With rebuild, Cardinals’ new ambidextrous pitcher has time to develop

The St. Louis Cardinals are in the business of acquiring talent and skills and have decided to give those assets time to develop and mature over the course of an extended roster rebuild.

It is convenient, then, to find a player with two skill sets in one.

For switch-pitcher Jurrangelo Cijntje, acquired from the Seattle Mariners in a trade for Brendan Donovan, the ability to continue developing both of his pitching abilities is one of several major benefits that come with enduring a little upheaval just before the start of what he hopes is a uniquely shaped career.

Cijntje – who goes by the nickname Loo (pronounced “low”) – took to a backfield bullpen mound at the team’s complex Tuesday, letting loose with both his left and right arms while sporting a six-fingered glove designed expressly for his needs. As baseball spectacles go, it was an intriguing one, but both Cijntje and his new team hope that a mere curiosity eventually matures into a dominant force.

“That’s kind of just [being] open-minded,” Cijntje said about transitioning to a new team. “Be able to talk to the guys and just introduce yourself. Don’t try to be too close to yourself. Just trying to pick everybody’s brain, obviously be open-minded and talk to everybody else that’s around you.”

The change in teams was not the only shift in Cijntje’s career path that came with being traded. Seattle told reporters in the days before the deal that they would likely progress him exclusively as a right-handed starter. He has more velocity from the right side and allowed an eye-popping 1.114 OPS to lefties as a left-handed pitcher across two minor league levels in 2025.

The Mariners, who came close to reaching their first World Series last season, were eager for their 2024 first-round pick to get on a track that brought him to the majors as quickly as possible with solid contributions. The Cardinals, with a longer timeline and more room to grow, are open to the possibility that he could still develop into one of baseball’s unique figures with a skill set to match.

“I think it’s pretty good, because everybody can see that [the Cardinals] are doing a rebuild now, and then to be able, let’s say, three, four years, and then see where the team’s at,” he said. “It’s kind of good to be a part of that, just from the ground and to the top. It’s great to start somewhere, and then all of the sudden, you can look back, and it’s like, damn, we were all the way down, and look at us now.”

One thing Cijntje had going for him to ease the shock of being dealt was the long winter of reports connecting Donovan to the Mariners. The teams were engaged in discussions for months, and Cijntje said his representatives made him aware that he was part of those talks and might well be on the move.

On the day the trade broke, he was playing Call of Duty online with fellow Dutch player Ceddanne Rafaela and got a heads up—first from his agent, then from the Mariners—that he would be on the move. As soon as the shock faded, he thought of his cousin, Zackery Braafhart, long a Cardinals fan because, as Cijntje put it, he likes to wear a lot of red.

Among his earliest connections in St. Louis was director of pitching Matt Pierpont, who held a coaching role in Seattle when Cijntje was drafted. Pierpont left that job within months to join the Cardinals, but the onboarding he did in Seattle gave him insight into Cijntje’s one-of-a-kind skill set.

Cijntje was also college teammates with outfielder Colton Ledbetter, acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays as part of the same trade, and with right-hander Nate Dohm, who joined from the New York Mets in last summer’s deadline deal that sent Ryan Helsley to New York.

“[Dohm] was like, ‘it’s a great organization, we’ll be happy to have you here,’” Cijntje said. The welcome wagon, clearly, is being driven by those who just hopped on themselves.

Despite the relative lack of depth for the Dutch team in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, Cijntje said he had made up his mind to skip the event and come to his first big league spring training once he got word from the Mariners he would be invited. That decision was not directly linked to the trade, unlike so much of the rest of his winter.

Had he remained in Seattle, he likely would never have had a real shot at big league hitters as a lefty pitcher. That may still be the case in St. Louis, but there is a great deal more time to find out. He is, undoubtedly, one of the premier prizes of the first official winter of the rebuild—an instant injection of a top-100 prospect whose success or failure will be among the first real measuring sticks for Chaim Bloom’s baseball operations group.

He’s also a young pitcher, and there are countless roads for players fitting that description. For Cijntje, that number doubles—one for each arm. He’s eager to see where those roads lead.

“It’s just always been baseball,” he said. “Baseball’s been the same.”

For other people, maybe. No one’s quite like him.