With his struggles mounting, St. Louis Cardinals demote shortstop DeJong to Triple-A

The St. Louis Cardinals made a roster move of increasing inevitability on Tuesday, optioning starting shortstop Paul DeJong to Triple-A Memphis.

DeJong, 28, was 10-for-77 with 25 strikeouts to start the season after providing below league average production every year since 2019, including that year, when he was named to the National League All-Star team.

“When you think about what’s best for him, what’s best for the organization, this club right now found it was going to be difficult to get him at bats and get him right,” Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak said. “Right now he understands he’s got to go down, he’s got to get his work in. We did not put a timetable on it ... it comes down to production.”

DeJong still had two minor league options remaining and started the 2022 season with slightly more than four years of major league service time. A player can reject an option to the minors once they reach five years of service time, and so the Cardinals were able to send DeJong to Memphis without risking losing him on waivers.

The club had to this point resisted suggestions in recent weeks that they would move away from DeJong, pointing to his stellar defense in the middle of the field. However, DeJong committed an error in each of the last two games of the weekend series at San Francisco, though manager Oli Marmol said he wasn’t sure whether those miscues were related to his struggles at the plate.

“I think there’s an adjustment that needs to be made both physically and mentally,” Marmol said. “I think the ability to go down there and have a reset is important, but he’s going to have to actually make physical changes so that the result looks different.

“The ball will tell you what’s going on, and it’s a lot of ‘F, dash, fill in the blank.’ So he’s going to have to go down there — and he’s more than capable of it — and show that adjustments are being made and production is there.”

Shortstop Kramer Robertson was selected from Memphis to take DeJong’s place on the active roster.

Robertson was promoted ahead of power-hitting second base prospect Nolan Gorman because the club expects Edmundo Sosa, who is currently on a rehab assignment at Double-A Springfield, to return to the active roster as soon as Thursday. Sosa will be given “a real shot” to run with shortstop, Marmol said.

‘It’s not going to happen overnight’

Tommy Edman, who rose through the organization as a shortstop and was the starter there in 2020 with DeJong and Sosa on the injured list, will work at the position before games over the next few weeks before he and the club make a determination regarding whether he’ll receive an extended look there in game action.

“We don’t want to necessarily just move someone right away without some proper process,” Mozeliak said. “It’s not going to happen overnight. We’ll see if his transition over there (to shortstop) is something that he’s comfortable with and if we need him, so it’s really wait and see.”

“It’s not necessarily about if we can get (Gorman) at bats here,” Mozeliak added. “We can’t if Tommy’s at second. And we don’t want to just move Tommy over there without a strategic plan for that transition.”

Mozeliak snarks

With Sosa starting his assignment at Springfield on Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday night’s start at short fell to Brendan Donovan, who became the first player in the Major Leagues since at least 1900 to make each of his first four starts at a different infield position.

When asked about the extended patience the organization had shown with DeJong even as he turned in an OPS below .700 over his most recent 1,000 at bats, Mozeliak snarked that it was, “almost like a reverse question; how long will (the media) be patient?

“A lot of things were written about us probably being too patient. At some level, we recognize that, but we also know it’s a long season. We know he’s working, we know he’s trying, but he just wasn’t having that level of success that you need to see.”

DeJong informed of decision Tuesday afternoon

A staff meeting on Sunday’s return flight from San Francisco fed into Monday’s off day as a day to think, and led to Robertson — who had traveled to Norfolk, Virginia, with the Triple-A Redbirds — being put back on a plane to connect to St. Louis.

DeJong was told by Marmol of the decision early on Tuesday afternoon, and when the clubhouse opened to the media, his jersey still hung at his locker and his place in pregame batting practice was still sketched out on the schedule.

His place on the roster, however, had gone, and the Cardinals find themselves in the position of owing more than $12 million in salary to a player who, at present, has not turned in good enough results to stay in the big leagues.

The message is clear — whether he returns will depend on whether he turns in results. For that to happen will require a turnaround as dramatic as DeJong’s fall off.

This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 3:46 PM.