Rings before spring: Six Cardinals prospects get engaged in busy offseason
Victor Scott II had to do a surreptitious exchange with his father in the parking lot of a Panera. Brycen Mautz pretended to lose his cellphone under the front seat of his car. Ryan Fernandez had to sneak down to the sidelines of the Texas Bowl.
As the St. Louis Cardinals get younger, the life milestones that accompany youth are starting to pile up. Six Cardinals on the 40-man roster got engaged this winter, and each of the six — Fernandez (fiancée Kennedy), Mautz (Rachel), Scott (Alivia), Gordon Graceffo (Alexis), Michael McGreevy (Domenique) and Masyn Winn (Gianna) – was much more excited to talk about the diamonds they put on hands over the winter than anything that might happen on a baseball diamond.
“I had a lot of practice in baseball,” Winn mused about the difference in difficulty between playing and proposing. “Never had to practice getting down on the knee.”
Of the half dozen newly betrothed, it was Fernandez who stepped the furthest out of his comfort zone. Kennedy Smith works in sports herself, handling some duties hosting Houston Texans games at NRG Stadium. When the Texas Bowl was played there this year, she was handling her broadcasting responsibilities when her co-host slipped in an unexpected third key to the game, and Fernandez walked off the sidelines in front of a crowd of more than 60,000 rowdy football fans.
“Everyone says, ‘yeah, but you pitch in front of that many people all the time,’ and I’m like, it’s so different,” Fernandez said. “Pitching is easy. I do that. That’s my job, and I’ve been doing it my whole life.”
By the time he hit a knee – “laugh crying, or happy crying” – his rubbery legs were strong enough to support him. There was only one remaining challenge.
“I’m like, dude, you haven’t said anything yet,” he recalled. “You gotta ask her. You gotta get it out.”
He did, and she was thrilled, and the resulting video brought cheers and congratulations from all corners.
Scott, too, used his sports connections to set up a surprise proposal, but on a smaller scale. He and Alivia are close with fellow pro baseball player Taylor Trammell and his wife, and the Trammells have, in the past, hosted a charity event in the Atlanta area in the offseason. The event wasn’t on the schedule for this winter, but a scheme was hatched to have a fake invitation sent along so that the right level of dress and decorum would land.
After a typical Sunday morning of church with Scott’s family and a fast-casual lunch, the two got ready and headed off on an hourlong drive to an event that wasn’t scheduled to take place. Scott’s mental rehearsing of his big moment almost gave him away.
“I’m [driving] and I have this blank stare on my face,” Scott explained. “Not thoughtless, not too much on the outside, but in my mind, I’m blank. I was like that for like 15 minutes, and then she looked at me like, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ I almost told her the whole script out of my mouth.”
That script, well-rehearsed as it surely was, didn’t come out the way it was intended. Those things rarely do. Scott realized in the moment, “anything I say, I don’t know if she’s going to remember it.” From there, he said, it was more screaming and crying until her family came flying out of hiding “like a SWAT team, like Seal Team Six.”
McGreevy also ginned up a fake event to cover for some photos. He reached out to a local photographer to set up a phony modeling job for Domenique, who was thrilled to book a little extra work to develop more of her profile.
“They shoot, they pretend to take pictures for like 15 minutes, and then the photographer texted me, ‘hey, good to come down whenever,’” McGreevy explained. “I go down the steps, come up behind her when they’re on the beach. She jumps, because I scared her a little bit. And then I said a little schpiel, and proposed. Luckily, she said yes.”
Graceffo didn’t set up a fake event, but he did put together a phony dinner plan. Duke Mansion, a historic hotel in Charlotte, is a popular wedding venue with a busy schedule. When Graceffo called to schedule some private time to pop the question, he was hoping for a Friday or Saturday evening.
“They were like, ‘well, can you do Thursday?’ And I said sure,” Graceffo said. “They gave me a three to five [p.m.] time slot, so I had to ask her to take a half day from work.”
As certain as he was that Alexis knew what was coming, she let him off the hook for the week or so ahead of time.
“They have a big gazebo in the backyard and I just got down on one knee there, and that was it. Took pictures, and then we went and had actual dinner.”
Mautz also opted for the fake reservation but designed a scavenger hunt that ended on the beach in Encinitas, Calif.
“The second-to-last spot she thought we were going was this little park overlooking the beach and water,” Mautz explained. “Pulled up there, my family and her family were there earlier, so they set up a little blanket with flowers and stuff.”
With a photographer waiting and the ring in his pocket – sneakily swiped from the side of his car door where it had previously been hidden – Mautz dropped to a knee and got the answer he was hoping for.
Winn’s ring wasn’t hiding in a vehicle, but rather in the hollow of a tire swing. His fiancée is the only one of the group who’s from the St. Louis area, and her family owns property just south of Bonne Terre, Mo. The original plan was to take a winter trip together to Hawaii, but when trip planning fell through, he circled back to taking care of the important part.
“The day of, I disguised it,” Winn said. “We were supposed to have family pictures.”
The pictures still happened, but with a ring included and with help from Gianna’s family and friends. Winn joked that he had to be so surreptitious about the messages and notifications popping up on his phone in the run-up that, “if I was her, I would’ve thought I was cheating, for sure.”
Instead, he was planning for the start of a life together. The next bit of wedding planning, however, comes with some complications – for all six. The baseball wedding calendar is notoriously tight, with few months available in the offseason for a flood of ceremonies.
McGreevy said that Domenique immediately checked out the last potential day of the 2026 World Series before finalizing their date, and five of the six newly engaged couples are trying to fit their ceremonies into the months following the upcoming season. Scott said their wedding is likely heading for the winter of 2027, giving at least a little respite to a group of busy teammates.
Part of leaning into a younger roster is giving that group of players time to grow together, both on the field and off. Mautz said the newly engaged players have already swapped stories of preparation, planning, proposals and everything that comes along with it. The hope is that together, they can learn from their strengths and work on their weaknesses.
Take it from their manager. Oli Marmol and his wife, Amber, are likely to end up with a long list of weddings to attend, and that means a lot of gift shopping. Marmol, asked about his preferred method for handling the relevant registries, leaned into his own abilities.
“We all have our lanes of things,” he said. “That’s definitely not mine. That’s Amber.”
Get that man in the group chat. He has some wisdom to share.
