Contreras’ bat is back to form, but what’s his future as the Cardinals’ catcher?
Conspicuously absent in many conversations about how the St. Louis Cardinals plan to handle their pitching in 2024 is considering how they plan to handle their catching.
Last winter’s goal, replacing Yadier Molina, was unquestionably met by the wrap-up of the Winter Meetings, and then rapidly spiraled into an open question within a month of the season’s start.
Once Willson Contreras’s extended and impromptu absence behind the plate came to an end, the Cardinals seemingly settled into a posture of acceptance of their new reality, all the while contemplating whether and how Contreras fit in to the vision of the future that one season on the bottom of the standings has created.
Undoubtedly, there were rocky patches in developing a rapport with some pitchers on staff. It must also be noted that some of the deficiencies which were discussed publicly – game planning, preparation and the like – were the same which were aired against his predecessors as the heir apparent.
Each of Iván Herrera, Carson Kelly and Andrew Knizner endured much of the same criticism about his own performance in their own turns; perhaps the issue is less how they prepare and more that none of them is Yadier Molina, arguably the best to ever play the position.
And yet despite those struggles and the very public way in which they were aired, Contreras’s offensive performance has tracked perfectly along career averages. Through Wednesday’s action, he’s holding a 112 OPS+; for his career, that number is 114. His batting average and on base percentage are within a whisper of his career totals, and while his slugging percentage has taken a dip, he traded in Wrigley Field’s gusts for Busch Stadium’s caverns as his home ballpark.
Over the last month, he’s been, by any measure, one of the three most productive hitters in the game. This season has been who Willson Contreras is. In fact, it may be the best version of him currently attainable. Why, then, has the team gently started to waffle?
“I know that this is a winning organization. Always has been,” Contreras said during last weekend’s series loss to the Colorado Rockies. “This year has been a little tougher than before, and we have to move on and look at the whole picture.”
Part of that picture started in spring, with Contreras turning down an invitation to play for Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic so that he would have the opportunity to adjust to his new pitching staff. Some of that laid groundwork is paying off now with Steven Matz, who’s had perhaps the most time of any pitcher to work with the catcher and build in the sort of trial and error approach that allows for thorough troubleshooting.
Miles Mikolas and Adam Wainwright, though, decamped to play for the American team, where Mikolas was kept on ice and Wainwright was injured. A tenuous rotation got off to a tough start, and a month that might’ve been an opportunity to learn together became wasted time burned apart.
“I don’t want to use it as an excuse,” manager Oli Marmol said of the WBC, and emphasized several times. Excuse or no, though, it is part of the explanation for how things got so far afield, so quickly.
“There are certain adjustments from just a team standpoint of having all your guys together for a period of time before breaking camp that, really, you don’t get back,” Marmol said. “You eliminate April, it’s different.”
The Cardinals, entering Thursday at 15 games below .500, were 10-18 that month in addition to losing their lone game in March. It was the scrambling to catch up in May which saw Contreras dislodged in that month’s first week, and which betrayed the first sign that the club may have been suffering from buyer’s remorse less than three months after their largest outside free agent signing ever had his first official workout.
Ahead of the deadline, President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak declined to comment much on the catching situation, though he notably said it would be a topic to revisit in the winter. If the Cardinals do indeed decide that Herrera’s steps forward and Knizner’s reliability are a better fit for them as a team concept, the expectation throughout the industry is that the Cardinals would have to eat a significant portion of the money still owed Contreras in any trade.
One point of comparison might be the move made to divest themselves of Mike Leake, their largest outside pitcher signing, who was shipped out a year and a half into a five-year deal in exchange for a non-prospect minor league shortstop. The Cardinals had to send along $17 million to the Seattle Mariners as part of that deal, approximately a quarter of its remaining tab. The same proportion for Contreras would be a hair under $20 million.
That would be a stunning admission of an error in judgment by a team that has, to date, gotten exactly what it paid for. This season for Contreras was entirely predictable in every way, apparently to all except the team’s front office.
If they decide again to clean up a mess, they’ll first have to acknowledge they were the ones who made it.
This story was originally published August 11, 2023 at 7:00 AM.
