in recent years would finally yield to a major shakeup among the players for whom space had been saved.

The last out of the 2020 postseason, after all, was made by Dean, sent to the plate to pinch hit for O’Neill in a do-or-die situation despite their both hitting from the same side. O’Neill appeared in that Wild Card series in San Diego only as a pinch runner and defensive replacement, yielding left field to Carlson, who also was forced to hit cleanup in a transparently desperate gambit for an offensive spark.

Instead, it was O’Neill’s move to the third spot in the order that provided one of the necessary jolts which sent the team on its franchise-record winning streak and elevated them to the postseason. He took his first four playoff at bats in the Wild Card game in Los Angeles, pairing three strikeouts with a walk and a stolen base. It was the sort of performance which skeptics long saw as a sign that he would perhaps struggle to hold on to a regular starting role in the big leagues.

Skeptics be gone

After a year as arguably the club’s top offensive threat, those skeptics have very little ground on which to stand.

The same is true of Bader, whose offensive numbers in 2019 languished to 20% below league average as his on base and slugging percentages cratered. Bader’s well-documented hitting sessions with coaches outside of the organization were wielded as a cudgel against the club’s own offensive staff, and his superlative defense was viewed in some circles with scorn.

It was that defense, after all, that led the Cardinals to provide him with consistent opportunities for playing time ahead of Randy Arozarena, who went on to provide folk heroic numbers in the playoffs for the Tampa Bay Rays.

And yet while Bader may not provide the thump that Arozarena did in his Rookie of the Year-winning 2021 season for Tampa, he has established himself as the stiffened spine of the National League’s top defense. He also acquitted himself at the plate, finding again sufficient pop to provide a threat in the lineup’s lower third.

With the introduction of the designated hitter to the National League a formality awaiting only the end of the lockout, the Cardinals can more than afford to carry a player with Bader’s skills toward the back end.

Who’s got the leadoff spot?

Carlson, however, is pushing toward the top. Whether second baseman Tommy Edman is likely to return as the club’s leadoff hitter is an open question, and with manager Oli Marmol expressing a desire for lineup flexibility, it’s difficult to identify a hitter who would better fit the bill than Carlson.

Twice in 2021 he homered from both sides of the plate in the same game, and as he continues to drop his strikeout rate and increase his walk rate, he’s precisely the kind of emerging hitter who personifies the necessary depth in a lineup studded with power threats.

Injuries can always change an outlook; labor instability, certainly, can do the same. And yet after many years of searching, tweaking, and compromising, the Cardinals have been rewarded by sticking to their guns and assembling an outfield whose members are all approaching their peaks at the same time.

All that’s left is to find their way back onto the field.