What does Herrera’s promotion tell us about the Cardinals’ plans for catcher in 2024?
When Iván Herrera roped an RBI double in the bottom of the first inning for the Memphis Redbirds on Tuesday night, he lost sight of the ball off his bat.
As a result, he didn’t run his hardest on contact, and so when Triple-A manager Ben Johnson removed him from the game an inning later, he thought there was a chance he was being disciplined.
Instead, he was being promoted.
Alec Burleson broke his left thumb sliding into third base, creating a need and an opportunity. For Herrera, with the season winding down, that opportunity was more than welcome.
“At the end of the day, if you go down and you don’t perform, you let your guard down, that’s on you,” Herrera said Wednesday after being recalled to finish the season in St. Louis. “You want to go down and try to keep working to do whatever you need to be back here.”
After an impressive — albeit very brief — stretch in the majors earlier this season in which he was 8-for-23 with two RBI, Herrera admitted to feeling “frustration” after being sent back to Memphis. Last year, his debut opened his eyes to a number of things he needed to work on from a game preparation and management standpoint behind the plate.
This year, he’s drawn praise for his improvement in those areas, and he’s also torn the cover off the ball at Memphis. With a .450 on base percentage and .500 slugging percentage, there’s no doubt that he’s set himself up to make an impact on the 2024 Cardinals.
He’ll have to, because a slow creeping roster crunch will pose a significant challenge to the Cardinals this winter.
Having signed young as an international free agent from Panama, Herrera will be out of years in which he can be optioned to the minors ahead of next season, despite not turning 24 until June. That limitation, combined with having Willson Contreras under contract and with Andrew Knizner coming off far and away the best season of his own career, could leave St. Louis searching for ways to piece together a 26-man roster that contains three primary catchers.
“This offseason will be important to figure that out,” manager Oliver Marmol said.
That Herrera was chosen to be called up over other options, such as outfielder Moisés Gómez, is telling.
Gómez is wrapping up his second consecutive season of 30 home runs in the minors, but the club has shown little to no inclination to see his skills at a higher level. While that ambivalence could preview the risk to Gómez’s own spot on the 40-man roster this winter, the belief in Herrera also implies some things about that search for flexibility.
With Contreras’s sore left wrist also potentially bringing an early end to his season, Herrera’s presence brought the added bonus of protection behind the plate. A twinge of pain for Contreras in Wednesday night’s game brought Herrera immediately into the action, and he responded with an impressive throw down to second to nab Milwaukee’s Andruw Monasterio on a stolen base attempt.
Despite a rocky start to his first season with the Cardinals, Contreras is set to finish with one of the best offensive seasons of his career, having also established himself as a comfortable receiver for a pitching staff that was uncertain of him in the season’s opening months. Knizner, who’s slugged an impressive 10 homers as a backup catcher, is well respected among the pitching staff, and could well have more value for the Cardinals on the roster than he might return in a trade.
By contrast, righty sluggers like Gómez, Luken Baker, Tyler O’Neill and Juan Yepez have seen only lukewarm support from the team in terms of prioritizing their chances to show their own value; or, in the case of O’Neill, he hasn’t been able to stay on the field long enough to do so.
Any or all of the four could find themselves moving on this winter, and if they do, it might reopen a conversation about the viability of Contreras taking some rare turns in the outfield, though more as a technique to preserve his body and maximize his bat than as the clearly punitive measure it might have been in April.
Even if Contreras only catches when in the field, he’ll seemingly enter next season as far and away the team’s top option at designated hitter against left-handed starters, especially if some of the roster redundancies are cleared away. With minimal creativity employed, the roster pieces seemingly would fall into place in a way that provides sufficient time behind the plate for each of the three.
Over the season’s closing weeks, Knizner will maintain his steady presence, and Herrera will have a chance to end his season in a spot he’s earned, rather than starting the winter stewing on how his year ended.
“This year I basically played all aspects of the game good,” Herrera said. “Maybe in a short time, but coming here and giving 100% is what’s going to keep me here next year and the next ones.”
Some of that remains beyond his control. The Cardinals are open to allowing him to prove that more should remain within it.
