As Cardinals rebuild, Winn steps up: ‘I’m going to have to grow up real quick”
One of the most difficult parts of sustaining a franchise during a rebuild is balancing the responsibility placed on young players.
Masyn Winn should still be a core part of the St. Louis Cardinals the next time they’re gearing up for a serious postseason run, and the bulk of his career story should be written in St. Louis.
A player who turns 24 on the eve of the coming season is not necessarily one who should have to be a demonstrative clubhouse leader holding things together.
But this is not necessarily a franchise that needed to slip so far down this path. They did, and the time is here for players to try on new, unfamiliar roles, and Winn sounds prepared—one way or another.
“Most people know I’m very vocal, very emotional, and I feel like I use those emotions the right way in the clubhouse,” Winn said when asked about the potential of a growing leadership vacuum. “We had so many guys that were [leaders] for us, so I’m gonna have to grow up real quick and become that.”
The clubhouse, Winn noted, is not totally bereft of veterans. He mentioned Lars Nootbaar as a teammate who can join him as a vocal presence, and nodded at the skills Brendan Donovan brings to leading by example and calming situations as they arise.
Donovan, however, remains one of the hottest names on baseball’s trade block, even as spring training draws closer and uncertainty grows around whether the Cardinals will find a match that checks their necessary boxes.
Nootbaar is recovering from double heel surgery, and the team has been circumspect about when they expect him to return to competition, which takes him off the board for at least the season’s opening weeks, to say nothing of spring training.
With less than 100 days of major league service time, starter Michael McGreevy joked that “being a vet came quick.” But it fell to him to reach out to some of the new pitching acquisitions to offer assistance in finding apartments in both Florida and St. Louis, setting up the mundane realities of seasonal life in a new city, and understanding the daily flow of how a new organization operates.
It is to the Cardinals’ credit, as well as benefit, that they have a built-in foundation of players early in their careers who are ready and willing to pick up that mantle.
But it also comes as a challenge to those players. Winn, after all, won his first Gold Glove last season, but struggled at the plate at times while dealing with a knee injury that was eventually surgically corrected.
That growth will all happen for Winn in the context of returning as arguably the team’s most reliable everyday player, tasked with helping to bring along top prospect JJ Wetherholt, who is only six months younger than him but on the verge of a leap in his career that Winn took three seasons ago.
The difference in their career clocks is, ultimately, betrayed by the lack of difference in their ages.
“I want him to come in comfortable and just be himself,” Winn said of Wetherholt, who has shared a workout facility with the shortstop and many other teammates in South Florida this winter. “I don’t want him to be walking on eggshells or anything like that. I want him to go out there and just have a lot of fun.”
Most around the Cardinals expect the duo to handle the vast majority of up-the-middle reps this season and for years to come, but there can always be bumps in the road. Winn’s early debut means the 2026 season is his last before entering the arbitration system.
Assuming a new collective bargaining agreement doesn’t make fundamental changes to the free agency system, Winn will be at the same point in his team control as Donovan is now, following 2027.
It seems unfathomable that the free agency clock could already be ticking, but it is—not due to age or performance, but the realities of service time and the push on when the Cardinals believe they’ll be truly competitive.
“I want to be here for my whole career,” Winn said. “I’m hoping this is gonna pan out right, and I think it will. I hope I’m here long enough to see the benefits of what we’re doing now.”
Players, by and large, have been accepting and understanding of the new baseball reality in St. Louis, and have taken the departures of veteran teammates with a sense of weary resolve that demonstrates a willingness to ride out the long haul.
Winn is perhaps unique among them in that he has been publicly willing to commit to the Cardinals for what could be another decade and a half in the middle infield, even as he enters the coming season with the optimism expected from a competitor.
“I’m going out there to win every game,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a single guy in that clubhouse who doesn’t think the same way.”
That is where the players will lead them. What’s in doubt is whether they can get where they intend to go—and whether the plan to get there will arrive in time to bear fruit for those who are here now to enjoy it.
