Cardinals’ demotion of rookie outfielder isn’t their only roster move to raise eyebrows
It’s incredibly challenging to jump from the minors to the big leagues and never go back, and that challenge is amplified by a magnitude when a young player skips Triple-A entirely while still in the process of learning a new position.
It’s therefore neither entirely surprising nor entirely negative that the St. Louis Cardinals made the decision to option phenom outfielder Jordan Walker to the Memphis Redbirds on Wednesday afternoon.
It’s the series of roster moves around that decision which raise eyebrows and which seem to reveal a great deal of the team’s thinking as they attempt to navigate their worst season start in decades.
Walker, still a month shy of turning 21, was 20-for-73 in the season’s first month, hitting two homers and three doubles while tying with Paul Goldschmidt for third on the team in RBI, with 11. He recorded 20 strikeouts and only three walks, and spent his last few days of his first stint in the majors working through kinks in his swing with the team’s hitting staff while out of the starting lineup.
Where he struggled, undeniably, was in the field. Walker didn’t make his first professional appearance as an outfielder until the night of the 2022 trade deadline, and made 19 starts in right field as he adjusted to a new position.
By any measure, Walker’s early work in the field grades out as one of the worst in MLB. His negative three outs above average are tied with Michael Conforto and Lane Thomas for the worst among right fielders, and he charts as a negative value player by wins above replacement due to the defensive ground lost by having him in the outfield.
Walker is too good an athlete, too advanced a baseball player not to improve significantly in that part of his game.
With time will come strides, but with a full complement of outfielders and Nolan Gorman providing too much damage at the plate to be dislodged from the designated hitter’s spot, there’s an undeniable logic to giving Walker at least a few weeks away from a pressure-packed foundering team to find his groove with a Memphis bunch that is surging.
That bunch, on paper for a span of one day, included Taylor Motter, who broke camp with the Cardinals and was on the active roster until being designated for assignment on Sunday to clear room for Paul DeJong’s return. Motter cleared waivers, accepted an outright assignment to Memphis, and then immediately signed a Major League contract to come back to the big leagues.
Walker did play Sunday – he walked and singled – but otherwise hasn’t seen the field since DeJong’s recall. Alec Burleson and Dylan Carlson both began that game on the bench, and either could more than capably have filled Walker’s lineup spot had the team simply taken the path of least resistance and optioned Walker on Sunday without risking Motter’s exposure.
Perhaps they were confident that Motter would go unclaimed on waivers. Perhaps there was a compelling reason for Walker to start Sunday and only Sunday.
But the more cynical interpretation would be that the team was leery of a potential public backlash that might come from pairing the return of an underperforming player who they claim is on the rebound with the demotion of the player who seems set to be at the center of the franchise for the next two decades.
Frankly, it makes little sense to return Motter to the roster at all. That’s no judgment on his abilities, but rather his role; DeJong, the Cardinals have said, functions as the utility infielder. He is a backup right-handed bat. He’s even a potential emergency catcher.
There’s not room for that player on a 25-man roster, but there is with the current limit of 26.
Room for one of them. Not two.
In the meantime, Juan Yepez is eligible for recall at Memphis, posting an OPS over 1.000 over the last week since his return there on April 15, as well as the Cardinals’ only home run in last year’s postseason.
Luken Baker is hitting .319 with seven homers for the Redbirds; if the big club wants a power jolt, he can put some in a bucket. Even journeyman Juniel Querecuto has a .958 OPS in 52 Memphis at-bats, and he’s a switch hitter.
Why risk Motter and turn him around? What changed with Walker over a three-day span that they felt the need to erase one risky transaction halfway through a series? Why does a team that’s carefully operating so as to avoid the appearance of panic allow itself to be painted into a roster corner where that’s a perfectly viable explanation for their behavior?
The Cardinals have a reputation around the game for reliability and predictability. St. Louis has a reputation as a place that dissects the skills of the 26th man on the roster perhaps more than anywhere else in baseball.
Wednesday, those reputations collided.
The conversation around the latter is justified. The volume of chatter around the former is on the verge of being turned up substantially.
