Cardinals test Herrera in left field amid trade deadline drama
With few enough days remaining until the trade deadline that it’s reasonable to count them down in hours, everything around a major league team comes with increased scrutiny and an unavoidable instinct to double and triple check on what constitutes reality.
When the St. Louis Cardinals released a lineup on Monday afternoon that listed Iván Herrera as playing left field, the July fog of war extended as far as making sure there hadn’t been a typo in its construction.
“I don’t make mistakes,” manager Oli Marmol half smirked and joked with a reporter entering the clubhouse on Monday afternoon. A few hours later, watching Herrera settle under a fly ball to deep left field, that became reality.
The question for the Cardinals is how the rest of the story will unfold.
Herrera has been undoubtedly the team’s most productive and dangerous hitter when he’s been able to stay on the field thus far this season, but a pair of injuries to his left leg have cost him two months. Those challenges, in addition to his ongoing defensive struggles behind the plate, brought the Cardinals to a position where they decided he would stay away from catching for the remainder of 2025, though even as far back as July 11, Marmol foreshadowed that particular lineup development.
“When you think about Herrera DHing every day,” Marmol said then, “it doesn’t allow [Brendan Donovan] a day off his feet, it doesn’t allow [Nolan Arenado], it doesn’t allow [Willson Contreras]. Especially in the second half, you want a little bit of flexibility in terms of being able to do that, so I wouldn’t table it to the off-season.”
And so they did not, working backward from a day on which they knew Andre Pallante would be on the mound, figuring that his arsenal would minimize the number of balls in the air to left field. That strategy was executed to perfection on Monday, with just that single fly out accounting for the totality of Herrera’s fielding output.
“The last time I played outfield, I was like 14,” a broadly smiling Herrera said before Monday’s 7-1 victory over the Miami Marlins. “I was pretty good at it back in the day…It’s just been, I don’t know, eight years, nine years. But I’m ready to go.”
That attitude is part of what informs the team’s comfort in pursuing outfield time as an option for Herrera, despite his admitting that, prior to Monday, he’d never fielded fly balls underneath stadium lights. A few solid weeks’ work with coach Jon Jay brought him close enough to game speed that the Cardinals were willing to push the envelope.
The overwhelming heat wave which has planted itself over St. Louis has posed a challenge in terms of keeping players feeling at their best, and with Herrera ensconced in the DH role, it was difficult to find spots for players to get relief while still keeping their bats involved. Alec Burleson has been handling the bumps and bruises which accompany a long season for a number of weeks, but has had to do so while dealing with an uptick in outfield innings.
“It’s a move that gives us a look at what’s possible,” Marmol said Monday, deflecting the suggestion that it was also a move that points the team’s attention toward 2026 and away from 2025.
That diversion will happen in the natural course of the coming days, as the deadline passes and the Cardinals find new teams for any number of players either on expiring contracts or whose long-term fit in St. Louis has come into question over this season’s first 100 games. Herrera, perhaps more than anyone, has asserted himself as an unshakeable part of that long-term outlook, even as his positional outlook has changed.
Both the team and the player have, for the moment, characterized his shift away from catching as “not now” more than “not ever,” but with two top-rated catching prospects – Leonardo Bernal and Jimmy Crooks – rising swiftly through the system, as well as a belief in Pedro Pagés’ game planning skills as an incumbent, it seems easy enough to see a path that moves Herrera into the field full time.
Monday was his first professional appearance at a fielding position other than catcher, and he touched the ball once. To say it’s too early to draw conclusions from the experiment would be an insult to both being early and experiments. It is also not likely a coincidence that such an experiment would take place so close to the trade deadline, in the event that players like Donovan or Lars Nootbaar, who have reached their arbitration years, draw interest from other clubs.
What the Cardinals thought they had in Herrera entering the season was a catcher whose bat would stand out for the position. What it appears they actually have is a standout hitter who needs to find a position, able to carry his offensive weight no matter where he’s put on the field.
They intend to find that spot as long as he keeps swinging.