Cardinals camp opens with shifting focus from veteran comfort to team’s future
As a small group of players eating breakfast together inside the St. Louis Cardinals’ major league clubhouse started to break up, lefty pitcher Matthew Liberatore offered a helping hand to top prospect and 2024 first round draft pick infielder JJ Wetherholt.
If Wetherholt needed any help locating things around the complex or understanding anything about the schedule in his first big league spring training, Liberatore, 25 years old, was willing to help.
Fast forwarding into the future means shifting perspective as well as the competitive window.
Ready or not, the last vanguard of prospects (at which Liberatore was at the head) has arrived at an inflection point, and it’s Wetherholt’s generation and beyond on which the team’s serious hopes for future contention are going to be pinned.
Pitchers and catchers reported to the team’s complex in Florida by Tuesday afternoon ahead of Wednesday’s first scheduled, structured workout. The quickening pace was evident even in comparing Tuesday to Monday.
Larger groups of pitchers – nearly all from minor league camp – threw off the bullpen mounds behind the hitting shed in the back of the complex, and a cadre of catchers led by Iván Herrera and Jimmy Crooks were fed balls from a pitching machine as they worked through their footwork and exchanges on throws to bases.
Though he hadn’t yet arrived to campus by the time reporters had to clear the clubhouse on Tuesday morning, ace Sonny Gray’s adjusted location was perhaps the most jarring sign of the changes which are on the way for a franchise which finds itself staring down the possibility of an intentional step back in the standings for the first time in at least a generation.
Clubhouse real estate carries its own codes and expectations, and a pitcher of Gray’s stature and experience has earned the right to pick his own spot. It’s telling, then, that he moved significantly down the row from last year’s location, tucked at the end of a row which terminates in a quiet corner populated mostly by young pitchers who find themselves set to receive opportunities which historically might have eluded them in St. Louis.
Right next to Gray’s spot is the locker stall of top prospect starter Quinn Mathews, who rocketed his way through four minor league levels in 2024, leading the minors in strikeouts and becoming Baseball America’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year.
Mathews will be given every opportunity to debut in the majors in 2025; he will be given ample opportunity for that debut to come in the form of an opening day roster spot.
Whether that’s his path or he still has more to prove in Memphis, two months of immersion next to Gray will matter. The location represents an opportunity, and a shot for Gray to imprint on the coming generation even as Mathews and pitchers like him push hard to crack a veteran group which might eventually be forced to yield to the newcomers in a way that the Cardinals have resisted in years past.
Miles Mikolas, a Jupiter native, was in camp Monday working through his standard progression, and is rapidly approaching the point at which he’ll be scheduled to throw to hitters.
Steven Matz is on roughly the same track, and climbed a bullpen mound in front of coaches on Tuesday to work through his delivery and mechanics.
Erick Fedde, in his first spring training as a Cardinal, executed a wise veteran tactic – he knocked out his video and photo shoot obligations for scoreboard content and other aspects of the game experience as early as possible. In doing so, he showed off the new, improved and corrected white home jersey, with the letters comprising the name plate returned to their traditional size and shape.
Andre Pallante was not in camp on Tuesday, as both he and Brendan Donovan traveled across the state to St. Petersburg to take place in their arbitration hearings, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday. The awkwardness of that process is a continuing reminder of some of baseball’s most unwieldy business, though the hurt feelings are rarely a real fissure in a relationship between team and player. Lars Nootbaar, after all, endured his hearing last week, and has since been getting his work in well ahead of Monday’s mandated report date for position players.
The opening days of spring training generally come with their own expected enthusiasm, owing in part to the energy of young players getting their first shot to make a real impression with the team’s brass. There’s also always fun in seeing which players are establishing clubhouse presences.
Outfielder Ryan Vilade, who has 51 at bats in the majors and more than 3,000 in the minors, seemed to know every one of his new teammates in some way throughout his travels in baseball, shaking hands and offering hugs at an impressive clip.
There’s not a great deal to learn between the lines in the opening days of camp. As long as players report healthy – lefty Drew Rom is the only known player in big league camp whose schedule will be behind the rest due to injury – all that’s left is to kickstart the operation and watch players come together.
There are very few bad vibes in spring training’s opening days; if you find them, it likely portends a coming crisis.
That’s not where the Cardinals are. They’re changing, and there will be significant bumps on the road as they do so.
Wetherholt isn’t the only person in camp learning his way. This year, though, more than many others, that journey will be much more clearly in focus than a championship destination.
This story was originally published February 12, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
