Even in uncertain times for the Cardinals, there are reasons to be excited for 2025
Generally it is the arrival of baseball that helps break through the winter freeze and bring a little sunshine and optimism back into the lives of fans who have waited through a long winter.
As the majority of the metro east sits buried under a foot of snow and ice, that need is perhaps more acute than it has been in many months. The good news, though, is that there’s just a hair over one month left to wait for the sights and sounds of warmth to flood north from Florida.
The St. Louis Cardinals, though, remain locked in ice. They are one of just seven teams who have yet to sign a single free agent to a major league contract this offseason, and they haven’t yet made any trades.
Both are certain to change in the coming weeks; even teams who are going out of their way to be anti-competitive need to cycle in some fresh bodies, and a Nolan Arenado deal still looms on the horizon.
Until then, though, there’s only waiting and wishing and hoping.
Whatever additions the Cardinals do make are unlikely to be the sort which move merchandise and the attention needle, but there’s still optimism to be had. However this season works out record-wise and whatever the path toward competitiveness looks like, there are still a few scattered reasons for excitement.
The young arms will figure it out – or they won’t
It was less than two years ago that the mention of Michael McGreevy as a potential option to start big league games drew quizzical looks and quick dismissal.
At the start of last season, as the Cardinals were shuffling through excuses to avoid naming Matthew Liberatore their fifth starter, Gordon Graceffo wasn’t in serious consideration. Tink Hence and Tekoah Roby had to fight just to stay healthy enough to get on the field. Development was being questioned everywhere, and it wasn’t clear whether it would progress well enough anywhere.
Now, though, McGreevy is speeding through a winter in which he’s not quite an incumbent starter but is on the precipice of becoming one.
Graceffo will enter spring with an expanded pitch count, but seems destined to be pointed toward the bullpen, perhaps with an eye of backfilling for Ryan Helsley within the next few years. Hence and Roby still haven’t posted to the degree that’s necessary, but they’re on the 40-player roster. At some point, they’ll have to pitch.
Working through a reset means leaning in to upside and working to achieve it. Whatever revamped player development apparatuses are being set up at the lower levels will need to show success at the upper levels, and quickly. This quartet will be perhaps the best early measuring stick of those attempts.
Masyn Winn might be a superstar
However far they might have lagged behind in pitching, the Cardinals have had position players in recent years with sufficient prospect pedigree to drum up excitement from evaluators across baseball, not simply internally. In many cases, that’s been the result of players who have undeniable tools flashing them at the highest level, but not always being well rounded enough to develop the rest.
Winn could change that paradigm.
His glove, his speed and his outlier arm all showed up exactly as the Cardinals hoped they would in 2024. Indeed, he was a strong enough player defensively and on the bases that, even if he hadn’t hit, it’s likely that he would’ve held his spot through the season simply by virtue of adding enough value without the bat that they could be patient.
Instead, Winn slugged 15 homers and 32 doubles, putting up nearly five wins above replacement as a 22-year-old rookie. To become one of the game’s best players, he won’t need to take a big leap; a simple step forward will suffice, and the Cardinals would benefit greatly from it. They already see the potential, putting his name and face on four separate giveaway items on the schedule for the coming season.
There will be an answer to position player uncertainty
Nolan Gorman is among the group of players who have flashed elite tools at the big league level. Jordan Walker is as well. Iván Herrera could also be counted among that group. So too could Michael Siani, even if he arrived without the fanfare of the others. There are pieces there for success – and there are concerns that failure could result.
In the midst of a January primordial freeze, it would be impossible to say honestly that there’s certainty around how any of those players will perform over a full season. Both Gorman and Walker received that opportunity in 2023, more or less, and some of the results were encouraging. Both then took huge steps backward in 2024, in no small part contributing to the reset posture which has been used to excuse the team’s inactivity.
A year from now, that uncertainty will be all but gone. One season isn’t enough to demonstrate everything about a player’s future, but the Cardinals are determined to drum up a sufficient sample size – and to remove the dangling threat of demotion – to find out.
Prospect fatigue is real and sets in perhaps more quickly now than ever before with the available information on the minors, but Gorman hasn’t yet turned 25. Walker isn’t yet 23. Time is on their side, and the Cardinals have maneuvered themselves into a position to take advantage.
