Cardinals make small but important changes to roster as they prepare for active winter
Reliever Jacob Barnes cleared outright waivers over the weekend and rejected an assignment to the minor leagues on Monday, opting instead to become a free agent.
If it feels as though that’s an unnecessarily complicated way to say he was released, that’s largely correct, though it’s emblematic of the sorts of nips and tucks that take place while teams bide their time waiting for the World Series to end.
Barnes was the sixth player the St. Louis Cardinals have removed from the 40-man roster since the season ended, each of whom has wound his way through MLB’s byzantine transactional infrastructure. Pitchers Casey Lawrence and Andrew Suárez, like Barnes, cleared waivers and opted for free agency, though any or all of the three are candidates to eventually return on a minor league contract.
That opt out was earned by all three by virtue of having previously been outrighted off another team’s roster earlier in their careers. Reliever Kyle Leahy, on the other hand, did not have a previous outright on his ledger (or sufficient service time), and so he remains under team control, as does infielder Irving Lopez. Infielder Juniel Querecuto waited the weekend before rejecting his outright assignment, and like the veteran pitchers, opted to wade into the free agent waters.
For an average fan, tracking the mechanics might feel daunting and might even feel unnecessary, but these roster machinations are important in terms of how they impact the rest of the winter.
The team has made one addition this offseason already, claiming infielder Buddy Kennedy off waivers from Oakland. In order to do so, it needed a free spot on the 40-man, which was secured by officially filing Adam Wainwright’s retirement paperwork, on which he wrote “I got a puppy!” when prompted for his reason for stepping away from the game.
Free agency opens five days after the conclusion of the World Series, but so too must teams have their rosters in working order. Players placed on the 60-day injured list during the season are temporarily removed from the 40-man in order to allow teams maximum flexibility, but they have to be returned from that list in that same five-day window.
In removing Barnes from the roster, the Cardinals opened up their first real spot of the winter, as they currently have five players – Dylan Carlson, Brendan Donovan, Packy Naughton, Wilking Rodríguez and Guillermo Zuñiga – on the 60-day IL.
Whether they all return to the roster is an open question; Naughton, coming off elbow surgery and potentially a redundancy, could be at risk, and so could Rodríguez, who never was quite healthy enough to pitch in the majors in 2023.
Rodríguez, too, carries an extra bit of overly complex roster baggage. He was selected in last winter’s Rule 5 draft from the Yankees, thus requiring St. Louis kept him on the Major League roster or injured list for the entire season before they acquired his rights free and clear. The caveat, though, is that a Rule 5 pick must be active for 90 days in order to have his restrictions removed. Rodríguez did not, and so they would carry over to 2024, should the Cardinals opt to keep him.
Tracking all of these little ins and outs of roster housekeeping falls largely under the purview of John Vuch, a long-time front office stalwart whose title now reads Director, Baseball Administration. Those vital administrative tasks – moving players on and off, up and down, rubber stamping the decisions made by the baseball operations group – may seem mundane but instead take up the lion’s share of oxygen around the transaction wire before the offseason opens in earnest.
All of these machinations are occurring before even getting to the list of prospects who need to be protected from the Rule 5 draft or the players who may not be tendered a contract for next year ahead of arbitration season. Barnes, a journeyman, has racked up sufficient service time for arbitration eligibility and therefore a decent raise. He was bound to be non-tendered, and so instead the outright ax fell and expedited the process.
The Rule 5 protection deadline falls on November 14 and the contract tender deadline on November 17; these transactional signposts help keep things in order and are also helpful days to remember for fans who simply love the thrill of the rush of minor transactions being announced. In a long, cold winter, it helps to know there are days on which something is going to happen.
News from the Cardinals is likely to come in the days between the end of the World Series and the annual general managers’ meetings, set to open in Scottsdale, Ariz. next Tuesday. Sometime in that span, the team will firm up its coaching staff and make other announcements regarding organizational personnel before the market really opens up and the task of adding pitching gets much more real.
Those days are right around the bend. For now, the seemingly random nature of the comings and goings of roster odds and ends will have to suffice and sustenance. It helps to know there is some order in the apparent chaos.
