St. Louis catcher Molina projected for career-low starts. But is that a bad thing?

Some questions can only ever be answered behind closed doors.

Around a baseball team, those are generally few and far between. Whether or not a player is succeeding is visible on the field to all, and even when coaches and executives answer in euphemism, there’s comfort and confidence in knowing a carefully crafted message should land in the way in which it was intended.

Some careful answers, though, are whispered, and sometimes just barely that.

Yadier Molina is in his 18th and final season for the St. Louis Cardinals, and he is playing less regularly than he has at any time since taking over as the team’s starting catcher during the 2005 season. He started 35 of the team’s first 65 games, despite not having been on the injured list at any point. That puts him on pace for 87 starts over the course of the year; his previous low in a full season is 101 in 2007, when he missed more than a month after suffering a concussion and undergoing arthroscopic knee surgery.

From the day of his late arrival at spring training, it’s been clear to those around the team the effort required to allow Molina to stay on the field was substantial. Teammates marvel at the physical toll of more than two decades as a professional catcher, and some have idly speculated Molina is the only player on the roster who would be up to the task.

“You know Yadi,” Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol said. “If he’s on the field, he’s on the field. We’ll just keep it at that.”

He invited reporters to ask Molina directly if he was undergoing any particular physical ailments which might be limiting him.

“Everything’s good,” Molina said Tuesday before St. Louis’s doubleheader sweep of the Pirates.

Asked and answered.

Knizner assuming bigger role

Molina was not on the field, however, for Miles Mikolas’s near-no-hitter in Tuesday’s nightcap. Nor was he on the field for Mikolas’s complete game, 85-pitch performance in Tampa Bay on his prior turn through the rotation. Indeed, Molina hasn’t caught any of Mikolas’s five most recent starts; their last battery pairing was on May 17 in the first game of a doubleheader against the New York Mets.

Instead, Andrew Knizner has been tasked with wrangling Mikolas’s expansive arsenal in some of the most extended action of his young career. Knizner is on pace to shatter his career highs in games played and started as well as plate appearances — all set last year. He’s been trusted with additional stewardship of the pitching staff, even as he entered the Boston series this weekend with a 59 OPS+, making him 41% below league average as a hitter.

“Now that you’re actually in there three times a week, four times a week, the expectations are no longer trying to find my timing,” Marmol said of Knizner’s struggles at the plate. “Or, you know, saying like, you’re getting a real opportunity. So yeah, the expectations are different. He knows that.”

More about Knizner

Marmol described the years-long struggle with Knizner’s development, as the franchise turned to veterans like Francisco Peña and Matt Wieters in an attempt to allow Knizner to mature at Triple-A as much as possible.

“We’re asking him to make adjustments that you would normally make at a level that’s not at the big league level,” Marmol conceded.

It also reduces some pressure on Knizner to note, despite his struggles, his OPS+ is 10 points higher than Molina’s.

“I prepare every year to be ready for whatever the season throws at me,” Knizner said. “The chance to get in there some more, that’s always great. I try to take each game as an opportunity to learn and get better.”

“It’s a game of adjusting and adapting,” he added. “So, you know, I came in this year with a kind of a different approach.”

Knizner then described a literal approach at the plate, involving attempts to lift the ball more and generate power. That, in turn, led to some overcompensating, and he had a meeting with the manager Monday in which the two discussed the necessity for Knizner to hit the batting cage and adjust back to a happy medium.

‘It’s called getting an opportunity, right?’

That meeting came a day after Marmol — asked broadly about the offensive production from his catchers — spoke only about Knizner. That message, not whispered, was clear in subtext as well as text — Knizner is the player expected to improve, because for the first time since Knizner was in elementary school, Yadier Molina is not the catcher on whom the St. Louis Cardinals will most rely as they seek a championship.

When it was pointed out to Marmol the ask of Knizner — the adjustments, the development on the fly, the quietly sliding into a starting spot in place of a franchise legend who hasn’t quite vacated that spot — was significant, he paused, smiled, and looked around the room.

“It’s called getting an opportunity, right?”

They don’t come around for this team at that position very often.