Cardinals back to familiar rhythms of baseball with familiar roster. What’s ahead in 2025?
A couple ad placements are new, some signage behind home plate has been replaced, and a red rug custom fit to the floor of an elevator has been laid down. Other than those few cosmetic changes, Busch Stadium looked on Wednesday much the same as it has for the last several years, the ballpark perfectly reflecting the team which plays in it.
Most things look the same. The things which are different may or may not have much impact. Either way, the 2025 St. Louis Cardinals will start their march toward whatever competitive destiny awaits them on Thursday when Sonny Gray fires their first pitch of the 2025 season.
“The group’s ready,” manager Oli Marmol said as the team went through a workout day on the field. “We had a good spring, and this group is coming together really well, just gelling together. To be able to play that first game, we’re all looking forward to it.”
“I can’t wait,” first baseman Willson Contreras added. “I think this is one of the best opening days in baseball. Everything that we do over here is just amazing. Of course the fans will show up and enjoy it, and you’re trying to enjoy everything as much as I can.”
How many fans show up to enjoy it remains, to some extent, a mystery. The Cardinals are anticipating an eventual sellout, but as of Wednesday evening, tickets remained available for sale directly from the team in many sections of the stadium’s lower bowl. The secondary market, too, has significant availability.
The sameness in the roster is perhaps a consequence of being unable to navigate the trade market as aggressively as the team might have preferred this winter, and how that is borne out in fan enthusiasm is among the coming season’s more interesting open questions. Support that has been guaranteed over the last two decades, if not taken for granted, is being tested and stressed in ways that parallel the changes taking place in the organization behind the scenes.
“You look at our group and it’s a bunch of hungry young dudes mixed with some guys who have been in the league for a while, and with no ceiling,” Marmol said. “That’s what the season’s for, is to show what they’re capable of doing. I’m anxious to see it.”
The Cardinals do have health on their side as the season dawns, entering with just lefty Zack Thompson, who was unlikely to make the roster even if healthy, on the injured list. Gray proclaimed himself over a bout of flu-like symptoms that set in toward the end of the team’s time in Florida, and Marmol said that shortstop Masyn Winn checked out fine after awkwardly rolling his ankle during Monday’s exhibition game in Memphis.
Gray was not particularly forthcoming about his plans for overcoming a troublesome lack of velocity which was stapled to his subpar results throughout the spring. Sitting in the area of 90 miles per hour – down from last season’s average of 92.3 MPH – he declared that he would “just pitch.” Asked what that means to him, he described the process as “being a pitcher.”
“I just feel so much better,” he said about his illness. “I guess I got here on Monday, was a little under the weather, but at the same time, when I got here, I felt like I could breathe, you know?
“I just really enjoy this place. Getting out here and in a big league stadium, I just feel like I could breathe again, and I look forward to opening day.”
Gray pointed out that this was the ninth time in his career that he’s been declared an opening day starter, but only the fourth time that he’ll actually be able to take the ball on that day. That unfolded last year, his first season in St. Louis, when he was felled by a hamstring strain.
There will be no watching from the sidelines this season. He will be on the mound, perhaps not as the Cardinals expected when they decided to embark upon a not-yet-truly-begun reset, but from where they’ll certainly benefit from his skills – as long as his velocity dip is not a harbinger of a more serious issue.
“He has other weapons, and I do think it’ll be a build up to [velocity],” Marmol said. “It’ll come. Whether that’s tomorrow, we’ll find out, but my level of concern is fairly low.”
Wednesday’s workout was fairly casual, consisting just of rounds of batting practice and pitchers working through their respective throwing schedules. Reliever JoJo Romero and coach Jon Jay were bundled up against the cold, despite the bright sunshine and temperature in the 60s. Thursday’s action runs a greater risk of bumping up against troublesome spring weather, but that too has its place.
More than anything, a return to the ballpark is a return to the regular rhythms of summer, and a reminder that, win or lose, there will be baseball to consume over the coming months. For fans as well as players, that simple reminder can be enough for many things to be sorted back into the proper shape again.
“Each season starts differently, and that’s the great thing about baseball, and I guess life in general,” Gray said. “There’s always challenges. There’s always obstacles. You don’t necessarily know what they’re going to be. You try your best to overcome them, and continue to press forward and just continue to get better on an everyday basis.
“That’s just life, you know? You just keep pushing forward. And, you know, that’s all I’m trying to do.”
