St. Louis will reach the NLCS in 2023. Here are 4 other bold predictions for season.

It’s easy enough to look back at the year that was and identify a few things that stood out and may have been unexpected. What’s more interesting — and arguably more essential — is being able to chart out the year to come and set reasonable expectations for the Cardinals to clear in 2023.

Many or most of these predictions might not come true. If they don’t, though, it’s unlikely that it’ll be to the team’s benefit. Unless some truly shocking messaging comes from Clark Street in the coming months, this is a team with championship aspirations. Winning one will require success on many of these fronts.

1. Jordan Walker will hit fifth in the last Cardinals lineup of 2023.

Walker is still adjusting to play in the outfield. His booming arm doesn’t always fire on target, and he’s spending his winter tracking fly balls against the bright sky as opposed to scooping tough hops at third base. For all the scorn the team might suffer if they send him to the minors in March to work on his defense, there is a lot of work to be done.

The bat, however, plays.

President of baseball operations John Mozeliak has compared him favorably, if reluctantly, to Albert Pujols and the late Oscar Taveras on the rise. He’s the hitter for his generation, just as those two were before him. And those comparisons came before he ripped his way through the Arizona Fall League and cemented himself as one of the top three — if not the top — offensive prospects in the game.

By midseason, he’ll have emerged, and by the end of the season, he’ll be the lineup protection for Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado that otherwise doesn’t exist on the free agent or apparently trade markets.

2. Brendan Donovan will lead the Cardinals in at bats from the leadoff spot.

The Cardinals enter spring with three clear candidates to lead off — Donovan, Tommy Edman and Lars Nootbaar. Edman, a switch hitter, is far superior from the right side, and the other two, both lefties, split to the reverse, each hitting lefties better than righties. That creates a difficult lineup puzzle for Oli Marmol to solve, absent an obvious solution for the top of the order against righties.

Against that backdrop, and conceding that both Edman and Nootbaar have clearer incumbent paths to being in the lineup every day, it’s Donovan who will lock down primarily second base and continue to establish himself as an on-base, pitch-eating threat.

The others, however, have important roles to play. Such as ...

3. Lars Nootbaar will lead the Cardinals in defensive innings in center field.

Marmol has described center as “wide open,” declining to turn over his hand regarding his defensive alignment plans. Mozeliak casually tossed off an example outfield that included Nootbaar in center and Dylan Carlson in right, and when asked if that’s how he preferred the alignment, deferred to his manager’s judgment.

Still, there’s one obvious fact that leans in Nootbaar’s direction — if the team didn’t expect, or perhaps desire, that he seizes center, there’d be no reason not to simply say Carlson has the job. They haven’t, which seems to feint the other way.

Carlson, after all, rose through the minors in center, and when Harrison Bader was traded to the Yankees (indeed, even before, as Bader’s spring extension set up his departure), it was Carlson who slid over. Before being injured, center was his, and there was little to no debate about that.

It’s Nootbaar, though, whose batted ball data jumps off the page, and it’s Nootbaar whose refined work has caught the eye of important people both inside and outside the clubhouse. If he can handle the daily grind, the job will be his to seize.

4. Juan Yepez will hit more home runs than Willson Contreras in 2023.

This is perhaps the least bold of these predictions, given their respective rates in 2022.

Yepez slugged 12 homers in 253 at bats — roughly one homer per 21 ABs. Contreras managed 22 in 416 — roughly one homer per 19 ABs. Over a long enough time frame, and with more opportunities for the ascendant Yepez, it’s easy to imagine one passing the other.

Despite their commitment to Contreras, this would be a fairly positive development for the Cardinals. Replacing Albert Pujols’s production (second verse, same as the first, 11 years later) is going to fall to the two of them to share, and each is likely to contribute in his own right.

Contreras will have to deal with the strain of catching every day. Yepez will be forced to learn to handle the DH spot, and fight off the rise of coming challengers for at bats, like Walker. Notably, while I’m comfortable predicting Yepez’s total, please don’t ask me if he records them all while still a Cardinal.

5. The Cardinals will make it back to the NLCS — and be overcome by the Mets.

I’m just barely too young to recall the rivalry between the Mets and Cardinals in the 1980s. I do, however, remember the heat George Steinbrenner’s Yankees took in the 1990s, with screams about his plans to buy a championship against the good of the game.

Say what you want, but it worked. And the Mets, for all their residual Mets energy, are barreling along the same path. They’re collecting talent at breakneck speed, and with the Dodgers quietly backsliding and the Phillies and Padres perhaps unlikely to harness the same magic, their path is clear.

A knock down, drag out NLCS — a repeat, in some ways, of 2006 — featuring the plucky Redbirds and a well-tuned New York juggernaut is on the horizon. Can a newly evil empire truly triumph? Yes, they can.